WordPress is a unique platform acknowledge as No. 1 CMS across the globe, used by majority of websites. However, one major weakness wherein WP suffers big time is the slow site loading time. In fact, if right precautions are not taken, your site could end up feeling sluggish. This could in turn result in the site losing on retaining customers and would also have adverse effects on search rankings. There are few simple and quick ways by which you can speed up your WordPress website. However, before that let us understand why this is important.
Why it all boils down to site speed?
As soon as a user lands on your site, there are just few seconds to grab their attention, convincing them to hang around for a while without bouncing back. As per a study conducted, a mere 2 seconds delay in page responsiveness mitigates satisfaction level of users by almost 4%, leading to clicks and revenue reduced by 4.3%. A site taking hell lot time to load, pushes visitors to just go away without eve having a glance. Additionally, Google gives a high preference to site speed as a SEO parameter.
Ways of speeding up WordPress website
So, let us move on to our main discussion, and see 5 quick ways of tuning up your WordPress website for max speed!
1. Good website hosting is critically important
You might prefer shared hosting due to its affordability. However, shared hosting is incredibly slow, and lets a website face frequent down times. This is especially important when your website is publishing trending topics. The best way to do this is making use of WPEngine as an ultimate source for hosting solutions, resulting in websites loading faster.
2. Always start with a solid theme or framework
Twenty Fifteen framework is optimized to deliver speed being lightweight, due to absence of too many unnecessary features encompassed within a single theme. Hence, avoid choosing a bloated framework full of features that are not necessary for your site, and additionally slowing down the site crawling. Other fast loading premium level framework you can use for you site is Thesis Theme, which is probably the best and easiest of all basic themes. When a theme like this is free of excess plugins, it is fairly easy to customize things.
3. Caching plugin should be effective enough
Some WordPress plugins are highly useful with most falling in caching category. These plugins are bound to accelerate loading time of the page, and the best part is they are completely free to use. By far the best in this category is W3 Total Cache, since it has all the features required to fasten up a WP site, with fairly easy installation, and easy to activate.
4. Images should be optimized
A free plugin named WP-SmushIt help you optimize the large sized high resolution images on your website. Just install the plugin once and leave everything else to the plugin, doing the entire job automatically for you.
5. Homepage should be optimized for rapid loading
Show just full posts excerpts. Have number of posts reduced per page. Unnecessary widgets should be eliminated from homepage responsible for sharing. Eliminate all the inactive widgets and plugins. Have minimal widgets only which are mandatory.
Why not speed up your WP site instantly?
We have presented here 5 quick ways to fine tune your website. However, there are many different ways to do it with a range of other plugins. If you need help, the best team of Gold Coast Web Design at Alinga Web Development and Design is here to assist! Please take a minute to drop in and say Hi! We’d be happy to help you!
