Page load time is not just a part of the user experience, but also a search engine ranking factor to push fast loading and better-performing sites. In fact, Google’s report shows that a half-second delay in load times can cause up to a 20% reduction in web traffic. Thankfully, there is more than one method to speed up your website. In this article, we’ll be discussing caching to optimize your speed and how it can help you with a better user experience.

Types of Caching for Websites

Here are different types of caching for websites to know about including:

■ Browser Cache:
In browser caching, browsers create copies of HTML files, JavaScript, and images and save them on your computer’s hard drive. The browser uses the cached version for the sites you often visit and elements like the site logo downloads from the cache instead of downloading from the server each time.

■ DNS Cache:
DNS servers cache DNS records for faster lookups. A DNS record tells a browser where to find your website. DNS servers cache records at servers worldwide. Therefore, the user visits a site from the server closest to their DNS server. Since DNS records cache all around the globe, the DNS changes often take 24 to 48 hours to propagate around the globe.  

■ CDN:
A CDN (content delivery network) stores copies of static elements of your website including image, javascript, style, and CSS – on proxy servers distributed around the world. CDN distributes your website around the global servers so when someone visits your site, they load a site from the server closest to them. If your site isn’t on the proxy server or the cached copy expires, the proxy server requests a new copy and caches those files for future use.

■ Static Page Cache:
When your web server builds the HTML of a page, it can be configured to then save that HTML output locally. With the use of this locally cached copy of the HTML, you can respond quickly to similar requests in the future. While static page caching is a most useful method for web developers to increase the speed of the site, backend optimization also plays a key role. Static page caching can also be configured with CDNs to store the output with the rest of your site resources at proxy servers around the world.  

■ Object Cache:
Object caching can be used to store pieces of data after more expensive operations such as API calls or database queries. Without making the same repeated operations, websites can more effectively scale in traffic without the use of many server resources. It is important to know that, stored data of an object cache can vary in size or type.

Page Caching and its Benefits – Explained

Cached pages serve as the static HTML versions of a page in order to avoid time-consuming queries to your database. Search engines like Google store backup version of the cached pages which serves the users instead of the most recent version of the page. This is beneficial since the most recent version of a page needs to collect and access information from the database. The newest version often takes more time to serve than the page that is already stored as a cached version.

For example, the search results give the user an option of viewing the cached version of the website.

If the user chooses the cached version of the web page, the browser will serve them with a page with the notification that a more recent version of the page is also available and that they are viewing a cached version.

The benefit of viewing the cached version of the page for the user is that they will be served with the required information faster. Page caching can lower server load by up to 80%. Page caching is helpful for high-traffic websites that make use of database information when serving the page to the user. On the other hand, the downside is that the user doesn’t access the most recent version of the page.

It provides a huge advantage to the sites that don’t come with dynamic features and add new information often, it becomes an optimal way for the user to get the information load faster.

How Does Caching Boost User Experience?

User experience is a fundamental part of any online business growth. It can either bring you more sales or hinders your business growth. There are various components of a satisfying user experience. Caching is considered to be an important factor when it comes to website performance optimization. Caching leverages the following benefits:

■ Reduced Latency: A slow load time of web pages usually leads to user frustration and eventually a higher bounce rate. Statistics show that 51% of online shoppers in the US abandon a purchase if they find a slow website and moreover, A two-second delay in the load time while making a transaction results in an abandonment rate of up to 87%.  The loading speed of a webpage is crucial to a good user experience and caching can reduce latency by serving web page content from the nearest servers to the users. In fact, the page loads 50% faster when cached.

■ Content Availability: Content availability is a key factor in user experience as users want to access information as fast as possible. A site may not load for a user due to several reasons – the network may be prone to frequent interruptions or the site may be experiencing intermittent outages. In such cases, caching will help you by serving end-users the cached content and making the website robust.

■ Avoids network congestion: The internet handles a huge amount of data and manages heavy traffic throughout the day. This results in bandwidth congestion which can be a major cause of networks. Using caching on your website, you can reduce the network congestion as cached content reduces the fetching path. Now, the requests aren’t directed towards the origin and reduce the requests on the network and load on the origin server.

Speed up Your Site Using Page Caching with Other Methods

In combination of page caching with Gzip Compression (reduce load times up to 70%) as HTML file size optimization (load time reduction up to 30%) and the movement of your design features and JavaScript to external CSS style sheets and JavaScript files (which can reduce your page load time 50% or more), you can double or even triple the performance and speed boost of your website which will provide your visitors with a better user experience.

