{"id":4768665,"date":"2022-09-21T15:10:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-21T13:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/?post_type=core_web_vitals_hub&p=4768665"},"modified":"2023-09-13T17:47:22","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T15:47:22","slug":"keep-request-counts-low-transfer-sizes-small","status":"publish","type":"core_web_vitals_hub","link":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/google-core-web-vitals-wordpress\/keep-request-counts-low-transfer-sizes-small\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Keep Request Counts Low and Transfer Sizes Small"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have recently run a performance report on PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse may have recommended you to \u201ckeep request counts low and transfer size small\u201d:<\/p>

\"Keep
Keep requests counts low and transfer size small\u201d from the Lighthouse\u2019s diagnostics section – Source: PageSpeed Insights<\/a>
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Lighthouse crawls your web page and reports the number of network requests made by each resource such as images, fonts, documents, CSS, etc. The goal is to help you identify the most significant resources using bandwidth to know what may cause bad performance. <\/p>

In this article, we explain how heavy page resources and large transfer sizes affect the speed of your website. We also share some techniques and plugins you can use to control the request counts and the transfer sizes. <\/p>

What Keep Request Counts Low and Transfer Sizes Small Means<\/h2>

This PSI audit lists the total number of requests and transfer sizes made by each web page component: scripts, images, fonts, other media, etc.<\/p>

A \u201crequest\u201d refers to the number of files (resources) used to render the web page, and \u201ctransfer sizes\u201d refers to the size of these resources.<\/p>

\"How
How to keep request counts low and transfer sizes small explained – WP Rocket<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>

Lighthouse recommends keeping the resources as small as possible and keeping request counts low if you want to ensure a great performance. <\/p>

Why Request Counts and Transfer Sizes Matter for Performance<\/h2>

Controlling request counts and transfer size are crucial for performance because large files are more likely to harm your site’s speed.<\/p>

In fact, the larger the transfer size and the higher the request counts, the longer it takes for your page to load all the resources. Some of them may even be render-blocking which may affect the browsing experience for your visitors. <\/p>

That\u2019s why it makes sense that Google recommends minimizing the number of required requests and decreasing the size of your resources. This audit helps improve the Lighthouse performance score <\/a>by telling you which requests you should work on first. <\/p>

What Is Considered As \u201cGood\u201d Transfer Size?<\/h3>

Transfer size is good when it\u2019s right under 2667 KB. Anything more than 4000 kb is considered bad for Lighthouse. To have fast-loading pages even on slower connections,  it\u2019s more judicious to keep your request counts low, and transfer sizes small. <\/p>

What\u2019s the Impact of the Requests and Transfer Sizes on the Core Web Vitals?<\/h3>

Another reason to keep your request counts low and transfer sizes small is to optimize your Largest Contentful Paint<\/a> (LCP) metric. LCP is one of the Core Web Vitals<\/a> created by Google, aiming to measure when the page’s main contents have finished loading. The LCP grade will be negatively impacted if your main content is heavy.<\/p>

\"Requests
Requests and transfer sizes\u2019 impact on LCP – Source: WP Rocket<\/a>
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How to Keep Request Counts Low and Transfer Sizes Small <\/h2>

There are 4 main optimization techniques to follow if you want to keep requests counts low and transfer size small according to each resource type identified by Lighthouse.<\/p>

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Lighthouse\u2019s Resource Type – Source: PSI<\/a> <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>

1. Make your code as clean as possible and trim your scripts (CSS and JS)<\/h3>