What can I do to make my website faster?

The most common page elements that cause long load times are things like large images, linked assets, third-party plugins, excessive transitions/animations, excessive interactions, embedded content, etc.

NOTE: You can test the load time of your site using a free online website speed test.

Step 1. Optimize Large Images

Large images are the single most common reason why websites perform slowly. Below are some best practices when it comes to images in your Webflow site. Learn more

Use vector images when possibleUse compressed raster imagesUse the correct image format (.jpg, .png, .gif etc)Keep image display size as close to the image’s natural size as possible

Step 2. Limit Linked Elements/Assets

Many web pages contain references to elements that are hosted on external servers requiring additional time to load through your server and browser. The more linked elements you have (e.g. scripts, images, Twitter feeds, etc) the more your page slows down.Try to limit the amount of linked elements on your site. If your site is hosted on your own server, upload copies of external content to your server rather than querying a third-party server every time your page loads.

Step 3. Update Third-party Plugins

Because the coding experience of plugin developers varies greatly, your plugin could be poorly written, maintained, and even unsupported. If your plugins are causing your site to load slowly, consider updating them, replacing them with similar plugins that have better ratings for efficiency and speed, or removing them entirely.

Step 4. Eliminate Excessive Transitions/Transforms

Webflow makes it easy to add CSS Transitions and Transforms to your site but this ability can cause unintentional misuse of these animations.When adding transitions, make sure to only select the properties you wish the transition to affect.

Step 5. Remove Excessive Interactions

Each Webflow Interaction adds a little extra load time and while out interactions are optimized for fast, efficient, and reliable website performance, there is no way to make sure your site is performing optimally if you add too many. 

Make sure your site element structure allows you to use the same interaction on multiple elements, avoid using duplicate interactions when possible, and try to only use interactions when needed.