In this fast-paced online world, where consumers want instant response, your web performance matters a lot. Capturing users’ attention will become easier with fast loading websites. Large size web pages can affect your website loading speed, SEO and your website performance. So, it is important to consider the web page size, if you want to fully load your website.

Heavier web pages take longer to fully load and create a negative user experience. When the page loads slowly, it will eventually create a negative impact on the overall website performance. According to a survey, approximately one-third of mobile searchers leave the site if the page takes longer than 3 seconds.

Therefore, it is important to consider the webpage size and how it affects the performance of your website. Checking and optimizing the webpage size is important to improve your website’s SEO rankings and user engagement.

Here is a complete guide on webpage size, why it is important and how you can optimize web page size.

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What is Webpage Size?

How to Measure the Web Page Size?

What is the Ideal Page Size for Your Website?

Why is Web Page Size Important for Your Website?

Effective Techniques to Optimize Webpage Size

Bottom Line 

What is Web Page Size?

A web page size is the total amount of data a page contains. This data is sent from the server to the browser when a visitor lands on your web page. The web page data includes all the elements, such as images, content, scripts, stylesheets, internal links and external links. Each element takes weight and computational resources to render in a browser. The heavier the webpage size, the longer it takes for the browser to load all the page elements. It will result in slower load time and a negative user experience.

How to Measure the Web Page Size?

If you want to measure the size of the web page, you can use website analysis tools and built-in browser tools. The website page size checkers clearly tell you the page size issues and scan information about your resources.

•         Google Pagespeed Insights
•         Website Page Size Checker Tool by Rankwatch
•         DupliChecker
•         Page Size Checker by CoolSEOTols
•         WebPageTest
•         GTmetrix
•         Pingdom

What is the Ideal Page Size for Your Website?

Some websites are larger, while some weigh less due to the smaller number of elements used. According to HTTP archive’s Page Weight report 2023, the average webpage size is around 2324.8 KB for desktop sites and 2037.3 KB for mobile sites.

The ideal page size varies from site to site and depends on what suits best for your site and what elements your site visitors want to see when they land on the web page. Furthermore, the page size also depends on the type of business you are running as the type of content and multimedia totally rely on the type of website.

For instance, if you are an ecommerce business, you will need to display product images from different angles to convince visitors to buy the product. You need to add high-resolution images on your page, which will increase the page size. In contrast, if you offer content writing services, and the website content is mostly text with simple graphics and low-resolution thumbnails, the web page size would be smaller.

Why is Web Page Size Important for Your Website?

Believe it or not, the web page size matters a lot, especially for your search engine rankings and website performance. The larger it is, the longer it takes for site visitors to download the elements and the browser to render all these elements into a readable format.

For creating an SEO-friendly website that offers an amazing user experience, you need to take action to optimize your web page size. Slow loading websites can make it difficult for users to find their desired product. The visibility of the content is also delayed and consumers can’t find the information they are looking for, leading to a frustrating experience. In short, it can increase the bounce rate, which is not good for your website.

Here are a few reasons why webpage size really matters to your website.

Search Engine Rankings

Webpage size is one of the most important search engine ranking factors that can have a huge impact on your website’s rankings. Websites that load faster have higher chances of getting a higher position in search results. It is advised to optimize your webpage size to improve your website loading speed to get better search engine visibility and get more organic traffic.

User Experience

It’s no surprise that user experience can make or break your brand image. If a webpage loads quickly, people are more likely to stay, explore information and make a purchase decision. It encourages visitors to return to your website and fosters a positive interaction. In comparison, a website that takes longer to load can frustrate users, leading to a negative image of your brand.

Bounce Rate

Users want fast websites that load quickly in a matter of seconds. A one second delay can lead to higher bounce rate and frustrates users. Keep in mind that webpage size can directly impact the loading speed as the larger files take longer to download. To lower down your bounce rate, you can optimize your web page size, which will eventually improve the loading speed and user engagement.

Web Hosting Cost

Reducing your page size can help you save on web hosting costs. There are many hosting providers that offer affordable hosting plans for websites with smaller page file sizes. It is because smaller page size means lower bandwidth, which will eventually reduce the hosting cost, especially if you have a large website.

