How to optimize JavaScript and CSS file size

A slow website is annoying to everyone. Many visitors will go elsewhere if it takes more than two seconds for a page on your site to load. Seriously, it only takes 1-2 seconds. 

Having a fast-loading website is essential. There’s a lot you can do to speed up a website, and one solution involves optimizing the CSS and JavaScript file size. 

Why optimizing JavaScript and CSS file size is important

Your site’s success will directly depend on how well it runs. If your page takes too long to load, it increases the bounce rate while lowering the user experience. That’s reason enough to optimize the size of JavaScript and CSS files. 

Research shows boosting conversion rates is also possible by enhancing site performance. That’s great news for online retailers, advertisers, and  membership sites that charge a fee. 

A website’s performance is a factor in SEO as well. The amount of organic traffic your site receives is affected by how quickly it loads in search engine results pages (SERPs).

How to optimize JavaScript and CSS file size

Now that you know the three big reasons why you want to optimize JavaScript and CSS file sizes, now you need to know how to do the optimizing. All of that hinges on minifying the files.  

How to minify JavaScript and CSS files

The minification process involves deleting spaces and other characters from the code of your website that aren’t mandatory for the code to function properly. These elements are typically included in JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files to make the respective markup languages easier to understand by humans.

Fortunately, computers don’t require the additional characters to read code files successfully. Instead, the added characters just make the files bigger. That in turn makes processing and loading the files more time-consuming.

It’s possible to manually minify JavaScript and CSS files by deleting spaces, comments, and new line characters from them as you work your way through the files. As you can imagine, this might be time-consuming and inefficient if you have a huge website with lengthy content.

Fortunately, WordPress users can use plugins that can be of assistance. It is possible to swiftly clean up your JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files with Fast Velocity Minify, which will boost performance. There are also online tools like Minifier and JSCompress that are simple to use and free.

Final Word on optimizing JavaScript and CSS file sizes

The majority of people who use websites today expect very quick load times. The size of your web page files is an important consideration for performance, which impacts a number of other aspects of your site. Web pages load much more quickly if JS and CSS file sizes are smaller. Your website’s bounce rate, revenue, and visibility could all be improved if its speed is optimized properly.

If you’re looking for SEO project management software to better manage your workflow, clients, and business – evisio.co is your solution. Try evisio.co for free here!

Start using evisio today at no cost.

Complete access without commitment.

Start for Free

What evisio is all about

Evisio helps agencies, marketers, and SEO consultants get results, no matter their level of SEO knowledge. It takes the guesswork out of SEO by telling you exactly what to do to improve your rankings and makes SEO simple by bringing all the parts of your SEO process together in one place.