Optimizing your website is an easy way to differentiate yourself from the other guys out there, aka the competition. If your website loads faster, you’re giving the end-user a better experience.

Here are a few basic things I do on the front-end side when I am asked to optimize a website:

1. (Re)write the website using XHTML and CSS. CSS decreases the overall code size, making the page load quicker in browsers.
2. Compress any JavaScript using free online tools such as JavaScript optimizer.
3. Compress the CSS using free online tools such as CSS Optimizer.
4. Use the ever-popular web page analyzer to gather important information about where the bottlenecks might be.