How To Speed Up WordPress Website?
I'm sure you have already visited many slow websites and you know how frustrating experience it is. Studies show that users will not revisit a slow website. Google reports 53% of mobile users leave a website that doesn't load within 3 seconds. This is what we definitely don't want for our website. The WordPress website speed affects user experience, bounce rate, conversion rate, SEO and more. Therefore, it is a crucial part of web design process. Let's learn how we can speed up a website to improve user experience, increase conversion rate and reduce bounce rate. There are 10 ways to speed up your WordPress website:
Use a reliable and fast web hosting and hosting plans
The first step is related to hosting. If the hosting is slow, your website is going to be slow, not matter how optimized your front-end is. Even if your hosting is good enough, you should choose the right plan. Hosts offer different plan like shared hosting, dedicated hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting and WordPress hosting plans.
Use caching plugin
When a user visit your website, WordPress requests all relevant contents from webserver. This method saves server space and keeps the website content dynamic, but these requests slow down the loading time. A good caching plugin simplifies this process and save full html pages for future requests. You should also consider using a reliable and good plugin for this. The best caching plugin in the market is WP Rocket. This plugin improves your website speed as soon as you install it.?
Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) Service
A content Delivery Network stores your static content on their servers all around the world. Let’s say your hosting is in England so every time a user in Australia visits your website his requests travel to the server in England but a CDN delivers your website content to the user from the closest server which can be even in Australia, New Zealand or Indonesia.?Bunny CDN?is one of the bests in the market.?
Optimize CSS & Javascript files
Minified CSS and JavaScript is a good practice to speed up loading time. Minifying makes these files smaller so they’ll be loaded faster. There are several plugins that accomplish this goal you but again installing many plugins is going to slow down your website. The best approach is using?WP Rocket plugin?which is the best caching plugin with many other options including minifying the scripts.
Optimize images
Large image size is another reason of a slow website. You need to compress your images as much as possible. There are several plugins like?Imagify?or?Smush. However I personally prefer using image editing program like photoshop to optimize my images.
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Limit plugins usage
There are lots of good plugins in the market but you should use them wisely. Each time you activate a plugin, it adds weight to your website and slows down the loading process. At the same time it’s not only about the quantity of plugins but quality of them also matters. Use only reputable plugins. One of the best approaches to eliminate the need to install excess plugins is using?Elementor Pro. This page builder provides a great number of features and possibilities that will help you to design incredible websites without using excess plugins.
Tidy up your website database
There are always some unused old files in your WordPress website database. These files might be the leftover data from themes, plugins, old media which just put unnecessary load on server. You can delete these files manually form server but the easiest and safest method is to use plugins like WP Optimize or WP Rocket (Highly Recommended).
Compress files using GZIP?compression
GZIP compression technology compresses data files before it is sent to the users’ browsers. This method reduces the file download time and makes your website faster. This compression doesn’t change the look or faction of your website. There are several method and plugins to do this job. The best and highly recommended method is using WP Rocket plugin.
Limit external script usage
Eternal scripts are the codes that your website uses but they are not stored on your server. Third-party tools like Google Analytics, Ads, Social Media Embeds use these scripts. They are not all bad, but they slow down your website. You can use WP Rocket to have more control over these scripts.
Use a lightweight theme
Some themes are very appealing but they are not very well optimized. High quality images and fancy effects require a lot of code then they are a burden on your server. Sometimes you don’t need a fancy theme at all. For example, if you are using Elementor Pro, you actually have dozens of features and widgets to achieve the design you have in your mind. I highly recommend to Us lightweight Themes. If you are an Elementor Pro user, the best choice is?Elementor Hello Theme.
Conclusion
As you know, there is no fixed solution for website speed. You should master designing and eliminate unnecessary widgets or other elements. Website performance is a balance that you should achieve it by extending and updating your knowledge. If you are a passionate web designer and love your job like me then I am sure your are going to find this balance gradually by practicing and gaining knowledge.??