Speed sells!
Q: So how does website performance affects sales for an average online business?
A: Dramatically!
As a general rule of thumb, larger files take longer to download than smaller files. Web page download time, also known as the Page Load Time depends on the total size of content assets being downloaded from hosting servers to the requesting browser. High-quality bulky images are the largest contributors to web page size, degrading page speed and agitating visitors eagerly waiting for the web page to load.
According to HTTP Archive, as of December 2017, images make up on average 66% of a total webpage’s weight. The following image optimization best-practices go a long way in reducing the negative impact of images on website speed:
WordPress Solutions:
Leverage image optimization plugins such as Imagify, ShortPixel Image Optimizer, Optimus WordPress Image Optimizer, WP Smush, TinyPNG, EWWW Image Optimizer Cloud. It’s even better if you go with the ones that compress and optimize images externally, which reduces the load on your own site.
And for more tips check out this in-depth image optimization guide.
Not so long ago, 30 KB was considered as the ideal web page size. And that included images, content, graphics, and code making the entire page. The popularity of CSS and JavaScript ripped apart the ceiling of 30 KB page size in delivering enriched website user experience.
Yet, modern websites coded in CSS are better at downloading content from hosting servers to requesting browsers efficiently and accurately. Optimization, therefore, isn’t all about minifying file size. The following best practices ensure a speed-optimized CSS delivery:
WordPress Solutions:
Free tools such as Autoptimize, Cache Enabler, CloudFlare CDN, and W3 Total Cache are some of the most popular tools available for minifying JavaScript and CSS.
Indeed, speed optimization isn’t (just) about shrinking page size. Reducing the number of client-server requests in delivering website content to Web browsers is an integral part of website speed optimization. Webmasters can achieve this by not making too many folks with CSS, HTML and JavaScript requests. Although the number of requests isn’t as important as they used to be thanks to improvements with HTTP/2. That is to say, optimize, minify and squish all unnecessary and compressible code lines.
Minification is particularly important for inline JavaScript and external files not cached. Google recommends minifying all JavaScript files over 4096 bytes of size, and a shaving off a minimum of 25 bytes to produce any noticeable difference toward page load time.
A rigorous approach toward designing speed optimized website would incorporate a strong intent on eliminating unnecessary bytes from the code. Utilizing all the coding space available, deleting extra spaces, indentation and line spaces while maintaining readability of the code reduces the overall size of website core and front-end files. And for websites already developed without this strategy in perspective, combining multiple server requests (for HTML, JavaScript, and CSS) into single ones effectively slashes sizeable chunks from page load times.
However, overindulgence in HTML Minification potentially leads to loss of fidelity of the website code, with user agents taking excessive memory cycles and CPU power in “guessing” the missing resources required to parse HTML files. Monitoring page load performance changes in response to implementing each minification process individually ensure that only the unnecessary code and spaces are deleted.
Minification of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML share common benefits: reduced network latency, fewer HTML requests, enhanced compression, faster browser downloading and execution, ultimately boosting page speed and yielding higher scores on website speed measuring tools.
Additional website functionality with plugins comes at a price: performance degradation. Unfortunately, webmasters deploy a myriad of plugins to add attractive but often unnecessary features such as gravatar, profile tools, website stats and font tools – some even use 10 different plugins for social media integration. The only benefit here is successfully avoiding manual coding.
Many popular websites carry as much as 80 plugins. Yet, the number is not entirely a concern if the installed plugins are developed well to avoid complex actions and expensive server processing.
If the answer to all these questions is YES, your reaction to the plugin in question should be a huge NO!
Now to the big question, how many plugins is too many?
While there’s no comprehensive answer to this question, limitations are unique to every website and plugin. A lot of WordPress experts recommend not using too many plugins. But many well-performing websites host over 80 plugins, until they install one low-quality plugin that adds half a second to page load time.
Similarly, using 10 plugins for simple and unique tasks is much better than deploying one plugin to perform all of the complex tasks by itself. Exceptions include high-quality plugins by credible developers, such as Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin, All In One SEO Pack and the likes.
