Bablab websites are fast. Really fast.
A Bablab portfolio website loads in 2 seconds. That’s the fastest loading time on the internet for portfolio websites. Having a fast loading website is one of the key elements of modern and effective web presence.
Why should I care about my website speed?
- People are expecting instant results and the slower your site loads the higher chance a significant part of your first-time visitors will move elsewhere.
- Search engines such as Google have page speed as one of their ranking factors which determine how sites rank in the search results. A slower page loading time will result in your site ranking lower and getting fewer visitors from search than a faster loading site.
- Browsers such as Chrome are starting to warn their users when they are about to visit a slow loading site.
How bloated are portfolio websites in today's DIY website platforms?
Most platforms are loading a whole lot of third party scripts and styles. All these scripts are loaded and interpreted by the browser, requiring more time to load, interpret and execute.
Portfolio websites have lots of images, how can they load fast?
Using modern markup practices can dramatically reduce the amount of images loaded, and by that reduce page load time. Here is comparison of total data transferred and loading time of a gallery page with several dozens of photos, in each platform:
It is clearly evident which platforms are utilizing a modern and efficient loading practice.
Why are all these portfolio websites so heavy?
All these platforms were designed to answer as broad requirements as they can, their code base is huge and comlex. Themes and plugins often alter the markup and load more external resources, causing slower load time and even markup conflicts. The selection of different themes and plugins results in different audit results across websites on the same platform.
Bablab is built for speed. It loads the minimal resources possible by including only scripts that are actually needed for the page. All scripts used to drive Bablab’s portfolio websites are pure Javascript (“vanilla”), and therefore are very small and efficient. Yep, no Jquery ;)
All photos are delivered using a global CDN for maximum availability.
All Bablab websites have the same solid performance, regardless of their appearance customizations. Your visitors will never wait for loading, anywhere, anytime, on any device.
How can I test my website speed and the amount of script it loads?
GTmetrix is a great free resource for measuring the speed of your site. It gives you a brief overview with useful metrics such as the PageSpeed Score, the time it takes to fully load your website and the total page size.
This is how a Bablab website performs on GTmetrix audit:
Another great tool is Google’s Lighthouse. It has audits for performance, accessibility, SEO and more. This audit will show you how Google examines and ranks your website.
This is how a Bablab website performs on Lighthouse audit:
You can read more of the effect Bablab had on photographer Sivan Askayo's website ranking.