There’s nothing worse than logging onto a website that takes forever to load, especially when that website belongs to your business.
Fed up with having to contact your web development agency every time your website comes to a halt? Don’t worry. We have solutions. In this post, we’ll be exploring some common reasons why WordPress sites slow down, plus sharing our top website speed optimisation hacks so that you can speed up your site yourself.
Why Is My Website Running Slowly?
From large images and videos to bulky plugins and outdated themes, there can be many different reasons for a sluggish WordPress site.
Your WordPress site might be slow due to a combination of issues – it could be down to resource capacity limits, inefficient code execution (from your themes and plugins), heavy database workloads, and more. When this happens, you need to take action in multiple areas to fix the problem.
What Is Considered a Good Website Speed?
Most people tend to get a bit impatient if a website takes longer than 2 seconds to load. Users these days expect things to happen fast, so staying under that 2-second mark keeps them happy and makes it more likely they’ll stick around and actually buy something.
If you can manage to get your site loading in under a second, even better. That’s when it’ll feel super smooth and effortless to users.
Did you know? Over half of web users give up on a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load on their mobile. Keep it speedy to keep bounce rates low.
First Things First: Carry Out a Website Speed Check
If you suspect that your website is slower than it should be, start by carrying out a speed check.
If you don’t want to spend money straight away, try a free speed test tool like Google PageSpeed Insights. This simple tool is super user-friendly and breaks down your load times and key metrics on both desktop and mobile.
If you need more detailed insights, consider a paid option like Pingdom, which shows you historical trends and provides more in-depth analysis. The premium version of GTmetrix is a solid option, too.
Both these paid tools offer plenty of metrics, so you can really find out what’s going on under the hood of your website.
How to Benchmark Your Website Performance
When checking site speed, it’s also a good idea to benchmark your website performance against your industry competitors. After all, if your rivals are loading faster than you, that’s probably where your potential customers are heading instead.
The easiest way to do this is to grab a handful of your main competitors’ URLs and run them through the same speed testing tools you used for your own site. For example, Google PageSpeed Insights works great for this since it’s free, and you can quickly test multiple sites back-to-back.
Make a note of your competitors’ webpage load times, Core Web Vitals scores, and overall performance grades. This’ll give you a real-world benchmark to work with. If most of your industry competitors are hitting 1.5 seconds and you’re sitting at 4 seconds, well, you’ve got some catching up to do…
What are Core Web Vitals, and How Do They Link to SEO?
If you’re thinking: ‘wait a minute, what’s a core web vital?’, fear not – it’s pretty simple to understand.
Core Web Vitals are basically Google’s way of measuring how your website feels to use. There are three main ones: how fast your biggest content loads (Largest Contentful Paint), how long it takes before your site is ready to respond to clicks while it’s still loading (Total Blocking Time), and whether stuff jumps around while the page loads (Cumulative Layout Shift).
Google uses these points to rank your site. Fast sites get bumped up in search results, while slow ones get pushed down. Therefore, speeding up your site isn’t just about keeping visitors happy – it’s part of your SEO and is about making sure people can actually find you.
The good news? Most of the speed fixes we’re covering will improve these scores anyway, so you don’t need to obsess too much over the technical details.
How to Improve Your WordPress Site Speed
Afraid your competitors might have the upper hand? Here are some super simple ways to get back in the game and speed up your WordPress in an instant:
- Compress your images and videos: Large media files are often the number one culprit behind slow load times. Use tools like TinyPNG or a plugin like Smush to shrink your images without sacrificing quality. If you can, try to keep all images under 200 KB each, and ensure all images combined on a single page don’t exceed 1 MB.
- Remove any unnecessary plugins: Too many plugins can really bog your site down, so it’s best to deactivate and delete any you’re not using. To make sure you’re not deleting anything important, always carefully check what each plugin does and whether your site relies on it for key features before removing it. The types of plugins that tend to be safest to remove include things like demo add-ons, small cosmetic features, duplicates, and outdated optimisation plugins (yep, the very thing you use to speed up your site can sometimes slow you down!).
- Enable caching: Caching creates a static version of your site, so visitors don’t have to load everything from scratch each time. Use popular plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache to make this easier.
- Stick with default or system fonts: Fancy fonts might look nice, but they can be total load-time guzzlers. Sticking to default system fonts means less to load and a snappier site.
- Choose a lightweight, uncomplicated theme: Finally, avoid themes that come packed with features you simply don’t need. Some of the fastest website themes for WordPress include Hello, Astra, GeneratePress, and even WordPress’s own default theme. These options are clean, responsive, and efficient.
Ready to speed up your site? Try these tips out and see how you get on. Even just a few small tweaks can make a big difference. Oh, and don’t forget to back up everything. Even if you’re making a minor change, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
How to Prevent Your Website from Slowing Down in Future
Once you’ve sped up your site, you’ll want to keep it that way. So, try to make a habit of updating your plugins, themes, and WordPress core at least once a month to keep things running smoothly.
Now and again, you can go through and audit your plugins and media library, so that you only keep what you actually need. Don’t forget to run regular speed tests too, as these will help you to catch any new issues before they become a problem.
Keep Your Customers (and Google) Happy
Ready to make slow site speeds a thing of the past? Start with a speed test, try out the quick fixes above, and watch your WordPress site go from slow and sluggish to smooth and speedy, no developer required.
Tried all the steps above and still having difficulty with your web speed? Reach out to our friendly team. Our marketers and web developers have plenty of experience tackling WordPress website performance issues. So, if it’s a slow website you’re suffering from, you’re in safe hands.