Web designers know well that excellent design has special significance for a website. And if they trust a particular concept that they believe is the best and most effective, it may actually be a major issue for some users or new visitors. A great design — beautiful, functional, animated, etc. — can turn into a huge problem. Even for front-end developers and coders. We simply add too much visual content, too many plugins, chunks of code, variables, conditions, and…
Optimization of this combined creation is a shared responsibility of both developers and designers. But optimizing code or compressing JPEG images isn’t enough. It’s about website speed, and optimizing the way data is transferred and processed.
You might think this only indirectly concerns developers and designers, but clients… well, they’re clients. And they often request not only website creation and layout but also deployment on the server, and even minimal support. So today we’ll look at one way to optimize a ready-made design project — not just to speed things up.
Specifically, we’ll discuss integrating a CDN — even if some readers think: "I’ve read plenty about that already." No arguments — but it’s still helpful to gather everything in one place and view optimization from a different angle.
Why is speed so important?
Numerous studies have proven how crucial loading speed is in browsers. Perhaps no surprise these days — we all face situations where pages suddenly take a painfully long time to load. Slow websites generate a negative impression and user experience.
Page load time has a direct impact on conversion rates, which in turn affects brand growth. As load times increase, conversions decline exponentially. That’s why an optimal load time is around 2.4 seconds.
How CDN helps boost speed
CDN offers many benefits, but we’ll focus on those that improve site speed. In short, a CDN is far better equipped than most hosting solutions — even VPS or dedicated servers — to manage site traffic. A CDN is a network of data center servers that deliver your site’s content (images, video, text, plugins, etc.) to users.
Typical hosting is optimized for stability — running PHP, CMSs, etc. — but not necessarily for site speed. CDNs, by contrast, are designed specifically for blazing-fast content delivery.
But how does a CDN actually speed things up? What makes it special?
How CDN acceleration works
To understand CDN benefits, consider what makes a site slow: overloaded or underpowered servers, large images, unoptimized or excessive scripts, or servers located far from the user’s region.
While image optimization and good hosting can help, the remaining issues require further attention.
Too many scripts
When starting out as a designer or frontend dev, everything feels magical. You install widgets, scripts, templates — you barely need to write code. But this “freedom” causes your site to slow down. The delay may be fractions of a second, but it adds up.
Even experienced devs fall into this trap by testing dozens of plugins to meet client demands. The result? Side effects that can’t always be fixed by simply deleting a script.
Every plugin adds JavaScript files, CSS, and requires more server resources. Performance tests often show high request counts for those files.
You can check request numbers using Inspect Element in Opera. See the variation across three sample sites:
The fewer requests — the better. Compress, combine, and minimize script code. Enable HTTP/2. And ideally, avoid heavy plugins.
While a CDN won’t decide which plugins to keep or remove, it can “on the fly” minify scripts to reduce your site’s payload — and boost its performance.
Another strong recommendation: enable HTTP/2. We'll cover its advantages later, but for now just know it was designed (in 2015, supported by all modern browsers) to optimize load times — especially for sites with lots of resources. So switching to HTTP/2 can even improve SEO rankings.
Most CDN services make it easy to enable HTTP/2 for your site — even if your host doesn’t.
Web designers know well that excellent design has special significance for a website. And if they trust a particular concept that they believe is the best and most effective, it may actually be a major issue for some users or new visitors. A great design — beautiful, functional, animated, etc. — can turn into a huge problem. Even for front-end developers and coders. We simply add too much visual content, too many plugins, chunks of code, variables, conditions, and…
Optimization of this combined creation is a shared responsibility of both developers and designers. But optimizing code or compressing JPEG images isn’t enough. It’s about website speed, and optimizing the way data is transferred and processed.
You might think this only indirectly concerns developers and designers, but clients… well, they’re clients. And they often request not only website creation and layout but also deployment on the server, and even minimal support. So today we’ll look at one way to optimize a ready-made design project — not just to speed things up.
Specifically, we’ll discuss integrating a CDN — even if some readers think: "I’ve read plenty about that already." No arguments — but it’s still helpful to gather everything in one place and view optimization from a different angle.
Why is speed so important?
Numerous studies have proven how crucial loading speed is in browsers. Perhaps no surprise these days — we all face situations where pages suddenly take a painfully long time to load. Slow websites generate a negative impression and user experience.
Page load time has a direct impact on conversion rates, which in turn affects brand growth. As load times increase, conversions decline exponentially. That’s why an optimal load time is around 2.4 seconds.
How CDN helps boost speed
CDN offers many benefits, but we’ll focus on those that improve site speed. In short, a CDN is far better equipped than most hosting solutions — even VPS or dedicated servers — to manage site traffic. A CDN is a network of data center servers that deliver your site’s content (images, video, text, plugins, etc.) to users.
Typical hosting is optimized for stability — running PHP, CMSs, etc. — but not necessarily for site speed. CDNs, by contrast, are designed specifically for blazing-fast content delivery.
But how does a CDN actually speed things up? What makes it special?
How CDN acceleration works
To understand CDN benefits, consider what makes a site slow: overloaded or underpowered servers, large images, unoptimized or excessive scripts, or servers located far from the user’s region.
While image optimization and good hosting can help, the remaining issues require further attention.
Too many scripts
When starting out as a designer or frontend dev, everything feels magical. You install widgets, scripts, templates — you barely need to write code. But this “freedom” causes your site to slow down. The delay may be fractions of a second, but it adds up.
Even experienced devs fall into this trap by testing dozens of plugins to meet client demands. The result? Side effects that can’t always be fixed by simply deleting a script.
Every plugin adds JavaScript files, CSS, and requires more server resources. Performance tests often show high request counts for those files.
You can check request numbers using Inspect Element in Opera. See the variation across three sample sites:
The fewer requests — the better. Compress, combine, and minimize script code. Enable HTTP/2. And ideally, avoid heavy plugins.
While a CDN won’t decide which plugins to keep or remove, it can “on the fly” minify scripts to reduce your site’s payload — and boost its performance.
Another strong recommendation: enable HTTP/2. We'll cover its advantages later, but for now just know it was designed (in 2015, supported by all modern browsers) to optimize load times — especially for sites with lots of resources. So switching to HTTP/2 can even improve SEO rankings.
Most CDN services make it easy to enable HTTP/2 for your site — even if your host doesn’t.