Given the vast number of companies and websites offering often similar information, products, and services, you want to be faster than your competitors. Page load speed is therefore an essential aspect of your website. A website that takes a long time to open and fully load will cost your website or online store revenue, either directly or indirectly.
When caching is used, loading times can be accelerated. With caching, certain data is temporarily stored in a cache (i.e., a digital storage location), so that a website loads faster. Below, you can read more about why this is so important. After that, we’ll delve a bit deeper into the phenomenon of caching by discussing technologies and pitfalls.
Important reasons to use caching
For the following reasons, it is advisable to implement caching on your website:
- A shorter website load time leads to significantly fewer visitors who quickly bounce. Good to know: it is estimated that around forty percent of internet users immediately close a website that takes longer than three seconds to load. Closing the page without having seen the content of the website. In general, a maximum load time of two seconds is considered acceptable. Ideally, you should even stay under one second.
- Page load speed is a key ranking factor for your website and, therefore, for your SEO performance. As a result, fast load times naturally attract more visitors to your website, especially if your competitors have slow load times.
Types of caching
There are various types of caching. The best known is probably browser caching. In the browser cache, a computer stores all the fragments that need to be downloaded to open a website. These components are thus (temporarily) stored in the browser cache. This means that the website in question can load much faster the next time.
While the browser cache is relevant to website visitors, a website developer focuses on the server cache. You can think of this as a cache located between the website and the visitor. Building a high-quality browser cache is complicated, but when it works properly, it significantly reduces load times.
What caching technologies are available?
There are various technologies for implementing caching. The following two are among the most popular:
- Varnish Cache: is one of the most popular caching technologies. This makes sense, as it allows a page to load up to a thousand times faster than without caching technology. With Varnish, a website visitor essentially lands on a pre-cached Varnish server, resulting in an extremely short load time.
- Redis Cache: this does not store complete web pages. However, Redis ensures that pages can be loaded quickly by storing data in RAM. For more complex websites, Redis is an excellent choice.
Be aware of these issues and pitfalls
A website builder focused on the shortest possible load time can hardly do without caching. Unfortunately, caching also comes with potential drawbacks and risks. For example, pages naturally need to be ‘cached’ again as soon as they are updated. Another pitfall is that small websites are equipped with a cache server with enormous capacity. This results in overcapacity, which is a waste of the investment.
