Did you know that 47% of consumers expected a website to load in 2 seconds or less, and 40% would abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load? (KissMetrics)
Knowing this, it’s safe to say that a website’s speed is more than just a luxury – it’s a necessity. Slow-loading websites can lead to higher bounce rates, lower search engine rankings, and a poor user experience overall. Luckily, if you’re using platforms like WordPress, there are multiple easy ways to optimize your site speed and avoid these pesky consequences.
Here are ten cutting-edge techniques to speed up your WordPress site:
1. Choose a Lightweight Theme
A theme is the foundation upon which your entire site is built. Think of it like the blueprint or your house. It tells you what it should look like, and how to get there. Now, there are two kinds of blueprints: heavy blueprints, big and full of details so they take a long time to build from, and lightweight blueprints, smaller and simpler so they’re quicker to build from.
A lightweight theme is designed with minimalistic code and fewer features, which translates to faster load times. And, unlike heavy themes that come bundled with multiple features and complex designs, lightweight themes are optimized for speed from the get-go. How? These themes minimize HTTP requests and reduce the amount of code that needs to be processed by the browser. Plus, they are highly customizable, allowing you to build a visually appealing site without compromising on speed.
2. Optimize Images with Next-Gen Formats
On a website, images are often the largest assets and can be a major culprit for slow load times. This is a major blow, as 39% of users will stop engaging with a website when the images won’t load or the loading time takes too long. (Adobe)
But taking out images all together is not the way to go either, as they are essential for creating visually engaging content, and we know how important that is. So, what’s the solution? Optimizing without sacrificing quality.
The easiest way to do this is by compressing images using tools like Smush, ShortPixel, or Imagify. These reduce the file size of images while maintaining visual quality. Another great way is by serving images in next-gen formats like WebP, which can offer superior compression compared to formats like JPEG or PNG. You can also access and process only the part of an image that is of interest at a given time by doing what’s called “lazy loading”. This reduces the initial load time, especially for image-heavy pages, and enhances UX by displaying content faster.
3. Take advantage of Advanced Caching
Caching is harder to understand, so imagine you’re making cookies. Every time someone wants a cookie, you have to make a whole new batch from scratch, and that takes time. Caching is like making a bunch of extra cookies and storing them in a cookie jar, and when someone wants a cookie, you can just give them one from the jar. Essentially, caching is a technique that stores copies of your site’s static content, reducing the need to regenerate pages from scratch every time a user visits. This is mainly effective in speeding up load times for repeat visitors.
There are different kinds of caching:
Browser Caching: This stores static resources like images, stylesheets, and JavaScript files in the user’s browser, so they don’t need to be re-downloaded on other visits.
Page Caching: This creates static HTML versions of your dynamic pages, reducing the load on your server and speeding up page delivery. It’s like a special place on the internet that saves cookies (website pages) for everyone.
Object Caching: This stores the results of database queries and PHP object requests, reducing the time it takes to retrieve dynamic content. In simpler terms: you are saving the steps to make cookies (website information) so you don’t have to figure them out every time.
Plugins like WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, and Breeze offer caching solutions, making it easy to implement these techniques on your WordPress site.
4. Minify and Combine CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
Think of a website like a book, and the words in it are like the code on your website. Sometimes, there are extra words like “um” or “like” that don’t really add anything to the story. Minification involves removing unnecessary characters, such as spaces, comments, and line breaks, from your site’s code. A smaller book (smaller file sizes) is easier to carry around, just like a smaller website is faster to load.
Combining CSS and JavaScript files into single files also reduces the number of HTTP requests made by the browser, improving speed (like putting different parts of the book together into one big chapter).
It may sound difficult, but plugins like Autoptimize and Fast Velocity Minify make the process straightforward. They automatically minify and combine your site’s code, making sure that your pages load faster without needing manual coding.
5. Enable GZIP Compression
Another great way to make sure your website loads faster is enabling GZIP compression. This works by compressing your site’s files on the server before they are sent to the user’s browser, kind of like taking all the information on your website and squeezing it into a smaller size. This reduces the size of the files, leading to faster load times, especially for text-heavy content like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. By doing this, you reduce the amount of data transferred, making your site faster and more efficient.
Most modern browsers and servers support GZIP compression, and it can be easily enabled through your hosting provider’s control panel or via caching plugins like WP Rocket.
6. Optimize Your Database
Imagine you have a toy box. Overtime, your toy box can get really messy with old broken toys, tiny pieces, and things you don’t play with anymore, making it harder to find your favorite toys. Your website’s database is like your toy box. It stores all the information about your website, like your posts, comments, and settings and, when it gets too full, your website gets slow. Inside that stored data, there is unnecessary clutter like post revisions, spam comments, and transient options. Regularly cleaning and optimizing your database is crucial for maintaining site speed, improving query performance, and avoiding those pesky slowdowns.
Plugins like WP-Optimize and WP-Sweep can automate this process, removing unwanted data and optimizing your database tables.
7. Reduce Redirects
Redirects are sometimes necessary, especially if you’ve moved content or restructured your site. However, each redirect adds an additional HTTP request and response cycle, which can slow down your site. Therefore, minimizing unnecessary redirects by doing regular audits and simplifying your redirect paths can greatly improve your website’s load times.
A great tip is to avoid redirect chains (where one redirect leads to another) as these can significantly slow down your site too. Tools like Screaming Frog and Google Search Console can help you identify and resolve redirect issues, easily.
8. Optimize CSS Delivery
Your websites’ style basically depends on CSS files. These are files used to control the look and feel of a website. They tell a web browser how to display elements like colors, fonts, layout, and spacing. CSS files, or Cascading Style Sheets, are essential for styling your site, but they can also be a source of render-blocking, which delays the display of your content.
What is render-blocking? Imagine you’re standing outside a house you can see clearly, but you can’t go inside until your friend arrives with the key. However, your friend is stuck in traffic, so you’re left waiting. This is similar to render-blocking. A website can’t fully display its content (you can’t enter the house) until certain critical files, like CSS or JavaScript, finish loading (your friend with the key arrives). Until those files are loaded, the browser is stuck waiting, and so are you.
To optimize CSS delivery, you can inline critical CSS directly in your HTML. This allows the browser to render above-the-fold content more quickly, improving perceived load times. In other words, by putting the most important style instructions directly in the webpage code, your website can show the top part of the page faster. This makes it feel like the page is loading more quickly, even if the rest of the page is still loading in the background.
For non-essential CSS, use the media=”print” attribute to load it asynchronously, or use a plugin like Autoptimize to defer its loading until after the page has rendered.
By optimizing how CSS is delivered, you reduce render-blocking resources and ensure that your site loads as quickly as possible.
Final Thoughts
Speeding up your WordPress site is an ongoing process that touches on every aspect, from selecting the best theme to fine-tuning how your CSS files are managed. By implementing these strategies, you can noticeably decrease your site’s load time, enhancing UX and boosting your site’s SEO as well. It’s a win-win situation.
Every millisecond counts, so don’t hesitate to start optimizing your WordPress site today. If you have any questions regarding WordPress or want to leave it to the pros, reach out to us! With over 15 years of experience developing WordPress custom websites, we deliver integrated solutions that are easy to use, accessible, scalable and secure.