Ways to improve WordPress speed and performance
Part of a good WordPress website update and maintenance strategy involves ways to improve WordPress speed and performance. Studies show that even a 1-second delay can lead to a 7% drop in conversions! But what are some of the levers we can pull to improve customer experience, search engine rankings and ultimately sales? Let’s explore.
What slows down WordPress?
Several things can damage your website speed. Some are external. Poorly configured servers and shared hosting environments or out-of-date plugins come to mind. But the way your website is configured; like a failure to implement caching, unoptimised images, bloated code and a reliance on external scripts for ads and fonts, are all common culprits.
No-code ways to improve WordPress speed and performance
Installing caching plugins like WP Rocket or WP Super Cache will make a world of difference. If you didn’t restrain yourself when uploading images, you’ll probably want an image compressor plugin as well. Big image files can really slow your website down. Also, you will want to ensure your WordPress core, themes and plugins are all updated to the latest versions so you get all the benefits of performance improvements and security patches as they’re released. When you need to do resource-intensive tasks like backups, schedule them for low-traffic periods and adjust the frequency to what you actually need. If you don’t make daily changes to your website, don’t do a daily backup.
Next, why not display text excerpts or accordions to improve loading times and encourage users to visit individual posts? That will see people move around your website and you’ll even get more information about what they’re interested in as a result. Lastly, turn off comments if you can and use a Content Delivery Network like Cloudflare, Sucuri or Bunny CDN to serve website content more locally to where your traffic is coming from.
What about media
Text is the easiest part of your website. Words don’t have as much impact on page speed as images or video. That’s why you should avoid hosting media if you can. If it works for your business model, you could offload your bigger audio and video content to dedicated platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud or Blubrry. They’re designed for this and you might even get some ad revenue from streams. At the very least, you’ll be able to avoid bandwidth issues and large backup sizes.
When it comes to the theme of your website itself, get something made bespoke or go for lightweight premade themes from reputable providers like StudioPress, Themify or CSSIgniter. The same goes for media plugins – only use trusted developers with a focus on performance. If you do need to host your media within WordPress, remember to use the smallest file sizes at the lowest high-res DPI possible.
That being said, website development is probably not your main business focus. If that’s the case, please reach out today. We’d love to help you maintain a well-functioning and customer-delighting WordPress website.
