In this article, we will delve into best practices for improving page speed in HubSpot CMS.Website speed plays a pivotal role in both SEO and user engagement. It has emerged as a crucial factor for ranking high in search results and reducing bounce rates.
Imagine you're searching for information on the latest tech gadgets. You click on a search result that promises an in-depth review and recommendations. However, as you eagerly wait for the page to load, seconds start to feel like minutes. Frustration builds up, and you decide to hit the back button and try another search result instead. This scenario showcases the importance of page speed for both SEO and user experience.
From an SEO perspective, search engines like Google take page speed into consideration when ranking websites. They prioritise websites that load quickly and provide a seamless user experience.
If your website takes ages to load, search engines may penalise it by pushing it lower in search results, leading to decreased visibility and fewer organic traffic opportunities.
On the other hand, from a user experience standpoint, page speed directly impacts how visitors perceive your website. In today's fast-paced digital world, people have short attention spans and high expectations. They expect instant access to information, smooth navigation, and quick interactions.
If your website fails to deliver on these expectations due to slow loading times, users are likely to abandon it and seek alternatives. High bounce rates not only hurt your website's engagement metrics but can also result in missed conversions and revenue.
By prioritising page speed, you can improve your website's SEO performance, attract more organic traffic, and provide a positive user experience. For HubSpot CMS users, optimising page speed becomes essential to leverage the platform's benefits fully.
Understanding HubSpot CMS and how it affects page speed
While HubSpot CMS empowers you with tools and functionalities to build and optimise your website, it's crucial to understand its impact on page speed. On your journey to improve your website’s page speed, Hubspot offers some automatic optimisations straight out the gate to guide your efforts, these include:
A CDN with image optimisation and automatic WebP conversion
When it comes to website performance, image size plays a critical role. Large image files can consume valuable bandwidth, causing delays in loading the page.
To help, HubSpot CMS provides a free Content Delivery Network (CDN) with built-in image optimisation and automatic WebP conversion. This powerful combination optimises image delivery and improves website performance.
The CDN accelerates the delivery of static files by storing cached versions in multiple server locations worldwide. With image optimisation, HubSpot compresses images upon upload, reducing file sizes without compromising quality.
Additionally, the automatic WebP conversion ensures efficient image delivery with smaller file sizes. These features enable the HubSpot CMS to provide faster load times and an enhanced user experience.
Harnessing the power of HTTP2
Traditional HTTP/1.1, while functional, has limitations when it comes to efficiently handling the demands of modern websites. HubSpot CMS incorporates the power of HTTP2 to boost page speed and improve overall website performance.
By leveraging the advanced capabilities of HTTP2, HubSpot CMS reduces end-user perceived latency, optimises network and server resource usage, and enhances page loading times.
With HTTP2, multiple files can be loaded simultaneously over a single connection, eliminating the need for multiple round trips and reducing the overall load time.
This results in a seamless and faster browsing experience for users, ensuring that your website delivers content efficiently and keeps visitors engaged.
JavaScript and CSS minification to streamline your code
When it comes to optimising your website's page speed, every byte counts.
HubSpot CMS streamlines the optimisation of your website's performance by automatically minifying JavaScript and CSS files.
Whether you're using the design manager or uploading files through the CLI, HubSpot removes unnecessary spaces, line breaks, and comments from your code.
This process reduces file sizes, resulting in faster load times for your web pages. Minification eliminates extraneous characters and whitespace, improving transmission efficiency and rendering speed.
With HubSpot's automatic minification, your JavaScript and CSS files become lean and optimised, enhancing the overall user experience.
Browser and server caching for added speed
When it comes to delivering content to your website visitors, speed is of the essence.
One effective way the HubSpot CMS enhances page speed is by leveraging server and browser caching. Caching is a process that involves storing copies of frequently accessed resources, such as images, CSS files, and JavaScript files, in temporary storage locations.
This allows subsequent requests for the same resources to be served from the cache instead of fetching them from the server again. The result? Faster loading times and a more seamless browsing experience.
HubSpot's caching capabilities operate on two levels: server caching and browser caching. Let's explore each of these in more detail:
- Server caching: HubSpot automatically caches pages and files on the server level. This means that when a visitor requests a specific page on your website, the server checks if it has a cached version of that page. This significantly reduces the time required to deliver the page to the visitor's browser, resulting in faster loading times.
- Browser caching: When a visitor accesses your website, HubSpot's server includes instructions in the response headers that inform the visitor's browser to cache certain assets, such as images, CSS files, and JavaScript files. The browser then stores these assets locally, so subsequent requests for the same assets can be fulfilled directly from the cache. This eliminates the need to download those assets again, further reducing page load times.
The benefits of caching extend beyond faster page loading times. Caching also helps to alleviate server load, as the server doesn't have to process and generate the same page repeatedly for each visitor.
This translates to improved server performance and better scalability, especially during periods of high traffic.
Amplifying page load speed with prerendering
When it comes to optimising your website's page speed and enhancing security, HubSpot has a remarkable feature called prerendering.
With HubSpot's automatic prerendering functionality, you enjoy the perks of having static versions of your pages, blog posts, and knowledge-base articles created whenever possible. This not only boosts your website's page load speed but also enhances security, leaving your visitors impressed!
One of the significant advantages of prerendering is its impact on page load speed. When a visitor requests a page that has a pre-rendered static version available, HubSpot can immediately serve that static version instead of executing the necessary server-side operations to generate the page dynamically.
As a result, the page loads almost instantly since there is no delay caused by database queries, server-side processing, or rendering dynamic content.
