13 Simple Ways to Reduce Your Server Response Time and Improve Website Speed

A fast server response time is critical for providing users with a positive browsing experience. Slow server response times lead to high bounce rates and hurt your search engine rankings.

In this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn 13 proven tips for reducing your server response time to improve website performance.

We’ll cover:

• What server response time is and why it’s important
• How to measure your current server response time
• 13 ways to reduce server response time
• How to continually monitor and improve server response time

By the end, you’ll know exactly how to slash your server response time to provide a lightning fast user experience.

What is Server Response Time and Why Does it Matter?

Server response time refers to the amount of time it takes for your web server to receive a request, process it, and return a response. It measures the delay from the server side when loading a web page.

Server response time directly impacts your:

• Page load times – Slow server responses increase page load times and cause visitors to abandon your site. 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
• User experience – High server response times degrade the user experience leading to less engagement and conversions over the long run.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) – Google uses page speed as an SEO ranking factor. Faster response times can improve your search visibility and traffic.

The initial time to first byte (TTFB) is especially important for providing quick feedback to the user when the page first starts loading.

Your goal should be to get the TTFB under 200 ms and total response time under 500 ms – but the faster the better.

Ideally you want your web server and hosting infrastructure optimized to respond to requests instantly. Even marginal improvements can directly increase engagement.

Now let’s look at how to analyze your current server response time…

How to Measure Your Server Response Time

Knowing your current server response and TTFB response times is crucial so you know if and where improvements need to be made.

Here are 5 quick ways to measure:

1. Use Google PageSpeed Insights

The simplest way to check response time is PageSpeed Insights. Just enter your URL and review the results on both mobile and desktop.

Focus on the metrics for:

• First Contentful Paint – when first text/image is rendered
• Time to Interactive – time until page becomes fully interactive
• Speed Index – overall load speed

2. Check WebPageTest

For more detailed analytics, use WebPageTest to measure TTFB and start render time. Test on devices across locations.

3. Monitor in Google Analytics

Within your Google Analytics account you can view page timing metrics including page load times and start render statistics. Add the Page Speed report.

4. Inspect in DevTools

Your browser’s web developer tools have a “Network” panel to inspect detailed waterfall timings for individual page resources.

5. Use a Browser Extension

Extensions like PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse provide an overlay with speed metrics right within your browser.

Now that you know how to analyze server response times, here are 13 proven techniques to help improve website performance…

1. Upgrade Your Web Hosting Plan

One of the easiest ways to slash server response times is upgrading to a faster web hosting plan.

Paying more for quality dedicated or cloud hosting resources often results in:

• Faster server CPUs for processing requests quicker
• More available bandwidth for increased simultaneous connections
• Larger memory for improved caching and performance at scale
• SSD storage vs HDD provides 100x faster response over hard disks
• Better redundancy and availability in multiple global locations

Upgrading from low-end shared hosting to a mid-high tier cloud solution can drastically improve response times through better resources.

Find hosting optimizing specifically around site speed and TTFB/response times like Kinsta or Pagely.

2. Enable Caching for Dynamic Content

Adding a PHP opcode cache like APCu or Memcached speeds up response times by storing precompiled bytecode in memory. This eliminates compile time for repeated PHP requests.

Caching also stores full pages, database queries or snippets in memory for even faster retrieval on future visits instead of building them from scratch each time. This saves server resources and reduces processing needed per visit.

On WordPress specifically these caching plugins can help:

• WP Rocket – Premium all-in-one caching
• WP Fastest Cache – Robust free caching plugin
• LiteSpeed Cache – Lightweight caching from LiteSpeed web server
• Swift Performance Lite – Freemium page/full site caching

Proper caching setup can improve TTFB by over 50%+ for sites using dynamic languages.

Make sure to leverage browser caching as well for static resources so files are stored locally rather than re-downloaded each time.

3. Compress Images and Media

Unoptimized images slow down response times by increasing page weight and server processing required.

Optimize all photos and graphics using tools like:

• EWWW Image Optimizer
• ShortPixel Adaptive Compression
• Kraken.io Lossy/Lossless Compression
• TinyPNG PNG/JPEG Optimization

This shrinks file sizes down through advanced compression algorithms while retaining quality.

Smaller image files = faster load times + lower bandwidth costs.

Lazy loading images/videos below the page fold also helps defer asset loading until users scroll down rather than all at once on initial load.

4. Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML

Minification removes unnecessary whitespace, comments and compacting files without affecting functionality. This significantly reduces payload sizes for faster response.

Enable minification through plugins like Autoptimize or WP Rocket settings.

The key benefit is smaller CSS/JS/HTML files resulting in:

• Fewer bytes for the server to process and send
• Faster browser parsing and rendering
• Improved TTFB and Largest Contentful Paint metrics

Manually minifying code is tedious – use tools that automatically handle this behind-the-scenes for performance gains.

5. Install a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN stores static copies of your files distributed across global edge server locations near visitors. This acts as a caching proxy to absorb and reduce requests hitting your origin web server.

Cloudflare and KeyCDN offer free plans while BunnyCDN and Fastly have affordable premium options.

Main CDN benefits:

• Reduces server overhead for increased response capacity
• Decreases latency by serving assets from nearby CDN POPs
• Optimizes delivery speed over geographically diverse locations
• Lower bandwidth + hosting costs through caching

This also helps maintain uptime if your main site goes down. Just aim for instant cache purges to synchronize changes globally.

6. Leverage Browser Caching

Enabling browser caching tells browsers to store website files locally on repeat visits so resources load instantly from the user’s machine rather than roundtrips back to your server.

