It’s never been easier to build a dynamic, content-rich website. Thanks to builders and hosting providers as WIX website creator, those with no previous coding or design experience can enjoy the rush of owning a vibrant slice of internet real estate.
While CMS platforms, such as WordPress and Joomla, have been around for many years, they aren’t the only choice for small businesses, freelancers or individuals who wish to cultivate an official online presence.
Haven’t signed up for Wix yet? Signup here for the latest specials from Wix and start building your website today! Wix.com is a leading cloud-based website builder software behind millions websites around the world.
Evidence of the popularity of website builders has never been clearer. In fact, just in 2016 the total number of registered websites bloomed from 900 million to over 1.7 billion. While only 200 million of the total 1.7 billion websites are active, this incredible adoption of digital real estate was clearly bolstered by the wondrous ease offered by WIX.
Although creating a website has never been easier, perfecting its performance and speed is an entirely different story. It’s clear the latest Google algorithm change reflects the current digital landscape. As the internet becomes more crowded, the need to elevate reliable and high-performing sites becomes even more important.
Regardless of your website purpose, in order to attract visitors and achieve visibility through first page SERP ranking, you must isolate your focus on speed.
This is especially vital for eCommerce websites. Failure to meet and exceed visitor expectations of full page loading in less than 3 seconds will result in your website appearing like one of the many malls throughout America – void of customers.
While the fundamental elements of cultivating a fast and responsive website are universal, a WIX website require additional tweaking based upon its unique infrastructure and deployment. However, when you master the art of boosting WIX-powered website speed, you’ll not only have the stability and technology of one of the biggest hosting and development companies on your side, but the limitless potential only offered to the fastest websites.
The following guide is designed to increase WIX website speed without sacrificing innovative designs. As always, use this information as a generalized roadmap to guide you to the city of swift page load times and extreme performance.
Step #1 | Leverage Built-In Page Load Speed Features
One of the greatest benefits of hosting your website with WIX is being able to take advantage of its advanced features without having to learn complex programming and network configuration skills. In essence, this platform is like receiving as Masters Degree in Computer Science without ever going to school.
WIX consistently upgrades and refines its website infrastructure to support overall functionality and performance. However, without knowing about these various features and technologies it’s almost impossible to ensure your site design takes advantage of its full potential.
In general, there are four primary technologies at your disposal designed specifically for dynamic website load time improvement. While two are relatively common, CDN and DDOS protection, the efficiency of the other two features varies based on your ability to take advantage of its capabilities. These include:
- Automatic Image Optimization – This unique feature is a rarity among any CMS or website builder platform. Essentially, when you upload an image, WIX automatically rescales/compresses the file to ensure it’s properly optimized for speed. While this feature eliminates the requirement of personally compressing/optimizing images prior to upload, it’s only available for images less than 15mb. However, enhance the efficiency of this feature by only uploading JPEG, PNG or WebP file formats that are already optimized for the web.
- Progressive JPEG Loading – This feature is similar to Image Lazy Loading via JavaScript, except it requires no work on your part. Images are rendered in a progressive manner, which boosts overall loading speed. However, it’s only compatible in Chrome and FireFox browsers. Therefore, you must ensure all images are refined as tightly as possible. You may want to consider adding Image Lazy Loading JavaScript to your site to boost speed for visitors using non-compatible browsers. Check out this guide to learn more and retrieve exact code snippets.
Step #2 | Configure Site for Page Rendering Process
In early 2018, WIX rolled out its anticipated Page Rendering Process for all sites. This new feature is essentially server-side rendering, which has the potential to seriously enhance your website speed.
Rather than rendering your site on an end-user browser, which occurs only after data packet requests are received and transmitted back to the browser for download, server-side rendering allows the bulk of the data rendering and processing to be done on the web server. Ultimately, this translates in faster page load times as the browser receives near-rendered data.
To take advantage of this in-house performance boost, you must ensure your website code and design aligns with the best practices outlined by WIX website builders, which is available here. The most important element when it comes to leveraging this technology is understanding how and when to use the server-side code. By following the tips and advice offered by WIX, you’ll immediately notice a dramatic increase in website load times and overall performance functionality.
Haven’t signed up for Wix yet? Signup here for the latest specials from Wix and start building your website today! Wix.com is a leading cloud-based website builder software behind millions websites around the world.
