ENTERPRISE SERIES

The Marketer’s
Guide to Website
Performance
How to Optimise Your Site’s Speed and
Performance to Improve UX and Attract
More Customers
The Marketer’s Guide to Website Performance

Introduction

As a marketing professional, you may be as shocked as we were to learn Authors

that it only takes around 50 milli-seconds, or 0.05 seconds, for visitors to
Robbie Westacott
form an opinion about your website. That opinion will usually determine
Paul Halfpenny
whether they like your site or not, and whether they’re going to stay or leave.
Si Cooke
Joy Clarke
This speed of thought will come as a brutal wake-up call to some marketers. Abe Selig
It’s an important reminder that you must do everything in your power to
provide the best possible user experience (UX) to your website visitors,
from the very first instant they land on a page.

While design, layout, accessibility, and other aspects of your site play a
key role in that UX, there’s one thing that comes before all of those, and
that’s website performance. If your site isn’t performing well enough, that’s
probably the first thing your users will notice, and they won’t be happy
about it.

This eBook will examine what website performance means in today’s fast-
moving digital landscape, provide practical tips and guidance to help you
optimise the performance of your own website, and highlight some lesser-
known pitfalls you should avoid.

1 in 4 visitors would abandon

a website if it takes more
than four seconds to load.
- Website Builder Expert
What is
Website
Performance?
Before we dive into the topic, it’s worth
looking at a brief definition of what we mean
by website performance:

Website performance refers to the speed,

responsiveness, and overall efficiency of your
website.

It’s an important aspect of your site that’s

determined by a range of factors, such as:

• The speed at which your web pages load

• How well your site functions
• Whether its design is responsive on mobile
• And more.

In this case, we’re not talking about how well

your website contributes to your business by
generating interest in your services.

Although, that should hopefully come as an

indirect result of faster speed and improved
UX.

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The Marketer’s Guide to Website Performance

Understanding
Website
Performance
These days, it’s pretty self-evident that you Poor performance, on the other hand, can
want your website to perform well. Even if you have a damaging impact on your business.
don’t have any technical knowledge of web Some potential outcomes of a slow website will
development, you’ll be aware from your own include:
experience as a consumer that it’s important
for websites to be fast and performant. • Frustrated website visitors and
unsatisfied customers

• Abandoned transactions and lost

conversions
Nearly 70% of consumers admit
that page speed influences their • Poor ranking in search engine results
likelihood to buy. pages (SERPs)
(Unbounce) • Negative brand reputation

• Lost business to higher performing

competitors
Clearly, optimising your site’s performance is
crucial for building a positive relationship with Good web performance is something you don’t
your target audience. even notice, whereas bad performance will be
painfully evident and will likely cause immediate
When your site has a good UX, you have an frustration.
infinitely better chance of retaining your visitors,
rather than letting them bounce off. The longer Despite this, achieving great website
someone spends on your site the more likely performance isn’t as simple or straightforward
they’ll come back, or even convert by following as you might think. Ensuring your website
a call-to-action, whether that’s to subscribe, performs well is a complex challenge, but it’s
make an enquiry, or purchase a product or one this eBook will help you solve.
service.

