Drupal is the first choice to build websites of every domain ranging from information sharing to business perspective like E-commerce. The reason behind its success is the features it hosts that are incredible and helps developers to design secure, engaging & unique websites. However, it has been observed that when visitor traffic is increased the speed of the Drupal website becomes slow causing loss of potential customers. This has become a key concern among the website developers as most of the search engines give priority to the website speed, particularly for mobile devices. Here are a few important tips for Drupal website optimization so that a large number of visitors can be served. You can hire Drupal developers as well for the optimization job as they are professional.

1. Keep it Simple

One of the most important approaches that people usually ignore is to keep the website design simple. It is a great way to make a Drupal website faster. Keeping the design, layout, graphics of the website simple and including only those elements which seem important is the best method to improve the speed of the website. Eliminate graphics, content, and images consuming space and making the website heavy. Everything ranging from modules to appealing themes can affect website performance. By using limited graphics and content, the site can load in less time & deliver a much faster experience.

2. Reduce Image Size

Image is an integral element of the website and drives a large number of visitors in comparison to ordinary textual content. However, the high-resolution images slow down the website performance. Google give priority to websites that are fast and optimized in a proper manner. The best way to optimize the images is by compressing them to the appropriate size before uploading. Don’t try to include graphics of high-resolution in abundance and modifying the size at later stages. Drupal 8 CMS has the feature to manage the image size and include the exact image for the website. Still, Drupal Development Company scale, crop, and optimize the images needed to integrate within a specific web page. This can improve the load time to a great extent making the website faster.

3. Integrate Caching Modules

There are internal caching modules enabled in Drupal CMS for advanced performance. They are:

Internal Page Cache Module: It helps to cache pages in the database visited by unknown users. The pages visited by the users are stored for the first time and later reused for fast loading to serve all the visitors.
Internal Dynamic Page Cache Module: This new feature of Drupal 8 aims to improve the website speed for both new and existing users. Additional caching layers include Varnish or Redis to improve the speed of their websites.

Recently, a new module named BigPipe demo is also introduced, which has inherited and implemented Facebook ideas. This helps websites to display personalized content in a simpler and faster manner.

4. Update PHP Version

PHP is a core language that has developed a number of CMSs including Drupal. Each PHP version has the functionality to boost website performance. Make sure the website has the latest version to enhance the customer experience. Several hosting providers have a feature to update the PHP version using cPanel. From the drop-down menu, select the most appropriate version for your website. But, be careful about changing the software versions. Several modules or scripts may not support the outdated versions of PHP, thus stay updated to optimize the website performance.

5. Use CDN

A CDN works by storing the website on different servers located all over the world. The CDN service provider has data centers placed in every continent and in all major cities. CDN makes copies of the website and stores it into the servers that are closer to the visitor’s location. This service is by default available on most of the hosting providers these days. If Drupal doesn’t need the development of HTML, then CDN serves it directly, completely reducing the load time. There are plenty of third-party extensions available that can be integrated with the Drupal 8 website to speed up the performance.

6. Bandwidth Management

Drupal has the feature of doing “compress cached pages”. Apart from that, it has introduced a default setting that manages external resources. The benefit of optimization is the reduction of both the size and the number of requests made to the website. With Drupal, the developers can merge CSS and JavaScript files for fast website loading. In the real-time situation, enable the compressing of CSS files & JavaScript files. This reduces the number of HTTP requests and the volume of data transferred.

7. Optimize Database

Apart from the website code optimizing, the database also needs optimization. The database has a major impact on the speed of the website. It is always a great idea to optimize the database by properly removing the data fields and unnecessary data sets. Instead of making regular queries to the database, the data is always present. This process also works on shared web hosting plans.

Conclusion:

Improving Drupal website performance will definitely drive users and search engines to also give it a priority. Once the speed is optimized, the website has the potential to drive visitors in a large number ultimately boosting sales & ROI. If you are lacking an optimized website, it is the best time to avail of quality development services and enjoy an optimized performance. Having so many advantages, business enterprises are opting for Drupal Migration Services to get the best results. With so many potential customers looking for products, it is the appropriate way to improve sales and boost ROI at an impressive speed.

Key Tips To Optimize Drupal Website for Higher Customer Engagement

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