If you've done any research into SEO practices, you'll know that website speed is really important.  
  
Site or site speed is a ranking factor employed by Google, providing websites with faster rates precedent in search results. It's all part of providing better outcomes to their users because the truth is, people do not need to hang around for slow-loading sites.  
  
Together with Squarespace being a hosted platform, we often wonder how much control they have over site speed. The solution is, not complete control, but you still have choices to optimize site speed.  
  
Here Is What you can do:  
  
Get our record variant here: Things to do to Accelerate your Squarespace site  
  
Website speed: It matters  
  
SEO is important in terms of your site becoming found organically in search results, however, that's only one reason to prioritize site speed. Think of what you do if you land on a web site which takes too long to load. Or do you give up fast?  
  
Most people won't hang about. This analysis shows they will depart the site if it does not load within three seconds. This looks like a brief time, but with improvements in internet speeds over the years, we have been conditioned to expect that things must work quickly. Otherwise, there's guaranteed to be a competing website to check out instead.  
  
So while SEO is a concern, there is another thing that should be a bigger concern: user experience. Improving site speed delivers a better user experience and ensures your website visitors are more likely to stick around a little longer.  
  
Test your website first  
  
How will you know if your site requires less than three seconds to load, or if any changes you've made any difference to rate? You may examine your website speed .  
  
There are a couple different tools available to help and most will also create a report highlighting problem areas. This is helpful so you're not left to guess.  
  
Squarespace urges that you either use their built in tools, or a tool like Pingdom to ensure you're receiving accurate results. If you are using the Google Chrome browser, you can follow those steps:  
  
  
  
Click the Network tab.  
  
Refresh the page to show the loading time.  
  
1 tool Squarespace does not advocate is Google's Pagespeed Insights. They say that this is prone to error as it's designed for programmers who code their sites from scratch and may return false negatives for Squarespace sites that are constructed on a custom CMS. That means in the event that you use it and enroll an error, that doesn't necessarily mean there is anything wrong with webpage speed on your website.  
  
Ways to speed up a Squarespace website  
  
Here are a Couple of areas where you may be able to Decrease load rate of your site and of individual pages:  
  
  
REDUCE IMAGE SIZES  
  
  
This is a basic that we'd anticipate most designers to be familiar with, yet large picture files are still often the culprit behind slow-loading pages. We know - you are attempting to strike the ideal balance with image quality and keep that sharp look onscreen, but you do not require print quality images to attain this.  
  
Some key items to remember are:  
  
Use JPG over PNG many of the time (some vector images don't seem so great in JPG).  
  
Maintain the picture width low. Squarespace recommends that you don't go past 1500 - 2000 pixels in diameter, but in some cases, you may be able to make them even smaller.  
  
The Getty stock pictures or free Unsplash pictures you can download and add directly via Squarespace are often big. To make them smaller, you can download them from the webpage you have put them and use an image resizing tool to decrease file size.  
  
There are several free image resizing tools. For example: PicResize, ResizeImage and Tiny PNG.  
  
  
  
A sort of"quick win" with Squarespace website speed is to make sure that you're using the SSL option. Why? Since your site is going to be delivered via the faster HTTP/2 protocol.  
  
You can also consider switching to the HSTS option, which has been proven to improve security and SEO.   
  
  
CONSIDER AMP FOR BLOG POSTS  
  
  
Switching on AMP (Accelerated Mobile Web Pages) can considerably improve page speed for blog articles, especially on mobile devices. It's pretty important to keep in mind mobile once you're looking at page speed because so much surfing action happens on cellular devices.  
  
When AMP is switched on it is going to deliver very fast-loading site pages to mobile users, provided that those have been obtained through a Google search.  
  
AMP operates by stripping out"non-essential" programming by a page and using smart caching to load pages quickly. It's well worth reading up on it first as it simplifies a number of standard Squarespace cubes, such as form blocks and code blocks. Check out the information on AMP and test it out before choosing to run with it.  
  
  
WATCH THIRD-PARTY SCRIPTS  
  
  
There are all sorts of third-party scripts you may be working on a Squarespace website, such as those associated with plugins you choose to add. As a general rule, only add those which are absolutely vital to accomplish the performance you need on your site - extras may slow you down.  
  
If you've had your site going for a while and you are not sure what impact third party scripts are having on web site speed, it is worth doing an audit. The website speed tools we discussed previously can tell you which are slowing your site down.  
  
Another thing we would suggest is being quite selective in the first place about which third party plugins you let. A general rule would be to select reputable, well-reviewed tools that have a clear history of regular upgrades by the proprietor. Plugins that are not kept updated can drag a website down.  
  
  
DON'T GO TOO FONT-CRAZY!  
  
  
We know. Some fonts are so stylish, you have to have them on your own website. Web fonts really can produce the look of a site, but the problem is that they can also drag down load speed.  
  
There are a set of typefaces that are considered "web safe" with nominal impact on site speed, but of course these are the boring ones, such as Times New Roman or Arial. The majority of people do opt to utilize some type of internet fonts to spice up the appearance of the webpage.  
  
Here are some things to consider:  
  
There's some evidence to indicate that Google Fonts load more quickly than Typekit fonts. (Both of which can be found in Squarespace's net font library).  
  
Try to stick with just one web font. Should you go too"font-crazy," it's going to slow your website down.  
  
  
USE CUSTOM VIDEO THUMBNAILS  
  
  
Have you got embedded videos in your Squarespace site? If this is the case, choosing the custom thumbnail alternative for video embeds can help to improve speed.  
  
There are two or three reasons for this: firstly, with no custom thumbnail, Squarespace might have to look up content and load it out of whichever site the video is uploaded too (e.g. YouTube or Vimeo). This occurs even when the visitor doesn't click on the video and may cause a lag if large files are being loaded.  
  
Secondly, doing with no habit thumbnail leaves you open to third-party biscuits being run in your website - another speed bump.  
  
  
ENABLE AJAX LOADING  
  
  
This implies it can tell browsers to load your website page speed load time at a time, speeding up the overall load time for people.  
  
Last thoughts  
  
Squarespace recommends that wherever possible, limiting your pages into under 5mb in size. This ought to keep you near optimum performance speed-wise.  
  
The tips listed above should continue to keep your pages under that 5mb threshold. We would also add that it is important to avoid too many embeds on one page. These can otherwise invite third-party scripts to run and can inhibit your own speed.