5 ways to speed up your WordPress website

Tips to boost your WordPress website speed and performance

Pages that load within two seconds have an average bounce rate of 9%, while pages that load in five seconds see their bounce rates skyrocket to 38%.

When measuring the success of a website, one of the most critical factors is speed. Nothing causes visitors to leave a page faster than a slow-loading website. Google has revealed that most visitors don’t wait beyond 2 seconds for a website to load.

While WordPress is a popular choice for designing websites, an overuse of themes and plugins can slow down the loading speed. Not only does a slow-loading website increase bounce rate and hence impact Google ranking, but it can also lower user experience and brand credibility.

Here, we bring you the best tips to boost the speed and performance of your WordPress website.

1. Keep your website design clutter-free

An image-heavy or cluttered website design may offer you the chance to share a lot of data, but be mindful. A heavy website or too many images can greatly reduce loading speed. Additionally, an excess of data can overwhelm the visitor causing them to leave the site. Instead, pick a light theme that loads quickly. Design your website to offer concise details with links for more information. To know more about how to design your WordPress website effectively, get in touch with a responsive web design company.

2. Prioritise your landing page

Chances are you have an ongoing digital marketing campaign with ads and posts that encourage audiences to visit a particular product link. Make sure that the link they click (the landing page) loads quickly. Audiences that click on the ad links are more likely to make a purchase. Make use of this momentum by ensuring they can instantly access your product when they click on the link. At this stage, a slow website can deter them from making a purchase, costing them a sale.

Any slow website will see an increase in bounce rate and a decrease in time on site. Even just a one-second delay will reduce page views by 11%, decrease customer satisfaction by 16% and reduce conversions by 7%.

3. Team up with a credible hosting provider

The speed of your website is greatly determined by the hosting provider you partner with. Based on the nature of your site, you will need to opt for a hosting plan that allows for the necessary bandwidth to keep your site fast even during peak traffic hours.

A lot of WordPress hosting providers offer numerous plan options ranging from shared to dedicated plans. While shared plans may offer a budget-friendly price, a reduction in speed could greatly compromise your business. If you are on the lookout for a good hosting provider, check with your WordPress development company for a credible recommendation.

4. Set your images to optimise automatically

Visual media is a great way of engaging audiences and communicating information in an easy-to-read way. However, websites with a lot of heavy images or videos take time to load, impacting website speed. One way to counter this concern is by reducing image size. You can opt for the smallest image possible while ensuring clarity.

Another popular tool is LazyLoad. In this, only the portion of the image that is visible to the reader loads first. As the user continues to scroll, the image continues to load. This is a wonderful tool as it maintains website speed while ensuring you use the extensive bandwidth only for visitors that actually scroll through the page.

5. Update your software

Just like your business and marketing campaigns, your website will also need to evolve with time. Be sure to monitor the important factors of your website such as theme, plugins and PHP code to ensure they are all working optimally. Update the tools you want to use and delete the ones that are no longer needed. A great way of checking which plugins can be deleted is by deactivating them one by one and testing your site’s performance. This will help boost website speed, performance and security.

There are many factors that go into website development and design. However, when it comes to judging performance and user experience, website speed ranks high on the list. Using these tips you can speed up your WordPress website for optimum performance. For more information on how to boost website performance, be sure to consult a website development company.