How to Reduce Server Response Time of a Website?
Every millisecond can make a difference and optimizing your server for class-leading performance is now more important than ever. There can be a multitude of reasons why your website is running slow.
Server lags are not always the cause of slow load times, but that doesn’t mean you’re immune from SRT (Server Response Time) impacting your end-user experience. Now is the time to start if you haven’t yet optimized this area.
What is Server Response Time and why is it important?
Server Response Time is the total time it takes for a server to respond to a request from a web browser. Irrespective of optimizing your web pages are for speed, if your server response time is slow, your pages will automatically load slower.
Investing in building a website is a complete waste of time if it loads slow and the visitors abandon the site without even viewing it.
Research reveals that over 50% of mobile site visits leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Added to this, the more time a page takes to load, the worse it ranks on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
Server Response Time influences:
- User Experience (UX)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
What is a good Server Response Time?
According to Google Page Speed insights, the Server Response Time (SRT) should be within 200ms. A 100ms speed is considered ideal and anything beyond 500ms can be problematic.
Based on the speed score they achieve; Google categorizes websites into three groups:
- Fast (90–100)
- Average (50–89)
- Slow (0–49)
Google says that more than 50% of the websites online are slow and only 10% of the websites are actually fast, wherein 40% are ranked as average, hence there is a lot of room for improvement.
Six ways to Reduce Server Response Time
1. Use a fast and reliable web hosting
The amount of time spent waiting for your server to respond only adds to your page load time. The first thing you’ll need to have is adequate resources to handle your traffic so that your pages load as quickly as possible.
To achieve a Server Response Time that does not fluctuate, it is necessary to invest in a high-performing server or in a managed IT services provider to ensure security, performance, and high availability.
2. Go for a lightweight Content Management System
If you’re using a Content Management System (CMS) like Magento or WordPress, then your website will accumulate bloat. You’re still at risk even if you don’t use a CMS due to the content (images, videos, text, etc.).
Stick to a lightweight template and use a webpage monitoring tool to correctly assess which plugin is slowing down your webpage and delete plugins that use up CPU resources. Hence, when it comes to lowering the Server Response Time, it is best to compress your images into smaller files.
3. Carefully choose and optimize web servers
While Apache is an excellent option, you may also get better results using OpenLiteSpeed or Nginx. Once you’ve chosen a web server, you’ll have to set it up. While it’s tempting to go with the default settings, you might end up using a low-optimal configuration. Because each web server configuration differs from another, our expert IT consultants at Infomaze can help you choose and optimize a web server to get the best performance. Reach out to us for a free consultancy.
4. Optimize your database
There are several ways to optimize the database to increase your website speed. Slow queries are a №1 reason why your server responds to requests sluggishly, hence you should spend time on identifying bottlenecks that are lagging your site.
Rewrite your queries, use indexes where necessary, change your schema to group objects such as views, tables, etc., and reduce the load on your database by using external caches.
5. Monitor PHP or WordPress usage
The more processes a server has to take on, the slower it’ll be and if you’re using a PHP or a WordPress script, make sure it isn’t consuming vital resources to undertake unnecessary tasks.
Make sure your PHP or WordPress is updated to the latest version as it is directly proportional to the response time. If you cannot do this yourself, you can take help from professionals who carry expertise in this domain.
6. Remove unnecessary code
CSS, JavaScript, and external files largely influence how fast the site loads. Compressing and minifying scripts is a popularly used solution without compromising the quantity of the data or performance.
Minify your script by removing redundant code like unwanted characters, long variables, and comments. You can do this by categorizing JS and CSS files as external and internal based on their size and performance.
Why Infomaze is the right choice for all your IT needs?
What differentiates Infomaze from others is that we don’t just deliver business solutions, but also transform businesses into API-powered digital platforms. The foundation of our IT capabilities spans way past software development (ERP, CRM, apps), server maintenance, security maintenance, IT infrastructure management, and more.
We have hands-on experience in helping clients attain noteworthy results on their digital journey with our IT infrastructure services. Our award-winning associates help firms to transform digitally — with IT infrastructure management, cloud migration, ransomware prevention, penetration testing, and automation, along with customization and setup of third-party solutions.
Get started today with our top-level managed IT infrastructure services and drive superior business growth.
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