WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for building websites for SMBs & even enterprises. But WordPress websites face one inherent problem, and that is their page speed.
People often come up with questions like why they should have fast-loading WordPress websites & How to speed up WordPress sites speed?
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So here I am with answers to all of these questions.
Let’s begin.
On this page
Why should you speed up your WordPress website?
Here is the list of reasons why you should speed up yo, r WordPress website:
- If your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, almost 45% of visitors will bounce off your website. That’s almost half of your potential customers. So it’s important to speed up your WordPress website.
- Search Engines often rank websites based on their page speed. The better page speed you have, the higher your website will rank on Google.
How to speed up your WordPress Website?
Use Light-weight themes
Everyone wants a classy, visually intuitive, & attractive website. Elements like sliders, elements, & widgets will surely make your website super cool, but there is an issue with them.
These elements will increase your website’s size, resulting in a slowdown of the WordPress website drastically.
One way to tackle this problem is to use lightweight themes like default WordPress themes. But if your needs are custom & you want to build a complex website, you can go for WordPress theme Frameworks. These frameworks offer a lot of customization without hampering your website’s speed.
StudioPress – Sites that rank higher
StudioPress provides themes, content sections, full-page layouts, custom block-builders, and Genesis framework.
Choose the right hosting provider.
Your Website’s speed depends a lot on your Hosting provider. With lower prices & cheap plans, we are often attracted to shared hosting providers. As they provide so-called Unlimited Bandwidths, emails & massive space, website owners flock to buy these plans.
Unfortunately, these are shared hosting, which means many businesses are using a particular space. So this results in poor performance, slower load time & a lot of downtimes.
As numerous other websites consume a lot of space, resulting in a below-par performance. Apart from that, there is no information available on how well the servers are optimized.
So the better option is to buy a dedicated cloud server.
There are numerous dedicated cloud server options available, and you can set up these servers from scratch after getting support from professionals.
Rocket.net – Managed WordPress hosting
WittySparks is hosted with Rocket.net – A highly secured WordPress hosting platform powered by Cloudflare enterprise.
Optimize images
Images are the most vital part of any website, and stunning images & visual arts are a great way to engage your visitors. Multiple types of research suggest that such images & visual content tend to deliver almost 75% of customers.
But if you have not optimized your images, they can hamper your Website’s performance as you have never imagined.
So the better option is to optimize multiple photo-optimization software available in the market.
Compress your images using this advanced software & you’ll be amazed at how well your website performs.
Moreover, there are multiple image formats that you should use, depending on your need. E.g., PNG images offer optimum quality, but they are very large. On the contrary, JPEGs are smaller, but they lack clarity.
So, depending on where you will be placing your images, choose the right form.
Imagify – Automated Image Compression
A WordPress plug-in that enables the compression of images on your website and improves the load times automatically.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
The site speed depends a lot on where your server is located. E.g., if your server is located in the UK, the users from the UK will get more speed. But it is possible that users from the US might not get similar speeds.
This might impact your site ranking on Google.
But CDN can offer you a solution to this problem.
CDN or Content Delivery Network is a feature that allows you to offer optimum site speed to all your users, irrespective of their location.
How does CDN work?
CDN is a vast array of servers spread across the globe. These servers store some of the basic files that make up your website. These are the files that stay unchanged for a long time. E.g., some visual arts, CSS, & JAVA scripts.
So the next time users reach your website, they are served with these files from the nearby servers, resulting in better speed.
Keep your database, clutter-free
Your database accumulates every information & change on your website. Over a longer period, this accumulated data will start hampering your website speed, making it very slow & inefficient.
So it’s important to clean up such unnecessary clutter.
One of the leading factors contributing to the data clutter is post-revision. It means, if one of your blog posts is using 1 MB space & you have made 3 changes to it, it will use 3 MB data. Imagine the number of posts you have created & several revisions on that particular post!
So make sure you keep your database clutter-free.
Delete unused plugins
Plugins play a vital role in making your website more user-friendly & efficient. But at the same time, outdated plugins hamper your Website’s speed & pose serious security threats.
So it’s important to keep an eye on all your plugins & remove the ones that are outdated & not in use.
Deleting plugins is extremely easy. The first step is to deactivate the existing plugins. Later, open the list of deactivated plugins & delete the one that you are not using.
Compress JavaScript & CSS Files
Minifying JavaScript & CSS Files might not seem much, but you’ll be amazed once you do so! I have personally observed that by minifying JavaScript & CSS files, WordPress websites load lightning-fast.
The reason is, compressed CSS files & JavaScript files take up less bandwidth, resulting in better speed.
You can use plugins like Breeze or Autoptimize.
WP Rocket – Speed up your website
WP Rocket boosts your WordPress website loading speed and helps you improve Google page speed and core web vitals score.
Final Thoughts
Your Website is critical for your Brand’s online success. So you must deploy the solutions mentioned above to increase WordPress website speed.
This is not a complete list, but by following these steps, I’m sure you’ll be able to drastically boost your website’s performance.
I hope you find this guide to boost your WordPress speed optimization useful. If you are looking for some WordPress theme frameworks, you can check out our blog here.
FAQs
Which format should I use, PNG or JPEG?
If your image will be your primary attraction on the webpage, it’s better to use PNG. But if you want standard quality & better speed, go for JPEG.
Is CDN really helpful?
Yes, I use CDN to ensure all my users enjoy equal site speed.
Does my Website’s performance depend on my hosting provider?
Yes, it depends a lot! Efficient & dedicated hosting ensure your Website enjoys full bandwidth & better speed.