WordPress Solutions:
Use the following solutions to keep a check on WordPress plugins performance:
Revision management is one of the perks that WordPress has to offer. The CMS automatically keeps track of the content created on the CMS and makes all of it available for future changes. To the server, this costs unnecessary processing through additional database entries not actually required in the first place. Controlling the number of revisions stored relieves the website core of useless burden.
Disable Revisions:
define(
'WP_POST_REVISIONS',
false
);
Limit Revisions:
define(
'WP_POST_REVISIONS',
10
);
// limited to 10 revisions
WordPress CMS stores posts, comments, pages and other forms of textual and encrypted data within a single database – except for images and videos that are stored in the ‘wp_content’ folder instead. This database gets crowded over time, not only with unnecessary content and post revisions, but also with garbage data.
Garbage content includes:
Database optimization revolves around getting rid of garbage data and useless content from cluttered databases, shrinking them in size and making it easier for website hosting servers to fetch requested content efficiently, within minimum processing cycles. This can also involve ensuring that you are using InnoDB for your MySQL database tables, as opposed to MyISAM. Learn how to convert myISAM to InnoDB.
The wp_options table is also often overlooked when it comes to overall WordPress and database performance. Especially on older and large sites, this can be the culprit for slow query times on your site due to autoloaded data that is left behind from third-party plugins and themes. Check out our guide on how to cleanup your wp_options table.
WordPress Solutions:
define('EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS',
10
);
10 is the number of days before garbage data is automatically deleted. Change as appropriate.
According to Google, every day the cyber world sees 99 years of human years wasted due to uncompressed Web content. And although most of the latest Web browsers support content compression capabilities, not every website delivers compressed contents. Visitors to these bandwidth-hogging websites experience insanely slow interactions with Web pages. Primary reasons for this unfavorable (and mostly unintentional) website behavior include misconfigured hosting servers, Web proxies, old or buggy browsers and antivirus software.
Uncompressed content hurts bandwidth-constrained users receiving the Web content in agonizingly lengthy page load times. Here’s the transcript of a common browser-server communication in delivering uncompressed content:
Browser: Hey, GET me /HeavyWeightChampion.html!
Server: On it! *server skims through the server and finds the file*
Server: There you go, 250 KB of response code.
Browser: Ouch! *end-user sweats, ultimately receiving the requested content in a few tens of seconds*. (Okay, client-server communication is perhaps a bit more formal and less dramatic than the above narrative.)
Most of the problem lies in the way client-server communication goes in the HTML world. HTML files (making almost the entire Web content) includes several redundant code instances. <Tags>, <Alts>, <HTML> and the likes are all the same stuff materializing repeatedly.
Google recommends the following compression tactics to deliver website content efficiently:
A few words of caution though:
Not following the above recommendations actually increases file size and page load times due to the overhead of compression and decompression.
WordPress Solutions:
Developers crave simplicity in website design code. Website code easier to create, read and maintain leads to efficient website development processes. This includes using the available code functions frequently to cut short extensive coding for specific website functionality.
However, adding too many extraneous loops and unnecessary code lines increases page rendering times by a few milliseconds. Influx a torrent of website traffic, and the milliseconds compound to plunge page speed well below acceptable standards.
Webmasters can reduce these response times by delivering cached copies of the requested content instead of rendering it repeatedly in response to every single user request that pings their server. Web cache is the mechanism of temporarily storing copies of web content to satisfy subsequent user requests from the cache database when specific conditions are met. This process reduces the number of client-server round trips taken in delivering (static) website content to requesting browsers.
Along with static cacheable content, websites also host dynamic information containing unique attributes changing regularly for every end-user. Storing cached copies of non-reusable dynamic content, therefore, doesn’t make sense, even though rendering non-cached content is a painstakingly slow process.
This is the art of caching smaller elements of non-cacheable dynamic website content. When Web pages containing static and/or dynamic content are loaded, hosting servers process PHP code and query MySQL databases to fetch the requested content. These time-and-resource consuming processes are circumvented by delivering the desired output stored as a cached copy.
