If you look after a site thatâs suffering poor mobile speed, then as a first step, carry out these 10 checks. They are informed by common drivers of poor website speed: The 10 Donâts .
For every Donât , weâve provided you with the relatively easy Do too; a step or fix that you can put in place to improve speed. I mean, weâre not talking HTML, JavaScript or CSS coding here, nothing too complicated. Just simple solutions in most cases, like repositioning an existing widget on the page. In fact, some of these steps will take you just minutes to give your site the boost it needs.
10 website mobile speed optimisation steps
| The 10 Donâts | The 10 Doâs | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Donât overload your home page with all your best content. | 1. Do aim to spread rich (heavy) media like videos and image sliders across all pages instead. | |
| 2. Donât add a âsmart reviews widgetâ to your footer that needs to send off for the latest âreviews & ratingsâ data across the web. Itâs likely to blow the speed on every page. | 2. Do add a âsmart reviews widgetâ on the main body of your contact page to drive new customer conversion, or on a dedicated âreviewsâ page instead. | |
| 3. Donât embed a Google Map on your footer. Think twice, even if youâre a destination business. Itâs famously âheavyâ content and will negatively impact speed on every page. | 3. Do host a Google Map on the main body of your contact page instead and add a helpful link on your website footer, so itâs easy for visitors to navigate to it. | |
| 4. Donât feature rich (heavy) media like videos above-the-fold (top of the page, before you scroll down). Or you risk âslow loadingâ pages and content âbufferingâ. | 4. Do feature rich media like videos lower down the page instead to improve page load speed, limit annoying buffering, and limit website bounce rate . | |
| 5. Donât embed a social media feed on the footer or in fact anywhere on a page unless itâs highly relevant, topical and engaging. It continually scans your social platform for updates in order to stream the latest content, so slows your site down. | 5. Do add a link to all your social media channels along with Call-to-Actions (CTAs), promoting compelling reasons for customers to visit and engage with you on your social platforms instead. | |
| 6. Donât fall for the âstyle over functionâ trap. Auto-play videos, live feeds and content flying in from different directions may look whizzy, but all these elements can negatively impact speed. | 6. Do try to limit the amount of âdynamic contentâ on pages. Give your visitors the information they want as fast as possible, rather than delay that with âsexy designâ features. | |
| 7. Donât feature too many image sliders, image âfeedsâ or gallery widgets on a single page or you risk pages loading slowly. | 7. Do try to limit the overall number of images on pages. In most cases, one great picture trumps 10 average pictures for the best user experience (UX). | |
| 8. Donât forget to optimise images in a web-friendly format before you upload them to your website, including images on your blog posts. | 8. Do set out to optimise any existing images on your site over 1mb in size to improve mobile speed optimisation. | |
| 9. Donât delete rich media like videos from the mobile version of your site in an effort to pass mobile speed tests. This is a negative ranking factor. | 9. Do what Google recommends: aim to deliver the same rich user experience (UX) to mobile users as desktop users. Host videos in âlight boxesâ to help alleviate speed issues instead. | |
| 10. Donât forget to enable lazy loading so content renders as visitors scroll down the page (instead of âall at onceâ when they first click on the page). Many website platforms now have this functionality built-in, so itâs just a case of locating and enabling it. | 10. Do note that if your website builder platform doesnât have lazy loading built in, you can always download a lazy loading app like this one for WordPress , so you donât need to venture into the realms of coding. |
10 website mobile speed optimisation steps, created March 2022
Are you struggling to pass Googleâs Lighthouse mobile speed test?
Seek some comfort in the fact that Googleâs Lighthouse test parameters are âhighly aspirationalâ. Especially so, if youâre building websites using an off-the-shelf platform like Squarespace, Duda or Wix because many of the issues highlighted by the Lighthouse report are likely to be outside of your control.
To help put things into perspective for you, Google ideally wants your pages to load in under 2 seconds. (Or preferably, in under half a second!) Lighthouse will give you a âwarningâ if your pages take an average of 3-4 seconds to load. And it will issue a âfailâ for anything over 4 seconds. Meanwhile, this is far-off whatâs happening in the real world. As of December 2021, the average page loading time for desktops was 10.3 seconds and 27.3 seconds on mobile devices.
So, when you take that into account, youâre probably not faring as badly âin the speed departmentâ as you first feared?
TOP TIP: Sharing this real world fact with your clients could provide them with a helpful âwider perspectiveâ too, enabling you to manage their expectations about page speed more effectively.
Carry out a real-time mobile UX test to put your mind at rest
Itâs always worth bearing in mind that mobile speed test results can fluctuate depending on many factors. Meaning, they do not necessarily reflect the user-experience (UX). In fact, the best way to test if speed is a problem, is to carry out your own real-time mobile UX test. Simply hop on your mobile and âshopâ the site as if you were a customer. If you experience buffering on specific pages, that tells you where you need to focus your mobile speed optimisation efforts.
Ultimately (given most searches are carried out on mobiles ) a real-time mobile UX test is the most effective way to console yourself and your clients that youâre providing a good user experience for the majority of visitors.
Test your site speed on Insites today with Google Lighthouse built-in
Insites is a complete digital marketing audit that evaluates over 200 factors and combines them into a single, easy to understand report for your agency clients. We run a Google Lighthouse audit on the websiteâs homepage and include those key performance metrics. Unlike Googleâs own tooling, we surface the key metrics and explain things in simple, easy to understand language.
Want to try Insites for yourself? Book a free discovery call with us today,
