How to speed up your WordPress site

Speeding up WordPress website

WordPress is a good platform to find customers and subscribers. While the content of your WordPress site matters, the site’s speed will determine the experience, which can be influential in deciding return visits.

The average load time and site speed contribute to the first impression. Similar to the case of poor content, users are less likely to revisit your WordPress site if it is too slow. Recent research suggests that user satisfaction faces a reduction of up to 4% for every 2-second long interval.

It is also responsible for reduced revenues and analytical data, with up to 5% reductions in incomes and 6% fewer clicks. With the recent inclusion of the site’s speed into Google’s search algorithm, a slow speed could affect your rankings too.

You need to speed up your WordPress site in order to avoid losing potential revenues, customers and subscribers.

Here’s a guide on how to speed up your WordPress site.

Make use of a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A content delivery network is a protocol that makes all static files that can be found on your WordPress sites, such as images, JavaScript, and CSS, available for download to your visitors. The CDN hosts these downloads on servers that are as close to the user as possible, making the downloads very fast.

You may consider using Free CDN and Max CDN for great content delivery networks which are simple to use.

Always optimize your images

Optimize your images in WordPress
Optimize your images in WordPress

You can optimize your images through online tools that reduce their size without affecting quality. Image optimization tools, such as Yahoo’s Smush, help to reduce the total page size, which reduces the overall load time. By optimizing the images, your WordPress site maintains its aesthetic appeal.

For users with many images, optimizing each picture after the other might take some time. You can use plugins such as WP-SmushIt to optimize large batches.

Optimize your homepage

Your homepage will affect the overall user experience for your WordPress site. A sleek homepage should be well designed but needs to be practical and functional. You should consider using excerpts instead of showing full articles and posts. This will reduce the overall load time, and make your WordPress site better accessible on mobile phone displays.

You may also reduce the number of articles being shown on the first page to improve performance.

WordPress has a number of widgets and plugins that are designed to improve customization. However, these can reduce the site speed. You need to remove all unnecessary and inactive widgets and plugins for a smoother homepage.

For best results, you should use a minimal interface. It is stylish, light and can be customized to improve user experience and overall ranking.

Schedule overhead management

Schedule overhead management in WordPress
Schedule overhead management in WordPress

You can improve the performance of your WordPress site by reducing overhead. This can be done by optimizing drafts and tables, deleting spam and other activities.

The process can be tiresome if done manually, but there are plugins to help schedule and carry out overhead management. Use the WP-DB manager to schedule optimization, with WP-Optimize carrying out the task.

Manage post revisions storage

When making a post on WordPress, you may likely have a few drafts. After the final post is completed and saved, WordPress saves all your drafts as well. The standard setting stores the drafts indefinitely, which could lead to a clogged up site. Plugins such as Revision Control help to manage the number of drafts, which provide backup without creating clutter.

Regularly test your site

Updating WordPress is not as simple as clicking update with every new change in themes and plugins. This part is easy. Checking to find out whether your site is still running as expected may be more complex than just updating the site.

There are a number of instances when updating your site may result in different types of challenges. It could become unusable to users on certain platforms and browsers, which will reduce its effectiveness and harm your ability to carry on seamlessly. You may not even know that your WordPress site is experiencing challenges due to this only happening on certain platforms.

Regular and thorough testing helps you identify these problems, as well as address them quickly to avoid losing subscribers and customers. Regular testing can help protect you from lost traffic, credibility and prospective clients. It can ensure that your site is running smoothly and quickly, with users assured more security. Your business will be protected from loss.

Hire a WordPress speed optimization company

Hire a WordPress speed optimization company
Hire a WordPress speed optimization company – Image Source: Kinsta

Optimizing your WordPress site can be a bit technical for most people. There are too many terms to consider, as well as too many processes involved. If you are having trouble with your WordPress site speed, you may consider hiring optimization services to experienced and qualified professionals to help improve your site without much of a hassle.

These companies are dedicated to improving WordPress performance for different users. One of the biggest, WPFIXS, is a holistic optimization service provider that offers development, installation, updates, and support, as well as bug fixes and optimization.

The service provider will help monitor your site and ensure optimal performance around the clock. The team provides quality and timely services every day of the week, ensuring that your WordPress site is running efficiently at all times. This will improve your website’s performance and likelihood to attract new and existing clients, which could mean better business for you.

Final thought

Optimizing WordPress can be great for your business. Your website will not be susceptible to lags and slow loading, which could affect customer satisfaction and influence the performance of your business.

This guide is designed to help improve the speed of your WordPress site. The tips may also influence the appearance of your WP site and could appeal to more users.

Some of the steps on the list may require the installation of plugins to help improve the appearance and performance of your WP Site. There are a number of options available, depending on the pricing and preferences. If you are unable to access the plugins mentioned, there are a number of options available that can also help you speed up your WordPress site.

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