Fragment caching stores the output of some code blocks that remain unchanged across varied versions of the dynamic content. When the code runs and reaches the code block cached for a predetermined time, the server queries and delivers the cached output of this code instead of executing it repeatedly until the time limit reaches.
The end result is a cache-optimized website content for maximum page speed even for ecommerce and membership-based websites handling intensely dynamic content. Kinsta actually provides four different types of caching, all of which are all automatically done at the software or server-level. So there is no need to mess with third-party plugins.
CDN is an extension of cache optimization designed to supercharge website performance aimed specifically at globally dispersed web traffic. CDNs consist of a network of servers hosting cached copies of web pages. Internet visitors requesting this information are directed to the nearest server within this network based on their geographic location.
Traditional benefits of CDN including performance boost, high availability, and page rank collectively lift business bottom line. Check out all the reasons why you should be using a CDN.
WordPress essentially democratized the web by empowering citizens of the cyberworld to create their own blogs and launch products and services online with minimal investments. In general, website owners leverage one of the following hosting services to keep their websites up and running:
Among these, employing managed hosting for end-to-end website development and management services is the most cost-effective and productive option for maintaining an ultra-high performance website. Features of managed hosting services impacting page speed and website performance include:
With the release of PHP 7 came huge performance gains! So big in fact, that it should be a priority over a lot of the small optimizations you might play around with on your WordPress site. PHP 7 allows the system to execute twice as many requests per second in comparison with the PHP 5.6, at almost half of the latency.
Cold emails aren’t a numbers game.
You don’t have to send 1000s of emails just to score a disheartening open rate of 2%.
(That’s the often-touted open rate for cold emails, BTW.)
That’s all just a lie perpetuated by marketers who suck at cold emailing… and who want to make you feel like you’re as horrible at this delicate skill as they are.
Truth be told:
Cold emails can – and do – work.
But
Your cold emails don’t start working until you get THIS right
WANT more leads?
Selling one annuity could net you thousands of dollars in commission.
Yes, this type of product appeals to a select crowd, but have to know where to look.
Here Are 5 Ways To Get Annuity Leads Online:
1. Annuity Lead Companies
One way you could get annuity leads is by paying someone else to find them for you.
A multitude of annuity lead-generating companies exist; however, they aren’t all safe or worth buying from. It’s this catch that makes purchasing annuity leads one of the riskiest ways to grow your annuity business.
While YouTube is a fun way to scour for the internet’s most viral videos, it’s also a powerful way to disseminate your brand’s message. With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, the platform’s reach is second only to Facebook. In regards to video, however, YouTube is still the reigning king of content.
While its business-oriented functions are less clear-cut than say, LinkedIn, YouTube has a variety of features that cater to your business needs beyond the simple tutorial or webinar. With over 30 million daily active YouTube users worldwide, now is the time to take advantage of a platform that has yet to realize its full sales potential.
1. Optimize your content
The first (and arguably most vital) step of the YouTube lead generation process is to make your content shine. If you’re not sure where to begin, here are three rules of thumb in mind: educate viewers, answer questions, and provide calls to action (CTA).
Focus on the keywords that are most popular in your industry and find ways to incorporate them into the titles of your videos, on in their descriptions. While YouTube is its own veritable search engine, others like Google and Bing will index your videos; so when you include the proper keywords, you have the potential to show up multiple times in a given search. Since YouTube videos will play in succession (a.k.a. “related” videos), optimizing your content is crucial to its overall performance.
Here’s an example of a beautifully detailed description from the channel ASAPScience:
It’s safe to say that the New York-based media company BuzzFeed is a cultural phenomenon. Each month, the “social news and entertainment company” garners over 5 billion video viewsacross its various social channels, and the digital content producer's flagship channel, BuzzFeed Video, now has over 9 million subscribers. As BuzzFeed continues to set the benchmark for creating socially shareable content, independent video producers (like YouTubers), multi-channel networks (MCNs), and brands seeking influencer partnership opportunities can all learn valuable lessons from BuzzFeed’s viral video growth strategy.
