Lighthouse: Keep request counts low and transfer sizes small
Overview
High request counts and large resources, in general, can combine to have a negative effect on your site performance.
It is prudent to keep your request counts low and transfer sizes small so that your pages can load fast, even on slower connections.
How does your site score on this audit?
How do high request counts and large transfer sizes affect page performance?
Remember that the higher the request count and the larger the transfer size, the longer it takes for your page to load.
Some of these resources may even be render-blocking and it is essential you reduce their number to improve your visitors' page experience.
It is important to understand what requests are being made on your page so that you can evaluate which ones to prioritize in your optimization efforts.
Note that third-party requests are also an important part of your page. Even though they may not be in your control, it is wise to review your third-party scripts to determine which ones add value to your site.
How does GTmetrix trigger this audit?
GTmetrix evaluates your entire page and reports the number of network requests made by resources, along with the total transfer size.
How to keep request counts low and transfer sizes small?
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to keeping request counts low and transfer sizes small.
Performance budgets can help you evaluate your page resources in order to optimize the size and number of requests.
Always try to incorporate good site building practices into your development workflow to ensure you achieve the above.
For example - you may be able to minimize the number of requests made by your page by:
- avoiding multiple page redirects.
- combining images using CSS sprites.
- removing unwanted third-party scripts.
Smaller transfer sizes can be achieved by:
- Compressing your text resources.
- minifying your CSS and JavaScript.
- properly sizing and compressing your images.
Refer to our documentation for tips on how to improve/fix the other audits.
For WordPress (and other CMS) Users
WordPress (and other CMS) users can perform many of the aforementioned performance optimizations using certain plugins.
For example, WP Rocket automatically applies many of the standard web performance best practices to reduce request counts and transfer sizes of your page assets.
Read our detailed WordPress optimization using WP Rocket guide.