5.07 - Reduce the number of requests

1 - Findings & Impacts

Most of the loading times are devoted to downloading the components of the page: images, style sheets, scripts, flash, etc. Reducing the number of requested items reduces the time it takes to display the page. Indeed, it often happens to call obsolete resources.

However, via HTTP/2 multiplexing completely rules out this problem of reducing the number of requests (see Loading: HTTP / 2).

2 - Recommendations

Reduce the number of internal HTTP requests needed by reducing the number of internal resources called in your pages.

• Text resources (CSS, JavaScript) must be combined into a minimum of files (2 or more)
• Delete duplicate CSS and JS files
• Avoid empty SRC or HREF attributes
• Combine static images (background images, buttons, pictograms ...) using the CSS Sprite technique, allowing you to request only 1 image for which your CSS file will crop and place the parts to use.
• Avoid resizing your images in HTML

Reduce the number of external HTTP requests necessary by reducing the number of resources located on external domains. This is particularly the case for tracking tags that often accumulate a large number of requests alone. Regularly clean up obsolete tags or duplicate tags on your pages.