Why Do BuzzFeed Videos Go Viral?
It’s no mistake that BuzzFeed’s content is everywhere. The media company has spent countless hours developing a formula specifically designed to make videos go viral, and both video producers, marketers, social media influencers, and brands can replicate the media company’s success by emulating the following elements of BuzzFeed’s content creation and distribution strategy:
Real People Are Turning Their Social Media Accounts
Into Bots - And Cashing In
Social Media bots create fake engagement. And they're quite effective.
They make posts appear more popular than they are, tricking algorithms into spreading them further.
And there's a good chance there's one in your feed right now.
Bots are amazing tools for bloggers. Amazing indeed.
Viral Hippo, the BuzzFeed News
–created Instagram account
that used a bot
to rack up more than 1,500 likes on a photo of a
black square, netted almost double that on a photo of a yellow square. It
pulled in 1,400 likes on a diagram of the human sinus, and more than 1,200 on
an accidentally shot photo of a hubcap. The likes were from real accounts.
"It’s not just Russian bots and hackers, it’s 22-year-old kids in their dorm rooms and influencers and brands of all sizes."
And the additional exposure bots provide can be quite valuable.
And as LinkedIn and other Social Media platforms have increased in popularity, Zopto and other similar services — including automated engagement trading groups on apps like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram itself — have become must-haves for many looking to build a business or gain exposure on the internet.
Brands like Walmart , Kroger, and the skin treatment product Aquaphor showed up in sponsored, engagement-juiced posts BuzzFeed News uncovered. Multiple bot users who liked Viral Hippo’s intentionally terrible posts liked these posts as well. The sponsored posts on Instagram can fetch anywhere from $500 to $3,000 a pop. Walmart did not respond to requests for comment. Kroger did not comment. Aquaphor spokesperson Leslie Kickham told BuzzFeed News the company has severed its relationship with the Instagram influencer that was promoting its products.
“Fraudulent activity is bad for everyone. We have a strong incentive to prevent this kind of behavior on Instagram and staff a number of teams to detect fraudulent activity and shut it down,” Instagram spokesperson Gabe Madway told BuzzFeed News.
Here are the strategies
that you’re going to learn about:
đź‘‘ Good landing page design is absolutely essential to lead generation. What's the point of buying traffic to your site if you don't put in the effort to understand how to convert it? [READ] Lead Generation Training - A Beginner's Guide
Learn step-by-step how to do local SEO for your target market in this quick video below:
It’s no secret that lead generation is important.
In fact, it’s a culmination of several different skills: you need to master content, sales, psychology, and good old-fashioned marketing if you want other people to become clients.
Bottom line? If you want more shmoney, lead-gen is a must.
And in this guide I’m going to show you everything you need to generate quality leads.
Cold emails aren’t a numbers game.
You don’t have to send 1000s of emails just to score a disheartening open rate of 2%.
(That’s the often-touted open rate for cold emails, BTW.)
That’s all just a lie perpetuated by marketers who suck at cold emailing… and who want to make you feel like you’re as horrible at this delicate skill as they are.
Truth be told:
Cold emails can – and do – work.
But
Your cold emails don’t start working until you get THIS right
WANT more leads?
Selling one annuity could net you thousands of dollars in commission.
Yes, this type of product appeals to a select crowd, but have to know where to look.
Here Are 5 Ways To Get Annuity Leads Online:
1. Annuity Lead Companies
One way you could get annuity leads is by paying someone else to find them for you.
A multitude of annuity lead-generating companies exist; however, they aren’t all safe or worth buying from. It’s this catch that makes purchasing annuity leads one of the riskiest ways to grow your annuity business.
While YouTube is a fun way to scour for the internet’s most viral videos, it’s also a powerful way to disseminate your brand’s message. With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, the platform’s reach is second only to Facebook. In regards to video, however, YouTube is still the reigning king of content.
While its business-oriented functions are less clear-cut than say, LinkedIn, YouTube has a variety of features that cater to your business needs beyond the simple tutorial or webinar. With over 30 million daily active YouTube users worldwide, now is the time to take advantage of a platform that has yet to realize its full sales potential.