This avoids re-downloading unchanged static assets like CSS, JS, fonts, images etc. Many remain identical between visits so caching saves users bandwidth and dramatically cuts response times/page load speed especially for return visitors.

Set proper cache headers through your .htaccess file or WordPress caching plugins:

# 1 Month for Media Assets <FilesMatch ".(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2628000, public" </FilesMatch>

# 1 Week for Styles and Scripts <FilesMatch ".(js|css)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public" </FilesMatch>

Now static files persist locally on user machines without expiring immediately. You get faster repeat loads + reduced server requests/bandwidth.

7. Reduce Redirects

For every redirect, there’s an extra roundtrip between browser and server adding latency before the final page loads.

Watch out for unnecessary redirects on:

• Root domain to WWW or vice versa. Pick one and stick with it.
• HTTP to HTTPS. Force a single protocol, typically HTTPS long-term.
• Landing pages redirecting to home page. Link directly to avoidance hop.
• Tracking codes inserting URL redirect chains.

Keep your site architecture clean with direct connections without avoidable redirects wherever possible.

Check current redirect chains using tools like Redirect Path and MozBar to identify areas for simplification.

8. Upgrade to PHP 7+

Switching your site to PHP 7 can drastically speed up backend processing time and slash TTFB in many cases.

Compared to the now outdated PHP 5.x, benchmark tests show PHP 7 delivers over 2x better performance on average:

[Image showing PHP 5.6 vs PHP 7.1 performance gains]

PHP 7+ comes bundled with most managed hosts nowadays. But if stuck on legacy infrastructure, request an upgrade or switch providers to unlock the speed boost.

This helps better handle simultaneous connections for improved response times as traffic scales.

9. Limit Active Plugins

Too many unnecessary plugins can bloat code, create conflicts and slow things down.

Aim for purposeful plugins aligned with business goals vs nice-to-have fluff. Audit current plugins removing inactive or redundant ones not pulling value equal to site speed tradeoffs.

With WordPress specifically:

• Deactivate and delete unused plugins
• Only keep essential functionality-driven plugins
• Avoid excessive “featured-bloated” plugins
• Vet plugins to minimize performance impacts
• Limit total active plugins ideally under 20-30

Carefully adding selective high-quality plugins still leaves plenty of flexibility for key features. But too many collectively create drag on backend speed and frontend website performance.

10. Optimize Your Database

An unoptimized bulky database slows down server response times through sluggish queries and bloat.

Strategies like database optimization, indexing, and purging unnecessary data improve speed by fine-tuning the database powering your site. This quickens lookup times rather than scanning through millions of rows per request.

Each millisecond saved on database queries has a multiplicative effect on TTFB and overall backend speed.

On managed WordPress hosts like WPEngine advanced query caching saves processing cycles for commonly recurring queries to further improve performance.

11. Improve Server Security

Hacking attempts and brute force login requests can overwhelm servers and resources affecting site performance if not properly secured.

Installing an advanced security plugin like Wordfence blocks bad actors through IP blocking, country-level bans, rate limiting and automated threat detection.

This eliminates unnecessary junk requests so your server focuses fully on legitimate traffic rather than fighting off attacks.

Other ways to lock things down:

• Strong passwords + 2FA where possible
• Limited admin users
• Disable XML RPC
• Managed WAF protection
• OWASP security standards

Solid security helps alleviate shady traffic dragging down server response capabilities so more resources dedicate to real visitors.

12. Check for Underlying Server Issues

Sometimes an isolated server hiccup causes temporary lag spikes despite decent specs and performance historically.

Monitoring tools like Pingdom provide uptime monitoring to receive alerts for response anomalies, downtime incidents or other glitches that may disrupt website availability and speed.

Proactively address server hiccups before they turn into prolonged outages destroying traffic and rankings. Identify patterns around peak loads where upgrading to accommodate growth becomes necessary.

Don’t overlook server issues dragging down an otherwise well-optimized site. Dig deeper to pinpoint root causes.

13. Switch Web Hosts

Migrating to an alternative specialized host optimizing specifically around speed and performance can provide better server response times than attempting endless optimizations on unoptimized infrastructure.

The fastest mainstream host options include:

• Kinsta – Top tier WordPress hosting optimized for speed and security. Leading page load times powered by Google Cloud Platform.
• A2 Hosting – Unmanaged SwiftServer plans up to 20x faster than typical shared hosts.

Evaluate the web hosting cost per pageview (CPV) to quantify speed advantages in tangible ROI.

Continually Monitor and Improve Response Time

Server response time requires ongoing attention – not just a one-time fix. Refine and tweak over time.

Here are 5 ways to monitor site speed moving forward:

• Update speed benchmarks – Record PageSpeed Insights, WebPageTest and Google Analytics speed metrics weekly or monthly.
• Page load checks – Randomly test real site pages to mimic user experience identify hiccups impacting visitors.
• Site Ping checks – Use automated checks to catch performance regressions the moment they start.
• Peak load tests – Hit server at max anticipated traffic volumes to find and address bottlenecks.
• Visitor recordings – Session recordings to pinpoint page areas that feel sluggish in actual use.

Continually push for a faster, more responsive user experience through ongoing speed checks and incremental optimizations over time.

There you have 13 proven tips for optimizing your server response time and TTFB for faster page loads.

Prioritize low hanging fruit through hosting upgrades, caching, diameters, CDNs and code optimizations for instant wins.

Then tackle advanced database, server security and performance tuning for maximum speed as you dig deeper.

The faster your server responds, the happier your visitors become and longer they actively engage across site experiences. Faster response directly powers conversions, revenues and long term business growth.

Neil Beckett

Neil is an accomplished web, designer and developer with over 15 years of experience in creating and optimizing websites for small businesses and online entrepreneurs. Read full bio

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