Devhuset WP

In today’s digital era, having a fast and responsive website is no longer just a plus – it’s a necessity. We at Devhuset know how crucial it is for companies to have websites that are not only impressive to visit, but also have a high technical standard for the companies to reach their desired rankings in the search engines. Below, we’ll explore five reasons why website speed ranks among the most significant factors to consider when developing a website.

1. Improved user experience

A fast website plays a crucial role in improving the user experience. First and foremost, it significantly reduces loading time, resulting in immediate access to content and seamless navigation through various pages. This creates an immediate sense of efficiency and responsiveness that captures the user’s interest and encourages longer stays on the site. In addition, a fast website helps to minimize the frustration that can occur with slow loading, which in turn increases the likelihood that visitors will stay and explore what is on offer.

A fast and responsive website provides a seamless and pleasant user experience, which keeps visitors engaged and eager to explore.

2. Improved search engine ranking

Website speed plays a crucial role in technical SEO. Google’s algorithm prioritizes fast websites over slow ones. The search engines consider the user experience as an important factor when they rank the websites in the search results. A website that has a fast loading time will increase the user experience and increase the likelihood that users will stay longer on the website.

If the pages of your website are not accessible to search engines, they will not appear or rank in the search results – no matter how valuable your content is.

3. Higher conversion rates

A fast website will cut the load time considerably in most cases. When a website has shorter loading time, the likelihood of visitors becoming impatient and leaving the website before they have completed a desired action, such as a purchase, registration or filling in a contact form, is minimized. The good experience that a fast website offers creates trust and credibility among users, and this can influence their decision to convert to a greater extent.

A fast website ensures that potential customers remain engaged and motivated to make the final purchase.

4. Responsiveness

With more and more users using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to access online content, speed has become even more important. A fast website ensures that visitors on mobile devices experience smooth and fast loading of content, without unnecessary waiting time. This is particularly critical on mobile platforms where network speeds can vary. A fast website significantly improves the user experience by allowing easy navigation, quick information retrieval and smooth interaction across different screen sizes.

By prioritizing website speed and implementing mobile-friendly practices, businesses can meet the needs of mobile users and stay ahead of the game.

5. Competitive advantage

In an age where users expect instant access to information and seamless navigation, a fast website can attract attention and retain visitors for longer. The fast loading time gives a positive first impression, which can help to stand out from the competition and create a more engaging user experience.

By investing in a website designed with speed in mind, you can set yourself apart from the competition, improve your brand image and cultivate a loyal customer base that appreciates the convenience and efficiency you offer.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is clear that a fast website is not just a luxury, but a necessity in today’s digital world. It not only positively affects the user experience, but also has concrete effects on everything from SEO and conversion rate to mobile friendliness and competitiveness. Investing time and resources in optimizing website speed can yield a significant return by attracting more visitors, improving user engagement and potentially increasing conversions. Don’t underestimate the power of a fast website when it comes to creating a memorable and positive experience for your visitors, while strengthening your position in the increasingly competitive digital landscape.

Since the GDPR rules came into force, many customers have contacted us regarding cookies and tracking in general. At the start we were unsure ourselves, and we knew about changes in advance. Even now, after seminars and courses, there are still cases where we are unsure of what is allowed and what is not.

When it comes to website analytics, many people use Google Analytics, and it was the go-to for us when we started. But the more you learn, the more you realize how much personal data GA tracks and how this data is used/abused. So we started looking for alternatives, and we quickly found Plausible Analytics.

Plausible is a lightweight and open source analysis tool. They use no cookies and fully comply with GDPR, CCPA and PECR. It is also created and hosted in the EU.

Plausible Analytics Dashboard

“Web analytics went from a simple, fun, and useful practice for site owners to a data grabbing machine for surveillance capitalism. Google Analytics is frustrating to use, difficult to understand, slow to load, and privacy-invasive too.”

Speed

Plausible is not only privacy friendly, but it is also 45 (!!!) times smaller than GA. As a company that spends a lot of time optimizing, it felt good to get rid of the slow loading speed while waiting for GA. Being light and fast will help your website, as loading speed is one of the CWV (Core Web Vitals).

Popup! Popup! Popup!

When GDPR came, so did cookie pop-ups and banners. They are everywhere and they are in your face the moment you enter a new website. They all need you to click “accept” before using the site. If you don’t, they can’t track you. Another thing, perhaps for another post, is that many pop-ups trick people into “accepting everything” with poorly worded sentences and conveniently placed buttons.

If you paid attention when you entered this website, you may have noticed that you do not need to accept anything in a cookie banner. That’s because we use Plausible, and the tracking is completely anonymous. There are no cookies, no personal data collected, and no persistent identifiers, and no cross-site or cross-device tracking either.

