What is website caching?
Website caching is like saving a shortcut to something you use often so it loads faster the next time you need it.
When you visit a website for the first time, your browser downloads everything it needs—like images, text, and layout instructions—from the website’s server. This can take a bit of time. But instead of downloading it all again when you revisit the site, your browser saves some of the information (like pictures or files) in a “cache,” which is like temporary storage on your device.
Next time you visit, your browser grabs the saved files from the cache instead of asking the website for them again. This makes the page load much faster!
It’s like writing down directions to a place, so you don’t have to ask how to get there every time.
Types of website caching
There are three types of caching that are relevant to websites…
- Browser caching
When you access a webpage, particularly so for the first time, your browser has to download a lot of data like images, the code that runs on the webpage and of course the main text content itself.
However due to the amount of data that it has to download this can take a while, as such browsers have their own cache which will save a copy of the resources on a page.
This way, if you go off the page and come back later the page will load significantly quicker as it just loads the files from your local storage. Your browser will keep hold of these files for a certain amount of time after you last accessed them or until either your cache is cleared or full, and it gets overwritten by something your browser deems more important or recent. - Server caching
Server caching is somewhat similar to how Browser caching works, only on the side of the server and not the browser.
When a user visits a webpage the website will generate that webpage by pulling in the content, header, footer and anything else that might be in that page like a product gallery.
Only then will it send all of this off to the user and this is quite a lot that has to happen before any data is sent to the user. To cut down on how long this takes the server will keep a copy of the generated webpage and when someone goes to access the page again, they will be sent the pre-generated webpage Cutting down on initial load times and making the site faster.
Like Browser caching this will also have a certain amount of time until this is deleted or overwritten by something else if the cache gets filled up. - CDN caching
A CDN (or a content delivery network) cache is a type of cache where content from the original server such as images, videos or entire webpages are distributed to a network of other servers. The reason for this is if there is a server closer to the person making the request then the page will load quicker because the data doesn’t have to travel as far.
Due to the distributed nature of a CDN cache it can also reduce strain on the main server. Instead of having everyone from across the globe access the same server they instead access a local CDN server and may not even need to access any resources from the main server reducing strain, consequently improving speeds.
Want to speed up your website and are interested in a CDN? Contact us to learn how we can help!
Reasons your website needs caching
Research indicates that a one-second delay can reduce conversions by 7%.
Caching is a great way to boost your website’s load times, especially considering how easy it can be to set-up. Page load times are an important metric used by Google and other search engines to assess which websites should rank higher in their organic search results, so anything you can do to speed up your site is a really good idea.
Caching saves your web server from having to repeatedly ‘build’ a page every time a user accesses it. Instead, pages are ‘pre-built’ as static HTML files – this reduces server-side processing time and saves information having to be fetched from the database which can take a while, particularly if the database server is busy.
As well as being beneficial for your website search rankings, lower page load time will benefit your visitors’ experience of your website, making them more likely to stick around and make a purchase or enquire about your services.
Implementing caching on your WordPress website
Depending on how your site is built, caching can be an easy quick win to improving your website performance. If your site is built on a CMS such as WordPress there are various plugins available that are free that make caching quick and easy to set up.
Caching can be set up on server level as well which means sites which don’t use a CMS like WordPress and don’t have plugins that allow quick and easy set up can still benefit from caching. However, this type of caching can be more complex to set up and may need advice and help from a web developer or server administrator.
If you’re using WordPress we’ve identified a few of the top caching plugins available in which we’ve had experience with. Mostly the free plugins are more than sufficient to help with performance and all plugins offer very similar setups:
- W3 Total Cache – free plugin with a paid premium version available
- WP Fastest Cache – free plugin with a paid premium version available
- WP Rocket – paid licence fee needed to use it.
Below are some scores on a site with a fairly basic setup for optimisation that is running one of the above plugins for caching. You can see that when we turn caching off along the score drops down a grade. This grading can vary dramatically with sites, some seeing a drop of a grade or two by simply turning off caching so you can really tell the difference. This will all depend on the site at hand and the resources it’s using and what other methods of optimisation you may or may not be using – remember caching alone is just the foundation to page performance.
With Caching
Without Caching
Why do you need to clear your website cache?
Occasionally you may find you have reason to clear your website’s cache, this is usually if a piece of content on the site is out of date or has been replaced or it could be a bug in the cached version that needs clearing. This is normally very easy to do, the process varies depending on the caching plugin you are using. Depending on the plugin you use the instructions may vary but they usually come with a stand out button to clear the cache inside the settings.
A handy tip is knowing how to hard refresh, this forces your browser to clear its cache for a specific website and reload the page with the most recent files from the server. This can resolve issues caused by outdated or corrupted cached data. To hard refresh:
- Windows: Hold CTRL + F5
- Mac: Hold CMD + SHFT + R
To sum up
If you want a quick win to help your site perform better? Caching is one of the easiest ways to make an impact. Looking to make lots of optimisations to your website performance? Again, caching should be the foundation of that.
From improving your load times, reducing server strain and also positively impacting your SEO, caching is an essential way to help improve your site. Alongside various other improvements you can make to your site’s performance, you can make your website a powerful tool that has a positive impact to your users experience which in-turn can lead to higher conversions. If you’re looking to help improve the performance of your site then get in touch to speak to one of our knowledgeable team to discuss your options.
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