These days, it appears that «desire for speed» isn’t simply a movie title, but a way of life. People not only anticipate quickness, but they also make decisions at breakneck speed. Did you know that a person’s decision to like or dislike your website takes less than 3 seconds? So, if you want visitors to stay and buy your service, don’t waste those three valuable seconds on a slow-loading website. In fact, 40% of those polled said they immediately leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. When it comes to a WordPress website whether you build it on your own or hire a web development company. The major objective is to build a website that is fast and efficient.
Slow loading speeds and a high bounce rate from disgruntled customers cause search engines like Google to punish your site, limiting your traffic even further. All of this is to imply that the speed at which your website loads can make or break its success. Isn’t it past the time you started working on it? Here’s how to determine your current speed, as well as some potential issues that may be slowing down your WordPress site.
How to Check the Speed of your WordPress Website?
It’s critical to keep track of your website’s performance so you can continue to improve the consumer experience. There are several ways to check the speed of your site for free using a variety of sites and apps. Some instances are as follows:
- GTMetrix – This tool not only checks your site’s speed but also provides you with a detailed analysis and reports on its performance.
- WebPageTest – Enter the URL of your page and choose a browser to determine the performance of your site. You can also look into other options like «Advanced Testing» and «Visual Comparison» at your leisure.
- Pingdom – This tool allows you to check the speed of your website from anywhere in the world.
Why is Your WordPress Website Running Slow?
Let’s have a look at why your WordPress site is slow before we go into the details. Understanding what’s causing the delayed loading or slow reaction time can help you narrow down the measures you need to take to resolve the problem.
Cheap Website Hosting Service
Your website’s host is where it lives and where it gets the resources it needs to handle the traffic. Your site will be slow if you use a shared hosting server or a low-cost hosting plan. The pace at which your information travels and is sent to your visitors is determined by your host. None of the changes described below will make your site run quicker if you’re dealing with server limits. This is why investing in a reliable hosting plan is critical to the success of your website.
Use “Caching” Data
Caching is a feature that saves a version of your site to display when the same visitor comes back several times. Your website will utilize fewer resources as a result of not having to extract files straight from the server. Unfortunately, this means you’ll have to clear your cache history on a regular basis to ensure your visitors aren’t seeing an old version of your site. Thankfully, you can eliminate this little snag by combining WordPress’s cache tool plugin with Varnish.
Not Using a CDN
Is your target audience based outside of the US? If you answered yes, you should consider adopting a content delivery network (CDN), which allows you to reach your audience from anywhere in the world without sacrificing site speed. Multiple copies of your site are made available on several proxy servers using this approach, and your visitors can access the version that is closest to them.
Having Large Image Files
While high-quality photographs enhance the appearance of your site, they can also drastically slow down its loading time. You clearly can’t remove all photographs from your website, and changing image size without hurting quality using traditional editing applications is typically tough. That’s why we recommend programs like ImageOptim and Optimole, both of which have a long track record of success.
Keep CSS, HTML, & JS to a Minimum
When computers don’t have to interpret long, difficult codes, they perform faster. By minifying all CSS, HTML, and JS files, you can reduce the time it takes for your site to load. Minify and Autoptimize are two plugins that might assist you in this endeavor.
Not Updating Themes, Plugins, and WordPress
Now is the moment to update your system and plugins if you’ve been ignoring them. Your servers are burdened by obsolete themes, which expose them to advanced threats.
Cluttering of WordPress Database
To keep your WordPress site working at its fastest, you should frequently clean out your database of any unwanted data. Every other day, eliminate spam comments, unneeded data, and content, to name a few things. Plugins can help you get this done quickly and efficiently without wasting hours of your time.
Using Low-Quality Framework
Using complicated or low-quality themes and frameworks slows down your site in the same way that huge images and files do. To increase the efficiency of your site, you don’t need to utilize fewer plugins; instead, invest in their quality!
Unnecessary Themes & Plugins
You should remove all deactivated themes you don’t use anymore whenever you upgrade your website. As a result, your server will be less stressed and your speed will improve.
Excess of Internal Links
Incorporating relevant external links into your text is a fantastic approach to comply with SEO guidelines. If you employ too many external links, your server will have trouble retrieving all of the necessary data in a timely manner. Examine your links and only keep the ones that are essential to your SEO rating.
Wrapping Up the Topic
Performance cannot be determined by a one-size-fits-all approach since every website is different. Because one (or more) of these issues could be slowing down your site, it’s critical that you undertake a comprehensive evaluation before attempting to resolve any issues. Rather than doing everything yourself, you may entrust your website’s performance reports to reputable support staff for optimization.
