How to improve website response time?

Customer experience quickly beats out exciting customer experience. Website visitors always want to freely navigate and interact with content instead of waiting endlessly.

We discussed why website speed very important in the previous article. 

You can see it here.

In the article, we will research website response time and how to improve website response time? 

Let’s starts it!

1. What is the website response time?

Time is counted from the moment a visitor requests URL until the request is fully displayed on the browser is called website response time.

Response time often used to measure system performance. If this score is low, your website was being optimized. And vice versa. Efforts to improve the response time of the website that is an important factor. It helps website performance. 

Note: you need to distinguish this term with “Page load time”. 

“Load time is the load time of all the components of a web page. It includes all load time of images, files, CSS, Javascript,… and resources of other providers.” 

In fact, Page Load Time is greater than response time. 

There are 4 steps leading to website display on the screen:

Step 1: Request: request launched by the visitor browser. 

Step 2 : Reply: the request and required properties are processed by the server. Then, it’s sent back to the web browser.

Step 3: Build: the browser uses this property to initiate the rendering for the requested website.  

Step 4: Render: the website displays to the visitor browser. 

So, along with browser lag, the main factor affecting the website response time is the server response time. 

2. How to check website response time

2.1 Standard 

According to the results of research, the website response time has 3 limits:

• 0,1s: lever of instant response. Users feel that they creating the result instead of the browser 
• 1s: lever of necessary response.
• 1 – 10s: attract the user’s attention. This is the maximum response time. Users can clearly feel the website latency. In this lever, they want to leave the site immediately.

Okay, so the fastest time is from 0.1-1s. However, you can adjust the time more slowly, but it should not be less than 2 seconds. The faster the website responds, the higher the customer satisfaction rate will be.

2.2  Website Response Time data

• The average time: average response time of the request. It includes time to load files: HTML, CSS, XML, image, JavaScript,…  Therefore, medium impact when slow components appear in the system.
• Peak time: the time to find potentially problematic ingredients. Issues include all the site anomalies, systems where a certain requirement is not handled correctly. You can see this when some large queries increase the response time of the website.
• Error rate (%): this is the calculation and display of the percentage of breakdown requests for all requests. This percentage counts all HTTP status codes displaying errors on the server. It also counts requests that have timed out.

2.3 Website response time testing tools

Currently, there are many tools to help you measure website response time. 

Solarwinds.com

The tool helps you to check and track the response time of any website. Stored response tests allow you to compare current and past response times.  

The versions: 

• Free version: trial for 14 days
• Paid version

Load runner

Load Runner is a load test product developed by Microf Focus. LoadRunner response testing tool works according to the principle of simulating Virtual Users on the application.

Pingdom

Pingdom provides a full-featured website for testing website performance. It gives you an overview of your scores and identifies factors that could improve. 

Similar to Solarwinds, you can choose between the free and premium versions

3. How to improve response website time? 

3.1 Web hosting

The hosting provides an environment on the internet for the website to operate. Therefore, the fast or slow response website depends on the quality of hosting. A web host uses old hardware/software resulting in a slower response time. Event when your hosting provider offers the most advanced equipment, you can choose the right package hosting. 

A useful piece of advice is to choose reputable hosting services, fully integrated with the features to help your website operate stably and smoothly. 

A great hosting has the characteristics: 

• Using the SSD drive
• Physical memory at least 2 GB.
• I/O (Data transfer speed from the host to the visitor) should be more than 5 MB/s.
• IOPS (Number of read/write times per second of the host) at least 2048.
• Entry Processes (the number of tasks running at a time out of the total number of tasks the host can handle at the same time) Should be equal to or greater than 50. Entry Process is created to protect against DDOS attacks on the server.

If you’re using the Magento platform, you can refer to Magento Cloud

The difference between Magepow’s hosting service and another provides that will make you surprise: 

• High-speed SSD: website speed is always a factor we are most concerned with. SSD is a commonly used hard drive with many outstanding functions. 
• Variety of options: you can completely choose the VPS hosting plan that is right for your website: VPS 2G/4G/8G/16G/32G/64G,…
• Reasonable cost: The cost is calculated based on the best optimization to help you save time and budget the best. Explore it here.
• Stable and safe: the server system is located in the big data center, meeting international standards. Ensure professionalism, stability, safety and security.
• Best support: contact our technician team for advice on problems with your website. Professional and friendly.

3.2 Cache

Web Cache is a cache on a website that temporarily stores frequently-visited static content. Therefore, it helps to minimize bandwidth requirements, latency, and response time of the website.

Some of the benefits of caching are as follows:

• Reduce bandwidth load: help website avoids unnecessary repetition of network activities, thereby greatly reducing bandwidth from customers.
• Improve speed: access some web data almost instantly, increase website productivity
• Improve server response time: Help the server process a part of the data that customers request.
• Meeting the large demand for access: many accesses at the same time is the cause of the impact on website performance. Hosting packages that support cache will meet the traffic volume 3-4 times higher than the throughput hosting packages.

3.3 Reduce the amount of resources website uses

Your website uses fewer resources (CSS, image, JS,…).The server processing faster, the response speed of the website is faster.

What is the solution? 

• Optimize images for websites: crop images to the right size, match the content of your website, reduce the acceptable color depth and remove image comments.
• Lazy load: this is an extension that is used by all websites. You will be amazed by the outstanding features it brings to your website. Detail description: Lady Load
• Inline small CSS and small JS in HTML. Note: avoid inline large CSS and JS that will cause website errors.

3.4 Content delivery network (CDN)

You know that response time will differ from different locations. The solution for this problem is to use the CDN. 

CDN will store your files anywhere in the world. This allows users around the world to access your website faster. 

CDN is very useful with the website business in many countries. 

3.5 Use a website monitoring tool response time

Continuously checking and monitoring the website’s metrics is important not to ignore.

Currently, there are many tools to help you monitor the status of your website.

You can receive notifications about website response time and fix problems in a timely manner. That helps to increase the performance of the website effectively.

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