Effective Techniques to Optimize Web Page Size

Optimizing web page size is important for your website performance and achieving higher rankings on SERPs. Here are a few effective techniques to reduce file size, reduce load time and create a positive user experience.

Optimize Images

Images play a major role in increasing the webpage size and slow response times. Optimizing and compressing them is a sensible idea to reduce the web page size. Many web designers use heavy image formats such as PNG and JPEG that contribute to larger page size. You can use modern image formats such as WebP and AVIF to compress your images without compromising their quality. It will ensure faster loading speed of your website. Fortunately, there are many image optimizers available in the market that can automate the process.

Here are some of the best online image optimizer tools that you can use to compress the images of your website.  

•         Compress Now
•         JPEG Optimizer
•         Tiny PNG
•         Optimizilla
•         JPEG.io
•         ImageRecycle
•         Compressor.io
•         Ezgif
•         Dynamic Drive Optimizer

Videos

Uploading videos to your website is a great idea to make your website interactive and user-friendly. Unfortunately, animated videos are a major contributor to larger page size and affect the load speed. Larger video files that take longer to load can create problems for your website performance, especially for those with bad internet connection.  

According to Unbounce’s Page Speed report, more than 70% of consumers say that the web page speed can have a major impact on their purchase decision. Some consumers said they give up animation and videos just for loading the page faster.

Embedding YouTube videos into your web page is an effective tactic to reduce the size. You can still provide an engaging and interactive user experience to your site visitors by adding videos to your website without hosting them directly to your website.

Here are some online video compression tools that you can use for reducing the size of large media files:

•         Movavi Video Converter
•         Youcompress
•         HandBrake
•         VideoProc
•         Clideo
•         FFmpeg
•         Final Cut Pro X

Minimize JavaScript and CSS Files

There is no denying that JavaScript is important for building intuitive websites and making them function well. But it can slow down the website response time and use more bandwidth. Make sure the JavaScript code is properly optimized and well-written. You can reduce the webpage size to minimize unwanted white spaces, comments and characters from JavaScript and CSS files.

For optimal file size reduction, you can bundle your different CSS and JS files into one file. It will result in faster page loading and optimize the loading process.

Use Optimized Fonts

Using fancy fonts can enhance the overall look of your website, but it can have a huge impact on web page size. It is highly recommended to choose fonts that offer better compression and are lightweight. According to many companies that offer web design services, fonts that are too heavy weight can take up more space in pixels than light weight fonts.

Fancy fonts require additional requests to the server, resulting in slow response times and more data usage. They contribute to larger web page size, poor user experience and longer load time. Avoid using custom fonts to increase your web performance and user experience.

Remove Unnecessary Third-Party Plugins

Third-party plugins have now become a necessity for modern websites. With these third-party scripts, you can implement different functionalities and advanced features to your website. Embedding third-party plugins can slow down the performance of your website. Fortunately, you can reduce the impact of third-party plugins and scripts by either removing or replacing resource heavy scripts that slow down your website.

Optimize Content for Mobile

Today, creating a website that works well on different types of phones, screen sizes and operating systems has become a necessity. Companies have no other choice as the trend of using smartphones is the norm everyone strictly follows.

Partnering with a company that offers web design services and responsive designs is a great idea. They will use responsive web design techniques and guide you on how to make your content mobile-friendly. A professional web design team will help ensure your content, images and videos look good on all devices and offer a great UX.  

Google ranks mobile-friendly websites higher on search results than those with poorly mobile optimized content. So, make sure your website is optimized for mobile phones and creates a positive effect on your brand’s mobile SEO.

Enable Caching

Caching is a great tactic to speed up your web pages. Basically, caching stores copies of the web pages. It minimizes the work required for the server to render and show the page to visitors. The server uses a few resources to load a page properly.

Today, browsers have the advanced functionality to cache web pages themselves. All you need to do is to configure browser caching and add a piece of code on the web resource. Similarly, you can use a caching plugin that can make caching web pages easier. You can make the most of the latest caching technologies, plugins and tools to optimize the speed of your web pages.

Bottom Line

The page size is the most important factor that has a bigger impact on your SERP rankings and overall performance of your website. As a website owner, you should take it seriously and carefully optimize your website content to increase the loading time of the page. Hopefully, this guide will help you reduce the website page size and boost performance of your website.