FAQs

1. What are the types of files to cache?
Answer – Types of files to cache include:

• Logos and other static images
• Stylesheets
• Downloadable files
• JavaScript files

2. What is the best practice for Caching Optimization?
Answer – You can’t just rely on caching for site speed solutions because you can run into problems when visitors land on pages that cannot be cached. For instance, an eCommerce site with a check-out page can’t be cached because of its dynamic nature. However, if you haven’t optimized your backend and frontend, the checkout experience could be painfully slow, causing the buyer to abandon their cart. So, it is recommended to optimize your backend and front first for caching. After that, consider caching the files that don’t change frequently.

3. How to Implement Caching?

Answer – Caching may be part of your web hosting service, especially if your web host offers a CDN. If not and you have a WordPress website, you can use WordPress plugins such as w3speedster to integrate CDN and implement caching on your website. 

The post How Caching Optimization Can Help to Improve Your Website Speed appeared first on W3 SpeedUp.

But there are different types of cache that have different importance on a site and act differently. Where seekers can’t hold on to slow websites and instantly come back, caching will help you decrease your WordPress site’s load time to a greater extent.

As a matter of fact, the faster your website will load, the better the user experience & SEO ranking it will create.

But here we are going to talk about site cache, browser cache and server cache and the major differences between them. First of all, let’s take a look at each of the cache types separately and understand what they are.

What is Site Cache?

A site cache is a way to temporarily store data like web pages, images and other media content when the web page loads for the first time by the visitor.

A site cache is also commonly known as a HTTP or page cache.  

Through site caching, the visitor’s data is remembered by the site to provide web page and content much faster on each re-visit in the future.

Sounds similar to a person’s memory? Indeed, site cache is like a temporary memory creating method for a website.

When a user visits a page for the first time, a site cache stores selected content to memory. And, when that same page is visited again, the site cache helps to display the same content with much quicker loading time compared to the first visit.

While site cache is helpful for a website creator to increase site speed, the site caching is the developmental concept from the client’s side.

That means, it is controlled by the site users.

However, a website can only handle limited client-side caching for a limited period to store saved data.

This way on any update on the webpage, content can be set or requested to expire after a certain time. It ensures that end users always stay up to date with the website and its fresh content. On the other hand, the pages that haven’t changed can still be loaded from the cache to speed up the loading time.

What is Browser Cache?

It is another client-side type of caching. That means the working of the Browser Cache is quite similar to Site cache but still differs as it is built for a browser.

In browser caching, content is saved or stored on your computer through the browser. The saved files and stored content are grouped up with the files associated with the browser you use.

Here are the types of files that browser cache temporarily saves:

• HTML pages
• CSS stylesheets
• JavaScript scripts
• Images
• Other types of multimedia content

Although some browsers have high caching systems such as Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, every browser always works on some form of browser cache.

Here, a website is able to connect with the user’s browser. So, when a page makes some changes, the stored content in the cache becomes no longer useful and browsers replace the old content with the new or updated one.

This is only done when the end user manually clears out their browser’s cache.

What is Server cache?

 A server cache is closely related to site caching. Instead of storing the data from the client side, server cache stores site server data.  

Server caching has nothing to do with the end user and browser. It is fully controlled and handled by the server your site works on.

There can be several types of server caching, but here are three main types:

Object caching – In this server-side cache stores database queries for quick retrieval on repeated page loads.

CDN caching – A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a cluster of servers that are geographically located all around the world. They create content cache using the server closest to the end user to make loading faster.

Opcode caching – PHP code is compiled between each request, then stored in a cache to make repeated page loads faster.

Now, let’s see what are the differences between each cache type.

Difference between Site Cache, Browser Cache and Server Cache

Now that we know about each type of cache, it’s time to understand the differences between them.

Site cache:

• Stores content like web pages, images, text etc.
• Client side caching
• Helps in serving content much quicker on each visit  

Browser Cache:

• Saves limited types of data like HTML pages, CSS stylesheets, JavaScript scripts, Images and other multimedia files.
• Files are heavier and takes time to load, thus, stored in the computer
• Controlled by the user’s browser
• Create Client-side cache
• Helps in serving content directly without requesting from server

Server Cache:

• Stores content, code, queries, or similar data on a server
• Server-side caching
• Controlled by the server instead of a browser or user.
• Holds a lot of content

·   Server caching has various types including Object, CDN, and Opcode caching.

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