Another advantage of prerendering is enhanced security. By serving static versions of your pages, blog posts, and knowledge base articles, you reduce the exposure to potential security vulnerabilities that may exist in dynamic components, since it doesn't rely on dynamic code execution or database queries.
Domain rewriting: optimising your connections
Every time a visitor accesses a web page on your site, their browser needs to resolve the domain name through a DNS lookup to find the corresponding server IP address.
This process takes time and adds to the overall page loading time. Additionally, establishing connections with multiple domains further extends the loading process, as each connection requires additional time to establish.
HubSpot CMS offers a feature called domain rewriting that plays a significant role in improving page speed. By reducing the number of domains used on your website, domain rewriting minimises additional DNS lookups and connections, resulting in faster loading times.
Streamline mobile with HubSpot's AMP support
When it comes to delivering a lightning-fast and seamless mobile experience, the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) format is a game-changer. With HubSpot's AMP support, you have the opportunity to create an unparalleled mobile experience for your visitors, ensuring that your content loads quickly and efficiently.
The AMP format is specifically designed to optimise the performance of mobile web pages. It focuses on delivering a stripped-down version of your content that is lightweight and loads almost instantaneously on mobile devices. By leveraging AMP, you significantly reduce the loading time of your mobile-specific content, providing your visitors with a smooth and engaging browsing experience.
HubSpot's AMP support allows you to take full advantage of this powerful format without the need for complex coding or technical expertise. With HubSpot, implementing AMP becomes a streamlined process, empowering you to create mobile-friendly versions of your web pages effortlessly.
Analysing current page speed: identifying opportunities for improvement
Although HubSpot offers automatic solutions for enhancing page speed, it's important not to overlook the value of manual checks.
Evaluating your website's current speed and identifying areas for improvement are crucial steps in optimising performance. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom provide comprehensive analysis and actionable recommendations for improving your website's speed.
These tools assess critical metrics such as server response time, file sizes, and render-blocking resources to provide a holistic view of your website's speed.
Google PageSpeed Insights offers mobile and desktop evaluations, providing scores and specific suggestions for improvement. GTmetrix provides detailed insights, including page load time, total page size, and waterfall charts to identify bottlenecks. Pingdom offers performance testing features and recommendations to optimise load time and overall performance.
By combining HubSpot's automatic optimisations with manual evaluations and analysis, you can ensure that you address all areas for improvement and maximise your website's performance.
Regular assessments using these tools will help you maintain optimal speed and deliver an exceptional user experience. Remember, website optimisation is an ongoing process, and staying proactive is key to staying ahead.
Best practices for optimising page speed in HubSpot CMS
Once you've identified areas for improvement in your website's speed, it's time to take action and optimise your HubSpot CMS website for optimal performance. Here are some best practices tailored specifically for HubSpot CMS:
Compressing images and videos: a small effort, big impact
While HubSpot's automatic image compression is a great starting point, it may not always optimise images to the exact size you desire for optimal performance. Therefore, taking additional steps to compress images further can make a noticeable difference in your website's speed and user experience.
To achieve your desired image size, you can utilise external image compression tools such as TinyPNG or Compressor.io. These tools employ advanced algorithms to reduce the file size of images while preserving their quality.
By compressing images before uploading them to HubSpot, you can ensure that they are optimised for web viewing, resulting in faster loading times and a smoother user experience.
By putting in the extra effort to compress images, you're not only improving page speed but also demonstrating your commitment to delivering an exceptional user experience.
So, don't underestimate the impact of image compression. Take the time to optimise your images, reduce their file sizes, and watch as your website's performance improves.
Implementing lazy loading: load smart, perform great
Implementing lazy loading is a smart strategy to enhance the speed and performance of your website.
With lazy loading, the content is loaded dynamically as the user scrolls down the page, rather than loading all the content at once. This approach significantly reduces the initial load time and improves the overall user experience.
HubSpot CMS offers a built-in lazy loading feature that makes it easy to implement this technique. By enabling lazy loading, you ensure that only the images, videos, and other elements that are visible on the user's screen are loaded initially.
As the user scrolls down, additional content is loaded progressively, creating a seamless and faster browsing experience.
By leveraging HubSpot CMS's lazy loading feature, users will be able to start interacting with your website more quickly, reducing the risk of high bounce rates and keeping them engaged for longer periods.
With lazy loading, you strike a balance between providing visually appealing content and maintaining optimal page speed, resulting in a better overall browsing experience for your visitors.
How Huble can help optimise your website for page speed
Optimising page speed is paramount for SEO and user engagement.
HubSpot CMS offers a host of tools and functionalities to elevate your website's speed and performance, including image compression, HTTP2 integration, JavaScript and CSS minification, caching, and AMP support.
By diligently monitoring your website's page speed, you can soar high in SEO rankings, reduce bounce rates, and deliver an exceptional user experience.
Page speed optimisation is a continuous process that keeps you ahead of the competition but can be a complex task.
However, with the expertise and support of the right partner, you can navigate through the intricacies and unlock the full potential of your HubSpot CMS.
At Huble, our experienced team of HubSpot consultants understand the nuances of HubSpot and can help you implement the best practices discussed in this article to improve your website's page speed along with complete HubSpot CMS onboarding.
Don't hesitate to reach out to our team and schedule a consultation to learn more about how Huble can assist you in optimising your HubSpot website or move your website to HubSpot CMS. Speak with our team today to embark on the journey towards a faster and more efficient website that delivers exceptional user experiences.