4
What Factors Influence
Website Performance?
Web Hosting
While numerous factors affect website
performance, your web hosting provider will
play a particularly important role.
In most cases, they will be responsible for the
server infrastructure your website relies on,
as well as uptime, scalability, security, and
support.
Good uptime is typically considered 95%,
with higher or lower uptime guarantees found
in different hosting providers’ service level
agreements (SLAs).
Higher uptime guarantees will generally come
from higher quality web hosts, as uptime
corresponds to the strength of a provider’s
server infrastructure.
That server strength will also power your
page speed, as server requests that can be
processed more quickly translate into faster-
loading pages.
Given the importance of keeping your site
running smoothly (and given the variance in
uptime guarantees between different hosting
providers), studying an uptime SLA closely is a
crucial step when deciding where to host your
sites.
Hosting services will also vary with the other
elements noted earlier. You should look for
a provider that offers the ability to scale up
server resources when you need them, keep
your site safe and secure, and answer the call
whenever you need support.
While some web hosts may offer an attractive
price point upfront, it’s essential to do your
homework to ensure you don’t end up paying
for hidden costs and cut corners down the
road.
The right web host should serve as a natural
extension of your team, helping you work
smarter, not harder, while providing you with
the expertise your site requires to perform to
the required standards.. In short, your web
host is essential to website performance.
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The Marketer’s Guide to Website Performance
What Factors Influence
Website Performance?
(Continued)
Use of Images
The images you use on your web pages will
play an influential role in site performance.
As you can probably guess, the bigger the
image files you use on a web page, the slower
that page will take to load.
For this reason, it’s important to optimise
every image you use on your website. The
optimum size, however, does vary based on
the image itself, your site, and so on. The type
of image files you use can also slow down
your web pages.
To help keep your images from dragging
your performance down, you can use
compression tools on the files, crop them to
the right dimensions, and stick to reasonable
resolutions.
It’s also beneficial to limit the number of
images you use on any given web page, as a
high volume will negatively impact speed.
6
Your Choice of Platform
Your choice of web platform is also crucial to
website performance.
For most businesses, this involves working with
a web design and development agency. In that
case, your choice of a specialist partner who
will support you in managing and maintaining
that platform is even more important.
If a CMS isn’t configured, managed,
maintained, or updated to the necessary best
practices, your website will inevitably suffer
from performance issues. This often requires
an experienced partner with technology-
specific expertise to build and manage your
site, giving you full confidence that it will
perform as desired.
Of course, with technology advancing so
rapidly, some older, more cumbersome
platforms are now simply less capable of
meeting the performance demands of today’s
users, regardless of who’s managing them.
Re-directs
Re-directs quite literally re-direct your users
from one web page to another. If you have a
high volume of re-directs in place, or you have
re-directs to non-existent pages, this may be
slowing your site down.
It’s useful to remove any old, redundant re-
directs to improve your site’s performance.
You can also use a 301 permanent re-direct
to tell Google that a new page is replacing an
old one, and this will send all your traffic to the
new page.
Web Page Weight
Images are one aspect of a wider issue, which
is page weight. This is the size of your web
pages, determined by things like style sheets,
documents, text, and the aforementioned
image files you use.
The more content you include on a web page,
the larger it will be in terms of its number of
bytes. This will directly affect the page load
speed.
It’s been suggested that the optimum size for
a web page is around 1MB. This is something
to keep in mind when we come to the
measurement of website performance later
in the eBook.
HTTP Requests
HTTP requests occur when your users’ web
browser requests information from your
site’s server. That server then sends data to
the browser, and that data is displayed to the
user as content on a web page.
Website performance improves when the
number of HTTP requests your users’ browser
has to make is reduced. This can be done by
optimising image files, as discussed earlier, as
well as optimising your JavaScript and CSS
files.
JavaScript
Another important contributing factor to web
page weight is your use of JavaScript, which is
one of the core programming languages that
the Internet is built on.
If your site uses too much JavaScript, or
applies JavaScript in complex ways, it can
slow down the loading speed of your pages.
It can also slow down the functionality of the
on-page elements of your site, creating a
more frustrating UX for your visitors.
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The Marketer’s Guide to Website Performance

A Process to Take Your Website Performance

from Good (or Bad) to Great
Ultimately, your audience’s expectations for
website performance are the main concern here.
Most people want to see web pages loading in
around one second or less. Most users will only
tolerate a maximum of two seconds loading time.
Even if your web pages are safely loading within
that time-frame, it’s still highly beneficial to
improve the performance of your website to
provide a better UX for your visitors.

1
Conduct an assessment by testing your site’s current performance -
you can do this with tools like PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix

2
Set KPIs for performance - for example, page load speed, average
session duration, bounce rate, conversion rate, and so on

3
Identify any problems and room for improvement,
and make adjustments to resolve these

4
Upgrade your server - for example, going from PHP
7.2 to 8.1 can give you a 40% boost

8
 5
Optimise your images and any other media files

6
Remove unnecessary JavaScript frameworks and
rewrite your sites JS using vanilla JS

7
Minimise your HTTP requests

8
Reduce and remove re-directs

Continue to monitor and measure performance regularly, and continue

to optimise performance against your KPIs on an ongoing basis

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The Marketer’s Guide to Website Performance

Pitfalls and
Mistakes To Avoid
Once you understand the influencing factors
on the performance of your website, it also
becomes easier to identify certain mistakes
you may be making that hinder the speed of
your site.

Many business websites are prone to falling

into at least one of the following pitfalls. If
any of these resonate with you, aim to move
away from them as a priority and watch the
performance of your site improve.

Don’t think you can optimise Don’t remain loyal to a platform

website performance without or CMS if it’s failing to deliver
measuring it the performance you need

As highlighted in the previous section, As mentioned earlier, the platform

measuring performance is critical to
improving performance. Too many
businesses leave this up to chance, but it’s
so important to put the necessary tools
and processes in place to keep a close
eye on your site’s performance and take
immediate action any time it begins to
slow down.
you’ve built your site on will also have a
strong influence on performance. Many
businesses continue to use old platforms
that are failing to meet the necessary
requirements, but it’s essential to approach
this realistically. Always be prepared to
make a change if the performance of your
website isn’t up to standards.

