Demystifying Page Speed Myths

Let's have a chat about page speed, why it's important and what I have learnt over the years so you don't make the same mistakes. I'll discuss the main factors that affect speed NOT every factor as this article would go on forever. First let's chat Plugins!

Plugins

Do plugins slow you down? I will break them down into two types (1) Frontend such as those loaded when a visitor arrives on your site will definitely slow down your website especially the more traffic you get because the more plugins that require activation. These frontend plugins are usually features such as forms, social media widgets and so on.

(2) Backend plugins are those which load in your wordpress dashboard (are accessed by a backend login) will not slow your website down - in fact backend plugins can improve the speed of your website and counteract the speed issues you have from frontend plugins and other issues.

Themes

Themes play a big part in speed and for the sake of readers I'll let you know I am referring to Wordpress themes but in general everything I chat about applies to most platforms. Some themes are already optimised some need optimisation and some will never be optimised. You should always read in the description if a theme is optimised for speed if its not mentioned then don't buy it(or use it).

External Assets

Guess what? You can't control external assets and these will affect your website speed. When I say external assets I mean JS, CSS, Images, Facebook Widgets and anything else which is called on externally and integrated with your site(or you can't access). Obviously if you host the images (or any assets) yourself or have access to them you can optimise them. So beware of external assets.

Page Speed Score

You don't need 100/100 in a page speed test score to feel safe and secure in your bed at night - its just a guide. If your page loads comfortable under 3 seconds you can rest assured you are faster than 80% of the websites out there. Check out this tool Google offers to help check your website speed, identify issues and resolve them > https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Server Response Time

This is the time that passes between a requested page in a browser and a server responding to that request. This is one of the most common issues that website owners overlook - its key that you have a great hosting provider with fast local servers and that you work on your website to reduce server response time. Since over 35% of the worlds websites are wordpress and around 70% of the top visited websites globally are on some form or function of wordpress I am going to suggest people with wordpress install the 'Speed Booster Pack' which reduces unnecessary calls to the server.

Page Speed Importance

Google has publicly shouted page speed and overall website speeds are a heavily weighted part of the search engine optimisation (seo) algorithm. This alone is enough. But if we take a step back and think about the user experience it makes perfect sense. According to unbounce.com you will lose more than 50% of your visitors if they have a poor website experience due to speed. Google also tracks this in their analytics so if you have Google Ads or display so SEO etc and use analytics you are being watched by Google so beware of your website speed.

By Tas Papoulias on #linkedin

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