How to Speed Up Unbounce Pages?


Userlevel 7
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Let me start by saying, I am impressed with how fast Unbounce pages load already, but in the pursuit of ever-improving optimization, I wanted to throw this question out to the community to see if there are any specific steps users can take to make the pages load even faster.

Shaving off a few milliseconds can make a big difference, so what do you recommend? For WordPress pages, I just use a number of different plugins, a CDN, imagine optimization scripts, etc. But for Unbounce, I’m not sure where to start with optimization.

Any ideas, tips, tricks, hacks for making Unbounce pages even faster?


15 replies

Are we talking about desktop or mobile? Because I can argue that a few milliseconds isn’t going to make any difference on desktop machines, and minimal impact on mobile.

If the page load is above 4s yeah people are going to be more likely to take off. But if its a pretty speedy page already a few milliseconds is just going to drive you bat poop crazy.

I’d recommend optimizing images before you upload in photoshop. Can you share the page in question so we can see how quick it loads? A lot of people (myself included) see red when pages load slowly and throw fits with the dev team. In truth, it isn’t really a ranking factor (per Jon Mueler from Google) it is purely a UX piece.

Hey @Joe - can you help me understand why we are getting such low QS? Is there an email I can reach you at?

Josh,

You can can email me at joe@altosagency.com send me a link to the page and a few select kw’s with some data from your account including clicks, impressions, ctr,
Search impression share, & search lost to rank.

Userlevel 7
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Hey Joe,

Thanks for the reply. I’m not really talking about any specific pages though. Just looking for general best practices. The tip you shared about optimizing images in Photoshop is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for with this question. Thanks for the detailed response.

Another user recommended compressor.io to optimize images for faster load times. I haven’t tested to see if page speed is faster when using the compressed images, but most audits that I perform flag images for slow load times. Compressor.io is super easy to use.

Userlevel 7
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That looks very useful. Thanks!

Any special scripts you’re running?

Userlevel 6
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The same rules apply to Unbounce that do to anything on the web. If you google “how to speed up your website” you’ll get tons of tuts, posts, etc, that basically all have the same to do list:

  • Minimize HTTP Requests.
  • Reduce server response time.
  • Enable compression.
  • Enable browser caching.
  • Minify Resources.
  • Optimize images.
  • Optimize CSS Delivery.
  • Prioritize above-the-fold content.

… and they all work!

But, Unbounce is “cloud” software. We do not have control over a lot of these elements. We cannot access the core code of our LPs. There’s a lot happening under the hood we can’t see and a lot of what we can see we cannot do anything about.

Really it comes down to the basics:

  • Image compression
  • Minimize your scripts
  • Minimize your CSS
  • Minimize your copy
  • Minimize embeds - this really slows Unbounce down. Not just video but custom forms as well or other 3rd party code.
  • Keep your LP short and to the point - after all it is an LP!

Personally I think Photoshop does a really good job if you know how to use the optimization tools. That is how we do it.

I do like some of these tools - TinyPNG, Optimizilla, Compressor.io (already mentioned above) … there’s a great list here.

A CDN, when possible, is always of benefit.

On a final a note I agree with @Joe_Savitch speed is not always a factor, especially if your pages are already fast. If you’re page is slow - you’re doing something wrong 🙂

On a side note: I have seen slow pages still produces high conversions. It really depends what is slowing the site down.

Hey thanks for this helpful comment 🙂
What do you meant with “Minimize your copy”?
The Variant Copies? Or what exactly? (:

Thanx!

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

Hey @ibrudap I mean shortening the amount of copy on the the page.

Hey @digibomb,

What do youi mean by a CDN?

Also, would you reccomend embedding videos from Youtube or Vimeo, or is there are way to actually upload a video onto the LP to actually shave more time of loading times?

Cheers

Ryan

So it’s been two years since this tread started. All of these issues still exist.

The speed issue is affecting SEO, and it’s the Unbounce popups that are the culprit. If I want an exit intent popup on all of my pages, Unbounce is going to have to be on all of my pages.

My SEO is strongly suggesting that we move away from Unbounce, but we know the tool well by now and have some high-converting pages.

So, is this issue going to be a priority at some point?

Userlevel 7
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Hey Brian!

I’m glad you’ve brought this up. As it turns out, we’re in the midst of rolling out page speed improvements in the next few weeks (I’ll actually be announcing the open beta for one of them today!). We’ve released a few already that are included in this post here: Checklist: How To Speed Up Your Landing Pages

Speed Boost was another major improvement we made recently to the backend, so if any of your pages since September haven’t been republished, make sure to republish them for Speed Boost to take effect. Here’s a link with some more info as well:

I’ll tag you in the comments section when we release our latest page speed updates to keep you in the loop. Trust me, we’re taking page speed very seriously.

Let me know if you have any questions about these updates, otherwise, keep an eye out for upcoming posts here in the community!

-Jess

Thanks. Our problem isn’t really the pages but the Convertables (popups).

Please tell me which of the following issues will be addressed (parrdon my SEO person’s drama):

1- use HTTP/2 (or if they cannot do that, they should resort to ughhh domain sharding)

2- compress their JS (consolidate and compress)

3- compress their html and fonts - have them loaded from their own libraries and not an additional call to google (consolidate and compress) or if the font is already being loaded by the wordpress site, recognize it and avoid dup calls to googlefonts

4- disable jquery migrate (freaking I don’t load it and they add this useless mother)

5- offer image compression when building their pages

Are iframe embeds from Wistia/Vimeo also considered to be embeds that we should minimize?

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