In case you’re confused, this is not about struggling or slowly putting things into a truck. This is a completely different kind of lazy loading that just about every website should be doing.
Basically, this is a practice that will speed up your website. A website that loads faster will improve your users’ experience, and that’s what people love. If you are not implementing this practice, there’s a good chance that your website could use some optimizing.
Before we go deeper, we need to understand some parts of your website. When you land on a website, what you see on the screen is called the fold. And as you scroll up, everything that is below the first scroll is considered “below the fold.”
If you want to apply this practice on WordPress, you will need to put your images and videos below the fold combined with a plugin like WP Rocket that enables the feature. As a result, these images and videos don’t actually load onto the screen for the user when they land on your website. These images and videos gradually come into view as they start scrolling down.
Why do lazy loading?
This practice of putting images and videos below the fold allows your website to show up super quick because instead of having to load all that content, they are way below the screen that nobody can see them. And your website is only loading them as your visitors are getting there. This saves server resources and bandwidth as only the necessary elements of the page are pulled. It’s like being a data sniper, rather than drinking out of a fire hose.
If you have YouTube videos, lots of images, iframe and beds on your website, it’s good practice to put all these below the fold (and activate lazy loading) to improve the load speed of your website.
Will it really speed up your site?
The first thing you need to do to find out if you need to rearrange the elements on your website and improve your load speed is check your website speed. GT Metrics is a great place to start as it helps you to determine if you’re using a lot of images and how long it takes to get into usable space into your website.
On another perspective, even if you don’t have lots of images or videos on your website or if your website is already loading fine, you will still want to consider lazy loading. This is especially true if people are using your website to do business with you.
You want your website to load faster and eliminate any delay that will keep your clients waiting. Remember, a fast-loading website is what everybody ultimately wants. Not to mention Google favors the fast. It also help improve sales conversion!
So if you want to get more sales, you need a faster website. Check out lazy loading and I guarantee you that it will speed up your website and you won’t regret it.
