Having a functional website is often integral for small business owners. Customers only want to use simple, attractive, fast-loading websites before they’ll move on to your competitor. However, proper web design might feel like a daunting task for those who are inexperienced, not tech-savvy, or do not have the right budget to invest in a state-of-the-art website. Regardless of your level of expertise, you should keep these 4 things in mind in order to optimize your website’s functionality.

Optimize Images

The larger your website, the more bandwidth it uses, thereby slowing down the experience for the user. The worst offenders of bandwidth usage tend to be images. It’s understandable that you would want a high-resolution image to promote quality, but there should be a balance between clarity and functionality. Adaptive images can help here. It’s a PHP script that automatically resizes images based on the detected screen size, which is especially useful for mobile sites. The script is customizable, too, giving you more control over how you want your website to run.

Minimize Waste

If there’s something on your website that isn’t used very often, it may be good practice to simply remove it. A website shouldn’t be bogged down by unnecessary bandwidth usage. This includes widgets, images, patterns, interactives, and more. Compression can help minimize the number of bytes per page, which will make the overall loading time much faster. This is important if you have many different types of media or elements on your website. In general, the smaller you can make it, the better.

Choose the Right Host

Often, many performance issues can be resolved with the right host. The host you choose will have its own set of limitations, so make sure you understand them before picking a provider. Cheap hosts generally offer minimal performance, whereas more expensive hosts have a lot of wiggle room. There are many different hosting packages available, so take the time to shop around, determine your needs, and see what works within your budget.

Plan Your Performance Needs

You can set a performance budget much like you would a financial budget. Based on your website as well as your host, there’s a maximum amount of bandwidth you’d be able to take advantage of. Keep in mind that every image, element, and page will take up space, and the culmination will determine how “digitally expensive” your webpage is, so optimize your web design while working within your limitations.

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