{"id":26136,"date":"2023-12-28T07:54:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-28T07:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designbombs.com\/?p=26136"},"modified":"2024-01-03T03:47:28","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T03:47:28","slug":"optimizing-wordpress-site-speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designbombs.com\/optimizing-wordpress-site-speed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Complete Guide to Optimizing WordPress Site Speed in 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Building a WordPress website<\/a> seems simple enough, doesn\u2019t it? You purchase hosting<\/a>, get a domain name, and install WordPress. With so many great themes and plugins readily available for WordPress users, you could realistically get the site built out, designed, and filled with content in a few hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For anyone who\u2019s ever thought, \u201cHow hard could it be to build a website?<\/a>\u201d, that\u2019s exactly what they envisioned. However, this leaves out a critical component of the website building process:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Site speed optimization. <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following guide explores all of the ways a WordPress website can and should<\/i> be optimized for performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Does Site Speed Matter?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Many years ago, Kissmetrics published an infographic that demonstrated the high expectations consumers have for websites. Namely, a growing majority expected websites to load in a matter of three seconds or less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the time since that data was published, though, we have case studies that show how serious this issue has become and what happens when a website fails to optimize for speed or<\/i> manages to exceed expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take the BBC<\/a>, for example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAt the BBC we\u2019ve noticed that, for every additional second a page takes to load, 10 per cent of users leave.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Pinterest<\/a>, on the other hand, has a great example of what happens when you improve site speed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe result of rebuilding our pages for performance led to a 40 percent decrease in Pinner wait time, a 15 percent increase in SEO traffic and a 15 percent increase in conversion rate to signup.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just news and social networks that can benefit from a boost in speed either. Retailer Zitmaxx Wonen<\/a> shows what happens when a website is specifically optimized for the mobile user:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cZitmaxx Wonen achieved a maximum score of 100 on PageSpeed Insights, and a load time of 3 seconds on Test My Site\u2026 In addition to improving speed and accessibility, key business metrics have also improved since the launch of the updated mobile site: mobile conversion rates are up by 50.2%, while mobile revenue has increased by 98.7%.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When you improve the on-site experience and improve your engagement rates, your website\u2019s search ranking will be directly impacted as well. If you can demonstrate to Google that you have a well-built, well-written, and super fast website, it\u2019ll be greatly rewarded in search results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to Measure Your WordPress Site Speed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you haven\u2019t built your WordPress site<\/a> yet, there\u2019s nothing to do just yet in terms of testing for site speed. Once the site is done, though, you can run it through one of a number of tools to see how well you did to optimize performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, there are a bunch of free website speed test tools<\/a> you can use to do this. Google, of course, has its own, so you may want to start there just to get a sense for how fast Google interprets your site to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is Google PageSpeed Insights<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Google<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Just enter your domain name (or a page you suspect is running more slowly than others) into the field and click \u201cAnalyze\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google will then spit out a bunch of data regarding how quickly your site loaded for Mobile and Desktop. Be sure to click through both tabs to explore how well your site performs for your different audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, scroll down to see how you did in terms of optimizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"PageSpeed<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Other site speed testing tools will produce similar reports. That said, it\u2019s still a good idea to run your website through at least two of them. Here\u2019s GTmetrix, for instance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"GTmetrix\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Unlike Google that splits out mobile and desktop speeds, GTmetrix splits out tests with results and recommendations from PageSpeed Insights and YSlow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"GTmetrix<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You can also check the waterfall analysis to see which specific parts of your site are causing the most drag on site speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, there\u2019s a lot to take into consideration here. Your goal, however, should be to find the site speed testing tools that work best for you and that provide suggestions in a way that make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimize Your WordPress Site Speed in 2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A lot of what those website speed testing tools<\/a> recommend is going to look like technical jargon, which is okay. For many of these optimizations, you don\u2019t actually need to know how to code the backend of a website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this list of 26 site speed optimizations, you\u2019ll see that most of this can be done with WordPress settings, plugins, and reliable web hosting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#1: Web Hosting<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Before you do anything else, take a look at your web hosting. If your website isn\u2019t sitting atop server infrastructure from a reliable web hosting company, that might very well be the source of your site speed issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things you want to look for when evaluating the quality of your web hosting plan are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n