Page Speed Optimization for WordPress
Page Speed Optimization is essential
for WordPress site or another platform you use. There is no question about it.
You know it better. You don’t need any statistic to prove it. Just ask yourself
do you like any slow loading website? Let me guess. You don’t like it. Not only
you, nobody does like.
Page Speed Optimization Does Matter.
You may Ok with your slow loading
website or maybe not. Let’s deep dig inside and take a look how bigger loses
might create.
- 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.
- 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
- A 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.
- If an e-commerce site is making $100,000 per day, a 1-second page delay could potentially cost you $2.5 million in lost sales every year.
Now you have a solid reason. You can
understand how page speed optimization can impact your blogging business.
If your website takes more than two
seconds you are hurting expectation of 47% viewers.
If it takes more than 3 seconds, 40%
viewers will not come back to you.
It means (47-40) = 7% reduction of
visitors just for a second, and it happens in between first 3 seconds.
Your website may not be an
e-commerce site but if it is then you are going to make loss $2.5 million in a
year in a matter of 1 seconds, if you are making $ 100,000 per day.
Why page Speed Optimization matters to a niche website?
You may think of I am a small
business owner or have a niche site. Page speed will not hamper your business.
Then you are making a big mistake.
The statistic shown is not only for
making the profit by selling a product but rather shown human behavior.
Traffic is important to you. If 40%
of you traffic never return back then you may lose the potential viewer who
could be a regular visitor of your blog. You may be losing more than 40% of
your revenue.
High loading page helps a page rank
higher. Thus it has a direct benefit for SEO (search engine Optimization).
Search engine always gives a priority to your site when it loads faster.
Faster loading website reduces
bounce rate. The user feels good when they find faster loading page. They like
to hang out on your site and goes one page to another page. This activity also
helps search engine to get information that peoples are liking to stay a long
time on your website.
You may be thinking, you cannot
effort that much budget to hire a highly professionals to make your site
faster. But the fact is most of the time you don’t need them. There are lots of
ways out. In this blog page speed optimization, you will find some tools by
which you can easily make your site faster with little effort, if you are using
WordPress platform.
Check your WordPress website speed.
You may not feel your website
running slow because you frequently visiting your site and your browser stores
your site in the cache. When you type your URL then your browser automatically
prefetch. That’s why you don’t feel the delay in loading.
But when other visitors trying to
visit your site they feel the actual loading speed because of their cache of
the browser doesn’t store any information about your website.
So check your website speed. I am
giving you some tools from where you can check your website speed.
You can use any of them whichever
you find friendly.
What makes your site load slow?
Before you want to know how to maximize
website speed you need to understand what slow down your website?
Your website speed does matter. It’s
no secrets now that your website speed directly affects your performance not
only in term of SEO. But rather It does affects your page rank in search
engine. It also increases bounce rate, reduces conversation rate and revenue.
Finally, affects your user’s satisfaction which cost you more in the longer
run.
So take a look what makes your site
slower.
Server performance and Server location:
Poor server performance causes
longer time to respond. Web browser always collects data to load a website
faster. If your server doesn’t respond well then you will have an issue to load
a website.
Another problem happens with server
location. The longer distance user has from server location the poorer
connection they will get.
If a user having those issue then
you can’t do anything from your site unless user having a good internet service
provider.
Web hosting:
You need a web hosting service while
you are in website business. If are choosing a poor service then you are going
to suffer. You can choose a cheaper one to reduce your cost. But you are going
to sacrifice web loading speed. So you can choose smartly for better performing
web loading speed.
Lots of traffic:
Huge traffic does affect loading
speed. Everybody like traffic, in fact, it’s the main moto to run website
business. You can avoid this problem only choosing good web hosting. I
don’t find any other way when we run a small business and want to do Page Speed
Optimization in this scenario.
Large image:
You may don’t want to lose you
high-quality image. But bigger file takes more time to load. And that causes
your site slow. But there is still a way out. 72 dpi image best for web or any
electronic display. And it’s not that much large in comparison to 300 dpi
image. 300 dpi image is a large file and it is best for printing. Unless you
are running a photography website to sell photograph then use a 72dpi image.
If you do care Page Speed
Optimization, take care of it.
Code density:
You might aware of HTML, CSS,
JAVASCRIPT, and PHP. When you are running a website you know it well there is
lots of code required to build a website. It might sound tricky coding may
cause your website run slow but without the code, you can’t build a website.
But there is some pattern of coding does exist can help your site run faster.
That’s why you need a good web developer and designer.
Text graphics:
Still today there are lots of uses
for text graphics. Text graphics act as an image. And image file is always
larger than text. So you need to you text graphics smartly.
Too many file request:
While loading a website it makes too
many files request. There is may file like CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, image file
etc. need the approval to load in a browser when someone searches for your
website. Let’s imagine your website having 10 CSS file 15 jQuery file, 100
image file and at a time 1000 user searching for your site. Then 10x15x100x1000=15000000
in total request going to your hosting server. Which will cause delay to load
your website.
