We have come a long way from the days of dial-up. We no longer have to wait for the modem to make odd scrambling noises while it connects to the internet, nor do we have to lose the connection when a phone call comes in.
With the increase in internet speeds for home connections and even mobile devices it is easier to connect to information when we need it very quickly.
Now that we have come accustomed to faster internet speeds, we are no longer happy waiting for content to be served up. We want the information quickly, and why not? It has been nearly 2 decades since internet has been widely available in Australia.
A user browsing for your industry, products or services can easily be turned off from your website if it takes too long to load the information they want.
You can probably remember the days when images on a website were low resolution and streamed videos were somewhat blurry with audio sounding like your speakers were tin cans.
With a sharp increase in internet speeds, web technologies and applications, websites demand much more data than what they used to. You can now stream Full HD video online with more clarity than a DVD. Images are higher resolution and while Flash may be dormant, you can still experience interactive and intuitive websites using new and powerful web applications.
All of these technologies combined provide an immersive and fun web experience for users but at a cost, data.
One of the easiest ways you can use to gauge your website’s speed, is by using Google’s free Page-Speed Insights tool.
The tool will measure both the loading and usability of your desktop and mobile website variants (if applicable) using a scale of 0 – 100. The higher your score, the better the results.
This tool will also provide you with suggestions with how to improve your website’s load times from image compression and caching, right through to server side suggestions.
While Google’s Page-Speed Insights isn’t the be-all and end-all of speed measuring tools, it is a certainly helpful indicator of how you can improve the load times on your website. Listed below are some other helpful speed optimisation tools.
Other Useful Tools
Have you ever been involved in a website project where the final deliverable or outcome just didn’t hit the brief of what you wanted or had envisaged? If not, that’s awesome! But if your answer is a resounding ‘yes’, you’re not alone. This, unfortunately, happens a lot with website projects. However, it can easily be avoided if a proper discovery process is followed to truly understand the expectations and objectives for the project.
Our favourite CMS platform SilverStripe has recently released its newer version 4.0. We thought it’d be best to share the reasons why you should update your CMS, and the new features and improvements you can expect in this new version.
The most important aspect of user experience is putting yourself in the user’s position. Understanding your audience is the first step in most marketing strategies and designing your website is no exception