1. Optimize your content
The first (and arguably most vital) step of the YouTube lead generation process is to make your content shine. If you’re not sure where to begin, here are three rules of thumb in mind: educate viewers, answer questions, and provide calls to action (CTA).
Focus on the keywords that are most popular in your industry and find ways to incorporate them into the titles of your videos, on in their descriptions. While YouTube is its own veritable search engine, others like Google and Bing will index your videos; so when you include the proper keywords, you have the potential to show up multiple times in a given search. Since YouTube videos will play in succession (a.k.a. “related” videos), optimizing your content is crucial to its overall performance.
Here’s an example of a beautifully detailed description from the channel ASAPScience:
It’s safe to say that the New York-based media company BuzzFeed is a cultural phenomenon. Each month, the “social news and entertainment company” garners over 5 billion video viewsacross its various social channels, and the digital content producer's flagship channel, BuzzFeed Video, now has over 9 million subscribers. As BuzzFeed continues to set the benchmark for creating socially shareable content, independent video producers (like YouTubers), multi-channel networks (MCNs), and brands seeking influencer partnership opportunities can all learn valuable lessons from BuzzFeed’s viral video growth strategy.
Why Do BuzzFeed Videos Go Viral?
It’s no mistake that BuzzFeed’s content is everywhere. The media company has spent countless hours developing a formula specifically designed to make videos go viral, and both video producers, marketers, social media influencers, and brands can replicate the media company’s success by emulating the following elements of BuzzFeed’s content creation and distribution strategy:
Real People Are Turning Their Social Media Accounts
Into Bots - And Cashing In
Social Media bots create fake engagement. And they're quite effective.
They make posts appear more popular than they are, tricking algorithms into spreading them further.
And there's a good chance there's one in your feed right now.
Bots are amazing tools for bloggers. Amazing indeed.
Viral Hippo, the BuzzFeed News
–created Instagram account
that used a bot
to rack up more than 1,500 likes on a photo of a
black square, netted almost double that on a photo of a yellow square. It
pulled in 1,400 likes on a diagram of the human sinus, and more than 1,200 on
an accidentally shot photo of a hubcap. The likes were from real accounts.
"It’s not just Russian bots and hackers, it’s 22-year-old kids in their dorm rooms and influencers and brands of all sizes."
And the additional exposure bots provide can be quite valuable.
And as LinkedIn and other Social Media platforms have increased in popularity, Zopto and other similar services — including automated engagement trading groups on apps like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram itself — have become must-haves for many looking to build a business or gain exposure on the internet.
Brands like Walmart , Kroger, and the skin treatment product Aquaphor showed up in sponsored, engagement-juiced posts BuzzFeed News uncovered. Multiple bot users who liked Viral Hippo’s intentionally terrible posts liked these posts as well. The sponsored posts on Instagram can fetch anywhere from $500 to $3,000 a pop. Walmart did not respond to requests for comment. Kroger did not comment. Aquaphor spokesperson Leslie Kickham told BuzzFeed News the company has severed its relationship with the Instagram influencer that was promoting its products.
“Fraudulent activity is bad for everyone. We have a strong incentive to prevent this kind of behavior on Instagram and staff a number of teams to detect fraudulent activity and shut it down,” Instagram spokesperson Gabe Madway told BuzzFeed News.
Here are the strategies
that you’re going to learn about:
đź‘‘ Good landing page design is absolutely essential to lead generation. What's the point of buying traffic to your site if you don't put in the effort to understand how to convert it? [READ] Lead Generation Training - A Beginner's Guide
But before we get started...
Take notes:
Learn step-by-step how to do local SEO for your target market in this quick video below:
It’s no secret that lead generation is important.
In fact, it’s a culmination of several different skills: you need to master content, sales, psychology, and good old-fashioned marketing if you want other people to become clients.
Bottom line? If you want more shmoney, lead-gen is a must.
And in this guide I’m going to show you everything you need to generate quality leads.