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Don’t select a hosting
provider that’s unable to meet
performance requirements
Since hosting provider will have a
significant influence on your website’s
performance, choosing a provider who
is unable to meet your performance
requirements could be a recipe for
disaster.
If you select a host you’re unable to trust
and their service ends up falling below
standard, you risk downtime, slow page
loading, security vulnerabilities, and
other problems.
To avoid this, you should emphasise
your non-negotiable hosting needs as
early as possible, and select a host that
specialises in your tech stack.
If you work with WordPress, for example,
look for a provider offering specialised
WordPress hosting to ensure you can
optimise your sites efficiently.
Don’t let too many plugins
bloat your platform and slow
down your site
For businesses working without the
guidance of an experienced agency, it’s a
common mistake to use an unnecessarily
high volume of plugins, including plugins
that are low quality.
The more plugins you use, especially
if they aren’t up to the required
development standards, makes you
more likely to encounter problems with
performance.
Particularly with platforms like
WordPress, it’s important to choose your
plugins carefully and ensure they’re not
slowing down your site. Continuing to use
plugins that aren’t kept updated can also
have a negative effect on performance.
It’s worth noting that bespoke
development may be a more suitable
approach than using plugins for certain
requirements, and that will also deliver
greater performance.
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The Marketer’s Guide to Website Performance
Don’t overlook the value of a
CDN to improve speed for your
global audience
When people from different parts of the
world visit your website, the page load
speed can be affected by their physical
distance from the location of your servers.
Using a content delivery network
(CDN) to send your data and content
from a server nearer their location will
accelerate the loading speed and improve
the performance of your site for those
international audiences.
12
Don’t neglect or overlook mobile
Over the past year or so, around 60% of
all web traffic comes from mobile devices.
When more than half of your audience
prefers to visit your site via mobile, you
can’t afford to overlook this aspect of your
site’s performance.
Optimising your website to perform well
on mobile will help you maximise the
positive experiences you deliver to your
visitors across all channels.
What’s the Relationship
Between SEO and
Website Performance?

Since your website’s performance has an

impact on your ranking in SERPs, a successful
search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy
requires your site to move fast and perform
well.

Google has actually been using website speed

as a factor in its SERP ranking algorithm for
over a decade, and this now accounts for both
desktop and mobile contexts.

All marketers should understand the value of

strong SEO, but many don’t realise that speed
and performance are integral to that.

If you’re looking to overtake competitors

in organic search traffic, you’ll benefit from
spending time improving the page load speed
of your website. The speed of your website
also influences your ranking factor for search
advertising as well.

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The Marketer’s Guide to Website Performance

What’s the Relationship

Between Security and
Website Performance?

Like most aspects of your website, it’s

important to consider security when
addressing performance. Certain aspects
of web security can slow down your
website if not implemented strategically
with performance in mind, from hosting, to
updates, to monitoring tools.

To safely secure your website with full

confidence, in a way that won’t compromise
speed or performance for your visitors,
follow these useful tips:

1. Choose a secure hosting provider

2. Perform regular software updates

3. Utilise content delivery networks (CDNs)

4. Always optimise imagery

5. Use only lightweight reputable plugins

6. Implement strong passwords and 2FA

7. Secure data transmission with an secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate

8. Deploy a web application firewall (WAF)

9. Perform regular backups

10. Conduct periodic audits and testing

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Website Performance
Within WordPress
If your site is built on WordPress, you
immediately have an advantage in terms
of performance. That’s because WordPress
is renowned as one of the most scalable
and flexible content management systems
(CMSs) available today.
WordPress’s versatility includes its ability
to support various types of websites,
from enterprise-grade business sites to
eCommerce giants, and its intrinsic features
deliver several performance benefits that
can significantly improve your site’s UX.
• Scalability - As noted above, WordPress
is incredibly scalable, allowing your
website’s speed and performance to be
maintained as it grows seamlessly in line
with your business needs.
• Speed and Efficiency - WordPress
is optimised for speed, as its core
codebase is lightweight. This means
your WordPress sites are designed to
load quickly.
• Robust Architecture - WordPress
boasts a robust architecture that can
handle high traffic volumes without
compromising performance, making
it suitable for websites of all sizes and
niches, even in instances of unusually
high traffic.
• SEO-Friendly - Search engines quickly
crawl and index WordPress sites, due
to their clean code and SEO-friendly
features. This can contribute further
to better SERP rankings and increased
visibility.
• Rich Plugin Ecosystem - WordPress
offers a vast repository of plugins
designed to improve performance.
You can install a plugin to enhance site
speed, optimise images, and implement
caching to boost performance further.
• Content Delivery - WordPress
seamlessly integrates with CDNs,
ensuring your website’s content is
delivered quickly to users around the
globe.
With its speed, scalability, and out-of-the-
box SEO features, WordPress offers a wide
variety of native capabilities for achieving
high performance.
By taking advantage of these built-in
advantages, you can gain full confidence
that your site’s performance will meet your
users’ expectations.
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The Marketer’s Guide to Website Performance

The Benefits of
Improved Website
Performance
Improving the performance of your website
is obviously a tremendous benefit to your
business. This ultimately comes down to the
fact that you should always be striving to
deliver the best possible UX for your visitors.

