While designing any website the first thing which comes to our minds is color selection. Nicely contrasted website colors makes it attractive and helps you win  points when getting work.

But, when we talk about website performance, the first thing which comes to mind is speed. Your website may load fine on a strong internet connection, but what about the customers with weak internet connections? You should think about them also.

Make your website ready to load even with a poor internet connection. There are various countries like Bangladesh (12.48 Mbps), Afghanistan (7.37 Mbps), Sri Lanka (14.38 Mbps), Uganda (16.65 Mbps) etc. which face an issue of worst internet connection speed and if you are targeting such countries, then this article is for you. I will discuss some points you should think about web design for low bandwidth connections.

#1 Limit your page size to improve page load time

Your page should load in 10 seconds when the internet speed is as low as 20kbps. It implies the maximum page size should be around 25kB, not more than this. You must take a note of this, during website development. There are day-to-day scenarios in which users look for information on the website but don’t have a fast internet connection; for which most websites are designed. Hence, limiting your page size during design and development is imperative.

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#2 More text, fewer images

An image speaks more than thousands of words, but its file is more significant than a thousand words of text. Thus it will take a longer time to download. An image contains more data than text; hence reducing the usage of the image and optimizing it properly is an intelligent way to see the big difference in the loading time of your website, even in slow connection.

Even if you use a small image of 43 bytes, the HTTP request required to download the image will eat the visitors’ time.

#3 Compress and optimize images

I know images create a good impression on visitors, so if you don’t want to remove them from your website, then at least compress them. It may include a file format change, enabling lazy mode, and image compression through lossless compression. Lossless compression is all about compressing the data in such a way, that no loss of data will happen when it is uncompressed.

Optimizing images means reducing image weight, allowing pages to load quickly. There are various plug-ins available for image optimization. Such plug-ins can resize and optimize the images without hampering their quality.

#4 Minify Javascript, HTML and CSS

What would be your reaction if you met with high traffic on the road while going to your destination? Of course, you will look for the quickest way to avoid such a jam. The same is the condition with HTML and CSS.

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HTML and CSS provide your website roadmap to the servers. However, this roadmap comprises many gaps and useless symbols. Removing unnecessary symbols, characters and comments from the HTML and CSS code can make it easy for a search engine to read the code.

Minifying unwanted white space, characters and block delimiters can remove the gaps from the code. Such a process increases the page speed.

#5 Removal of unnecessary plug-ins (from WordPress websites)

You should keep your plug-ins and theme up to date, but deleting the unused plug-in is the next step for making your website ready even for low internet speed. Not only do these unused plug-ins present security vulnerabilities, but they can also impact your WordPress website performance.

To delete such plug-ins, firstly, you should deactivate them. Then you can delete them by going to the list of inactive plug-ins.

Step 1

Step 2

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#6 Avoid PDFs

Instead of using PDF format on your website, you can display the same information in HTML or plain text. The PDF wrapper can significantly increase the file size. Text or HTML are smaller in size and are easy to compress. The end user can manipulate such text easily. Mentioning information in text or HTML format allows you to avoid PDF viewing software, which sometimes takes time to download.

#7 Caching

The cache is all about storing the file copies temporarily at a storage location. Cache never impacts your website speed if done correctly. It cuts down the delivery time. Your website may become fast as cache files are extracted from the server to the browser in less time. But you should complete your frontend and backend optimization if you want to increase your website speed with the cache.

A heap of database queries, API dependencies, and inefficient PHP can decrease the backend functionality and loading process. It will impact your website speed.

#8 Minimize the website redirect

Redirects are usually needed when you delete any page from the website, shifting content to a new URL or while changing the domain name. Too many redirects on a website severely impact the loading time. Every time your website page redirects to somewhere else, it extends the HTTP request and response time. Although in some scenarios, redirects become necessary, especially when moving to a new domain. However, if you reduce such redirects, you can significantly lower the loading time of your website.

#9 Intuitive User Experience

It is the factor which determines how user-friendly your website is so that visitors can fetch the information quickly. Your website should be intuitive and meaningful, understand visitors’ needs, and solve problems. But what if your website is taking time to load? In such a situation, you should use determinate and indeterminate status bars.

Determinate status fills from 0-100% showing customers that their information will be loaded soon. The indeterminate status bar moves on a fixed track.

                      

 

Indeterminate status                                                        Determinate status

In the above images, you can see how the indeterminate status changes to determinate status when the image is loaded. Such a thing increases transparency among visitors, as after getting the status bar, they may wait for some time till the image loads.

Conclusion

Always remember that every second your visitor will wait for the website to load will drastically increase their chances of visiting your competitors’ websites. How long will you continue to run your business while losing leads?

Make things simple and effective. Your website shouldn’t be too fancy to attract customers. It must be relevant to them, and they should be able to fetch the information quickly. You can make this happen by focusing on the necessary web features.

Are you overwhelmed with the things which you need to do to increase your website loading time even for slow internet connection? We are here to help you!

You can also read 8 web design mistakes and how to avoid them to know more  about web design.

Else, you can connect with our website development company in Pune to plan your website launch strategy.

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