Too many plugins:
You might be using too many plugins
but the problem is there all the plugin are not made by one person or follow
the same rules to communicate each other. That’s why they collide each other
and makes your site load slow. You need to understand some plugin helps to do
Page Speed Optimization but some reduce your web page performance. In some
other case, they work well individually but affect each other.
Unnecessary redirects:
Some web developer of owner
redirects one website to another website. It means, suppose you searching for a
URL but the page doesn’t exist there and that page redirecting you to another
page. It takes double time, one for searching the first URL and then another
loading time it takes to redirecting it. So you should not redirect your page
unless you have a strong reason to do it.
10. Using CMS:
CMS program like WordPress, Drupal,
Joomla, Wix etc helps to manage a website. But using CMS program slow down your
website because of using lots of functionality.
But it’s not recommended not to use
CMS. It actually helps some other ways. It is cost effective and you don’t need
to know any code. All the functionality you use to build a website helps what
you want. We just discussing here just one negative effect of CMS.
How to do Page Speed Optimization
Reduce Image size for Page Speed Optimization:
Maximum beginners have a tangency to
use bigger size image. Maybe some website deserves it but it is a major factor
when the question for Page Speed Optimization. By reducing image size you can
make your website load fast.
You need to understand there is two
factor of image size one is DPI (dots per inch). 300 dpi is best for printing
quality but it’s a large size image. In case of the web or any digital screen,
you don’t need 300 dpi image. 72 dpi looks like same as 300 dpi but yet lower
in size. You will not lose quality in terms of viewing on a digital screen.
Another way is by reducing the size
of an image. It means how big it is. If you are using an image for 150X150
thumbnail, you don’t need 1600×1200 image. Normally we upload various size of
image, but CSS or HTML tag compress the image and helps to view in 150×150
size. We don’t understand the image size is still bigger. Use Compressor.io or TinyPNG
to reduce the size of image or you can upload an image with that particular
size, what you need.
WordPress user may get the help of
some plugin like WP Smush Pro
. It will reduce image size as required.
Be selective while choosing a WordPress theme.
If you are using CMS like WordPress
then you need to understand. Lots of free themes have lots of functionality but
the functionality itself causes load slowly. Be wise while choosing. If you
don’t need all those functionalities in your website then don’t use a theme
with a huge functionality. Choose a light one.
Not only free themes, paid themes
has the same problem. Use only those themes which functionality full feel your
demand. Don’t use a theme with lots of functionality which you never going to
use it.
You can use the tools PageSpeed Insights to understand which theme is giving you better performance.
So be conscious before using of
purchasing a Theme and do a better job for Page Speed Optimization.
Avoid using too much plugin.
By using plugin your WordPress theme
got another dimension. It helps you various way for Page Speed Optimization. It
helps to make a user-friendly platform for viewers and as well as to you.
But because plugin inputs some
functionality in your site so it needs some time to load. And another problem
is one plugin may be stopping another plugin so that none of that plugin being
enhanced. So use only what you required.
GoDaddy introduced a free plugin P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler)
by which you can understand that particular plugin slowing down your site load
speed.
Always be updated with CMS, Themes, and Plugin.
Page Speed Optimization can be done
with very little effort. All the service provider provide updates time to time.
You need to update all the platform as soon as possible. If you don’t then it
may cause to load slowly your page.
Technology changes very fast. Which
is best fit for today that may not be suitable for tomorrow. Another reason is
they send an update pretty soon because they might fix an old problem with a
new update.
Reduce page load time by utilizing Caching.
Please go through to know in details
what is caching.
Caching is a process which reuses data from previous request to enhance speed
with the current request.
By this process, a user feels that
your website is loading faster if they used it before.
Why do you need to use this
features? Because all of your viewers may not be new visitors. When they come
back to visit your site and they feel your site loading slow then you might
lose those returning visitor. This creates a huge impact.
You can use W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Rocket, Cache Enabler All these
paid or free WordPress plugin to get the advantage of Caching.
WP Fastest Cache is a plugin which I personally use in my some of the
websites which creates a huge impact on my Page Speed Optimization.
Choose a better Webhosting service.
Maximum of us have a target to get
huge traffic. We need a web hosting service which can handle it. There are lots
of cheap web hosting but I prefer HostGator
or Bluehost. It’s my personal preference.
All those ways shared above How to
do Page Speed Optimization which a beginner WordPress developer or website
owner can do. Some other ways also there but you need to be an advanced level
developer. This post is only dedicated to begins level so we are not discussing
all of them but giving the hints all those steps.
- Page speed can be optimized by using CDN (Content Delivery Network) but it’s cost-effective. If you have a huge website like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr etc. then you need it.
- By disabling Hotlink you can optimize page speed to some extent. By this process, you don’t allow others to use your image and also don’t let steel your bandwidth.
- By fixing admin-ajax.php.
- Page Speed Optimization can be better by tuning MySQL.
Page speed optimization is very
simple to do. This process may boost up your SEO and may help rank better in
the search engine. Always take care of it.
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