Make Your SharePoint Pages Load Faster - Stop Them from Dragging!

If your SharePoint pages are dragging and affecting your user experience, there are a few quick fixes you can apply. Allison Gonzalez, a Microsoft certified trainer at Pragmatic Works, shares three actionable tips to optimize SharePoint performance. These tips are easy to implement and can significantly reduce your page load times.

1. Diagnose the Problem with Page Diagnostics for SharePoint

Before implementing any fixes, it’s important to identify the exact cause of your SharePoint page slowness. Microsoft offers a free Chrome extension called Page Diagnostics for SharePoint. This tool is essential for SharePoint administrators and anyone managing SharePoint sites.

To use this tool:

• Install the Page Diagnostics for SharePoint extension in your Chrome browser.
• Open the slow-loading SharePoint page and click on the extension.
• Click Start to begin the diagnostics scan.
• The tool will scan the page and generate a report outlining what’s slowing down the page, including large banners, complex layouts, uncompressed images, and heavy web parts.

The report will provide performance scores and give you actionable tips to improve speed. For example, it may suggest reducing the number of large web parts or images. It will also highlight issues like the lack of a content delivery network (CDN) or heavy use of IFrames, which can significantly slow down the page.

2. Simplify Your SharePoint Layout

Once you've identified the performance issues, the next step is to simplify the layout of your SharePoint page. Complex, visually-rich components, such as carousels, hero banners, or large PowerBI reports, can add unnecessary weight to your pages.

Here are some suggestions for simplifying your layout:

• Reduce the number of web parts on the page. Fewer elements mean fewer resources need to be loaded, resulting in faster page load times.
• Add collapsible sections to hide content until the user clicks to expand it. This will help avoid loading too many elements at once.
• If your team insists on keeping heavy elements, spread them out across subpages to ensure they load separately instead of all at once.

These changes improve both speed and mobile performance, making the site more user-friendly, especially for users on slower networks or mobile devices.

3. Optimize Your Images and Use a CDN

One of the biggest page speed killers in SharePoint is large images. If your images aren’t optimized, they can take a long time to load, slowing down the entire page.

To improve image performance:

• Compress images before uploading them to SharePoint. Tools like TinyPNG can reduce image size without sacrificing quality.
• Replace oversized images with optimized versions that have smaller file sizes.

For even better performance, you can take advantage of SharePoint Online's built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN caches static files like images, stylesheets, and JavaScript on servers that are geographically closer to the end user. This ensures that a user in Europe won’t have to wait for assets stored in the US to load.

To use a CDN:

• Enable it in your Office 365 tenant settings (it needs to be enabled manually via PowerShell or the CLI for Microsoft 365).
• Host static assets (like logos and images) on the CDN for faster global delivery.

Make sure your CDN stores content that doesn't change often, such as logos or other static images. Once the CDN is set up, it will cache these assets at multiple locations worldwide, improving speed and reducing the burden on your server.

Final Thoughts

By diagnosing your SharePoint site with the Page Diagnostics tool, simplifying your layout, and optimizing images with the use of a CDN, you can drastically improve your site’s speed. These strategies are simple to implement but can make a big difference in how your users experience SharePoint.

Faster pages lead to better user engagement, improved adoption rates, and fewer support requests. A fast-loading SharePoint site encourages users to visit more often, interact with content, and access apps and documents without frustration. Plus, as an admin, you'll spend less time troubleshooting slow page issues and more time adding value to the site.

If you want to learn more about SharePoint management, check out the full SharePoint playlist on YouTube or dive deeper into our on-demand platform for SharePoint training classes.

© 2025 Pragmatic Works

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