A website that is optimized loads faster, providing a significant improvement in the user experience and increasing the chances of retaining visitors on the site. Additionally, search engines, with Google at the forefront, take into account website speed when defining the ranking in search results. It can even help improve website security!
Do you think these are not enough reasons to have your website’s speed and performance optimized? Here’s how to achieve optimization for WordPress. Take note!
Table of Contents
Factors that affect the performance of a WordPress website
Regarding the factors that intervene and determine how effective the performance of a WordPress website is, we have to talk about:
- Load speed. This refers, as you already know, to the time it takes for the site to load. It is a valuable time that directly affects both the user experience and the ranking in search engines.
- Image size. Large images make the website slower than it should be. Therefore, it is essential to choose them wisely and give them the appropriate format.
- Number and weight of plugins. If you overdo it, the website slows down. Stick only to the plugins that you will use and get rid of all the others.
- Server performance. In other words, the quality and speed of the server where the website is hosted also have a lot to say about its performance. Don’t take chances when choosing a reliable and quality provider.
- Web design. Did you know that clear and optimized web design makes pages load faster? It also helps to retain customers, increase sales, and build a positive reputation for our brand among internet users.
Methods to improve optimization in WordPress
Now that we know why WordPress optimization is so necessary, we can get into the details.
- Choose the appropriate web hosting. It should meet the needs of your business and provide solutions in case of any setback.
- Remember to optimize images. Reduce their size and, whenever possible, choose the WebP image format.
- Don’t forget about caching plugins. They help reduce website load time by storing a cached version of pages.
- Minimize HTTP requests. The more HTTP requests a website has, the slower it will be. Combining CSS and JavaScript files is the best solution.
- Opt for HTTP/2. This is the latest version of the HTTP protocol with efficient communication between the server and the browser.
- Compress files. Another excellent way to optimize WordPress is by reducing the size of transferred files.
- Choose a CDN. Content Delivery Network distributes content across servers located in different locations, improving loading speed.
- Responsive design is crucial. Yes, we always say the same thing, but it’s because allowing internet users to view a website well on any device has only advantages: increases the time spent on the website, improves the user experience, and helps with conversions.
Tools to measure website speed
If you want to measure the loading speed of your website and check if the techniques mentioned before are working, you can use the following tools (they’re free!).
- Google PageSpeed Insights. This Google tool evaluates the website loading speed with a score ranging from 0 to 100 on both mobile and desktop devices. It also provides recommendations to continue improving and optimizing.
- GTmetrix. This tool can measure several performance aspects, such as the loading speed of each page or the entire website, the number of HTTP requests, or the browser cache efficiency. The recommendations it provides are aimed at improving website performance.
- WebPagetest. This tool conducts a speed test and provides information on relevant aspects. It also allows selecting the website test location, which means you can test different locations worldwide to see how the geographical location affects the performance.
Conclusion
WordPress is one of the most used CMSs today and can be extremely beneficial if optimized to the fullest. If you need help optimizing your WordPress site, Somos Peces Voladores can assist you.
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