There are some additional advantages

and opportunities that can be gained from
boosting your site’s performance, though,
which may provide even more incentive to
follow the advice detailed in this eBook.

These include:

• Reduced bounce rates

• Improved visitor retention

• Increased conversion rates

• More engagement from your mobile-first audience

• Higher rankings in SERPs

• A boosted brand reputation

• Greater customer loyalty

• A valuable edge over your slower competitors

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The Future of Website
Performance

Since the technology powering our websites
is now evolving so quickly, it’s important to
look ahead to trends that will have an impact
on your relationship with your target audience
in future.
A trend that will continue to gain momentum
over the next few years is using a “headless”
approach to website development and
content management.
As we discussed in a related article, a headless
CMS is an approach that separates the back-
end content management platform from
your front-end website. The CMS delivers
the content via data APIs, while the front-end
manages the rendering and presentation to
visitors.
Additionally, it means you can use your CMS
to manage content for multiple front-ends
at the same time. This is possible because
you’re not tying your content to a single
layout structure or template, so it can be used
in different formats.
An example of this is where the same content
is presented on both a website and a mobile
app, but displayed in a different layout on
each. This model improves the consistency
of the content you create and reduces
administration time.
As speed and convenience become
increasingly important to users, there are
benefits to be gained from considering a
headless CMS to manage your website.

This approach, when implemented correctly,

can enable improved performance on the
front-end of your website after the first load,
as the server only needs to send the data
requested (as JSON, for example), which is
more lightweight than having to render the
page on the server side and then send both
the data and the HTML for the layout.

17
 The Marketer’s Guide to Website Performance
Final Thoughts
In today’s digital landscape, your target
audience not only expects, but demands, rapid,
frictionless interactions with your business on
your website. Any hint of poor performance
or slow page load speeds is likely to turn your
visitors away and send them straight to your
competition.
Clearly, a highly performant website is crucial
to success online these days. Not only does it
provide a positive UX that will help you retain
your direct visitors, but it will also help you
appear higher in SERP rankings, providing
exposure to a larger audience.
Of course, this is easier said than done. The
most effective approach is to begin with the
quick, easy wins and low-hanging fruit. Once
you’ve taken advantage of all those to boost
performance, you can then work your way up to
the more technical issues.
18
Your prioritisation for this process should
become clear as soon as you conduct a
performance assessment and determine all
your areas of weakness.
Another proven, trustworthy way to maximise
the performance of your site is to leverage the
experience and expertise of your web hosting
partner or your web development agency.
To gain a precise understanding of your
website’s current performance, you can take
advantage of a free, no-obligation performance
audit with our team.
This will help you identify room for improvement
and take valuable opportunities to deliver a
greater UX to your audience.
 About Filter

Founded by CEO Oliver Morrison and CTO Paul

Halfpenny in 2016, Filter builds next generation
web platforms, working with progressive
businesses across several industries including
hospitality, finance and care.

Our highly skilled and knowledgeable team

brings industry-leading expertise to any digital
project, and we help our clients to differentiate
themselves through the use of technology and
up-to-date digital marketing strategies.

We work hard to make valuable contributions to

the industry by getting involved with key events
like WordCamp Europe, developing accessible
tools for businesses such as a free WordPress
personalisation plugin, and producing insightful
filteragency.com
resources like the one you’re reading now.

About WP Engine

WP Engine, the WordPress technology company,

provides the most relied upon and trusted
developer-centric WordPress products for
companies and agencies of all sizes.

Including managed WordPress hosting,

enterprise WordPress, headless WordPress,
Flywheel, Local, Advanced Custom Fields, and
Genesis.

WP Engine’s tech innovation and award-winning

WordPress experts help to power more than 1
million customers across 150 countries.
wpengine.com

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The Marketer’s Guide to Website Performance

If you’d like to explore your options when it comes to

website performance, why not organise a convenient
time to talk to our experienced specialists today?
We’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch to
book a free website
performance
audit today.
+44 (0) 208 0883030
hello@filteragency.com
filteragency.com