All businesses are set up with an aim to scale and grow. With the internet offering ample opportunities, businesses across domains are leveraging this golden time. Today, people can buy products, avail services, educate and entertain themselves through the internet.
Since businesses are going digital, it is becoming necessary to provide seamless services to the end user. If you run an eCommerce store, blog or any website, you must understand the criticality of user experience. Certain factors can make or break a sale, and one of them is how well your website performs, its interface design, speed, and usability.
The type of hosting on which the website is running plays a crucial role in determining how well it handles traffic, and how well you can execute its use-cases. Virtual Server Hosting using a VPS server is recommended for users and businesses that follow a hyper-growth approach and need a more scalable solution.
The speed of your website is a crucial aspect when it comes to user experience. It is the initial impression you will make on a potential customer. Even if the content or products on your website are top-notch, a slow loading website will force the user to move to a different result. Slow websites kill conversions and have an adverse long-term effect. In fact, the speed of your site will affect your Google ranking as well.
How to Improve the Speed of your Website
Virtual Server Hosting is one of the most popular hosting solutions for eCommerce websites, blogs, and local service marketplaces. As a highly scalable hosting solution, configuring a Virtual Private Server according to your needs is possible.
Database Servers
If your website is primarily based on retrieving data from a database, make sure it is optimized to perform at its best. A well-optimized database speeds up your site by improving the performance of queries. It further prevents the parts of your website that don’t use the database from slowing it down. Slow queries are one of the primary reasons why a server responds to requests slowly.
There are three ways to optimize the performance of your queries –
– i. Use Appropriate Indexes – Make sure the tables in your database are indexed appropriately
– ii. Rewrite the Queries – Rewrite queries with performance in mind. Are the queries only returning what is necessary? You need to ask yourself this question
– iii. Change Your Schema Tags – Check whether objects such as tables, views have better grouping
Server Software
It does not make a difference which web server you use. If it is not optimized, your website will have high loading time. You can improve the server’s response time by configuring its settings to suit your needs.
Apache is a popular web server which can be customized for high performance. It will not perform adequately if you use its default configuration. Make use of documentation pages for server configuration and implement them according to your usage. On Linux implementations, selecting dynamic module management over static will allow the components to run only when needed. It will use less of the server’s resources thereby improving speed and performance.
You can also use Nginx, a free web server which typically performs better than Apache in its default configuration.
Updates
When using Virtual Server hosting, it is necessary to keep applications, control panel, web server, and OS updated to the latest versions. With the latest version, existing bugs will be fixed, and the performance will be significantly enhanced. Updating also fixes security vulnerabilities and reduces the risk of a mishap.
Server Caching
Simply put, caching is the technical term used for storing data temporarily. Enabling caching on the server level improves a site’s performance, since most pages of your website are already available and do not need to be repeatedly fetched. It reduces the load on the server and frees various resources.
Upgrade PHP
Running the latest version of PHP is highly critical, both from performance as well as security point of view. It is imperative to use the most recent version when using third party applications which require a stable and updated version of PHP. Updating PHP is relatively easy and can be done in the following ways
– i. Log into your cPanel account
– ii. Navigate to Software section and click on PHP Configuration
– iii. Select the PHP version you want to use from the drop-down menu
– iv. Click the update button to save your new PHP configuration
Conclusion
Improving the speed of your website is imperative if you want to retain visitors. By following the steps mentioned above, you can improve the server response time which will eventually improve the speed of your site. By considering the amount of traffic your website receives, your database and its optimization, the hosting and server solutions employed can improve your website’s performance.
