When it comes to web performance, everybody expects all inclusive

Most families will have researched, booked and paid for their holidays by now and will be looking forward to some Costa del sun, but when it comes to website performance, travel companies are not sipping sangria just yet.

There will always be families who make a late decision to go abroad, so businesses must take just as much care to ensure their website runs efficiently now as they did in the peak booking season. But uncovering and analysing every single aspect of what is and isn’t working on the site can be a daunting and lengthy task, however there are a few ways travel operators can deliver a fast and reliable site without months’ of preparation, says Alex Painter of website speed and performance testing company Eggplant.

Identify and remove single points of failure (SPOFs)
Maybe your systems can handle any influx of traffic, even with large numbers of last minute holiday hunters determined to grab a bargain. But it may be that your weakest link is external content. Third parties play a bigger role in affecting a website’s performance than many people think. Some, such as payment gateways, are essential. However, other third parties, such as social media feeds and A/B testing services, aren’t as critical and could be removed to enhance performance. Some non-critical resources can even break your website if they’re slow to load or fail altogether. So, if the ship has sailed, cut the content.

Optimise large images to make way for traffic
Pictures arguably do more to sell a holiday than anything else. Image-heavy ads will likely be used to shout about the best deals, best hotels and best everything. The problem is that these files are often large, and consequently take longer to load. This will directly affect the user’s experience by increasing load times precisely when you need them to be fast. Therefore, one quick tip is to optimise your upcoming promotional ads and hero images, by using an image that is fit for purpose considering size, file type, dimensions and compression.

Ensure static assets have long cache lifetimes
Requests for large numbers of files on your site may be one of the reasons why it is underperforming. So reduce the number of requests can make it faster. One of the easiest ways to do this is to ensure that files that don’t change very often, such as images and style sheets, can be cached on end users’ devices. Getting this right means that your customers will only have to download your holiday graphics once, increasing load speed and helping to boost conversion rates.

Get rid of non-essential content
If there is anything on your site that is redundant, get rid of it. It’s the excess baggage to your customers’ serene and speedy journey. Newer features are added more often than older features are removed, building up the number of unused scripts and styles. A full audit of your website or even just your key pages may not be possible at short notice, yet a brief check of the source code will most likely reveal some content that is not needed and could be removed.

The simple steps outlined above are just some of the ways travel companies can keep their website running smoothly for the last minute bargain seekers. But next time, don’t leave it so late, eh?