Buying a product versus being the product

Plausible costs money, it starts at $9/month and goes up with more page views. GA is of course free, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost you anything. Just like any other product, you are the product if you don’t pay for it. The data you collect on GA’s platform is worth so much more to them than any monthly fee you might pay.

However, if you are unwilling or unable to spend money on Plausible, there is an alternative. You can host it on your own server for free. This of course requires setup, but Plausible has good documentation you can rely on.

And one last treat, 5% of Plausible’s gross revenue is donated to environmental causes and open source.

If you currently use Google Analytics on your websites or plan to create new ones, I encourage you to consider Plausible. It’s an excellent platform with enough data points for most people and it’s privacy friendly.

We have tested our own website devhuset.no to find out how much digital emissions we create. We tested better than 95% of the sites tested. One of the things we are working on is reducing the carbon footprint and pages we produce. Of course there is always potential for improvement, in our case the hosting we use is powered by non-renewable energy. Check out the results of the test. And if you want to test your website, paste your website link on the Website Carbon Calculator.

We’ve also donated to #teamtrees to offset the pollution our site creates, check them out.

How flexible is WordPress? This is a pretty broad question, but a completely valid one considering all the different content management systems (CMS) out there. In short, WordPress is very flexible and practically unlimited in what it can offer.

But what makes WordPress so flexible? And how can this allow marketers to succeed with fast, scalable and agile content publishing?

WordPress is open source.

Open source software is software that is publicly available online for anyone to download for free. No payment information is required and there is no ad generated revenue making it available to just about anyone. Once the source code is downloaded and uploaded to a web server, the famous 5-minute installation can be run. At this point you will have a fully functional CMS.

The only other component needed now is a theme. The themes are pretty self-explanatory. They are packages that WordPress uses to “thematize” the front of a website. Once a theme is downloaded and activated in the CMS, you will have a working WordPress site!

Many thousands of open source themes developed by third-party developers can be downloaded and activated from the CMS. WordPress also comes packed with a few out-of-the-box themes (like Twenty Twenty-One, Twenty Twenty, etc.).

Furthermore, there are also thousands of open source plugins available for download. Plugins work out of the box and either add a new feature to a website or extend existing WordPress functionality.

Scalability

Out of the box, Themes is an excellent tool for those who need a simple, functional website with little or no budget. However, the real power of WordPress lies in the ability to develop custom themes and plugins to create completely bespoke websites. As a WordPress agency, this is what we specialize in.

At its core, WordPress consists of a handful of basic mechanisms that provide a solid foundation when developing custom themes and plugins. The adaptability and extensibility of these mechanisms is one of the main reasons why WordPress’s flexibility is endless.

By using the basic mechanisms that WordPress provides—such as post types, taxonomies, metafields, and users—a developer has all the tools they need to build a fully customized website that the CMS fully powers.

Gutenberg

The Gutenberg editor is a recent addition to WordPress. This allows content blocks to be added to the editor for a page. The editor and its blocks are designed to mirror how the content will look visually on the website’s front page, offering far more seamless content creation than the previous TinyMCE editor that preceded the Gutenberg editor.

This has helped bring WordPress closer to “drag and drop” website builders and CMSs without compromising WordPress core functionality and flexibility.

The Gutenberg editor comes with dozens of core blocks, but also allows developers to create custom blocks. We offer custom Gutenberg blockchain development as standard and have found that it has really revolutionized both the admin experience of the admin site, but also our approach to developing the sites we build.

Multisite

One of the most powerful aspects of WordPress is its multisite functionality. This functionality comes packaged in the default installation of WordPress and provides the ability to control multiple sites in a single installation of WordPress.

Each site has its own dedicated administration area so that it can be completely exclusive to all other sites on the multisite network. Because all sites are hosted on a single WordPress installation and share the same codebase and database, admin users can quickly switch between admin pages on different sites without logging in or out.

A typical use for a multisite would be a multilingual site, each serving a unique country, region or language. Since sites share the same codebase, they could share a single theme if the branding and structure of each site were similar. Conversely, if each site needs to be completely different, they can develop their own theme.

Closing words

WordPress has been continuously developed and refined by a large community of passionate developers for the past 17 years. This has led to it becoming the most flexible and scalable CMS out there, reflected in its ever increasing popularity and being the most used CMS globally.

The commitment to accessibility for all begins with this website. Our goal is to ensure that all functionality and content is available to everyone.

With our ongoing accessibility work, we are working to meet WCAG guidelines version 2.1, level AA. These guidelines not only help make online content accessible to users with sensory, cognitive and mobility challenges, but ultimately to all users, regardless of ability.

Our ongoing accessibility efforts are there to make accelr.io as accessible as possible. Feel free to comment on how we can further improve the site’s accessibility for users with disabilities.