Your WordPress site speed is everything! The equivalent of your brand’s digital first impression. Whether they find you through a Google search, email marketing campaign or a paid ads campaign, it’s the first interaction a potential client has with your business. Get off on the wrong foot, and the chance of a potential sale goes way down.
The average website load time is 2.5 seconds and 8.6 seconds on mobile. While the average website on the first page of Google takes 1.65 seconds to load. This doesn’t happen by accident. Google tends to reward websites with faster loading times. It’s one of the crucial factors that dictates how well your site ranks in the search results.
In this article, we’ll go over how you can do a complete WordPress website speed audit. You’ll learn about the common culprits that slow down your website. As well as the necessary steps you need to take to ensure a better user experience for your customers.
Why Does My WordPress Site Load Slowly?
Step 1 of your WordPress website speed audit: Identify common speed issues and see if they’re present on your site.
Your Hosting Provider
There’s a lot to look for in a hosting provider. It’s the heartbeat of your website. If it’s weak, everything else suffers. Poor hosting is a lot like driving on a road full of potholes. It forces you to drive slower. Whereas on a freshly paved road, you can drive as fast as you want (or at least as fast as the speed limit!)
Budget hosting providers often use shared servers, piling hundreds or even thousands of websites onto the same machine. This means your site competes for CPU time, memory, and disk space with everyone else. If one site on the server gets a traffic spike, it can hog resources, leaving your site crawling or even temporarily inaccessible.
Think of cheap hosting like a congested highway during rush hour. Tons of cars (websites) trying to squeeze through limited lanes (server resources), leading to inevitable slowdowns and bottlenecks.
Quality hosting providers offer solutions like:
Virtual Private Servers (VPS): Segregate resources so your site’s performance isn’t affected by others.
Solid-State Drives (SSDs): Faster data retrieval compared to traditional hard drives, boosting load times.
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): Distribute your content across global servers, reducing latency for visitors worldwide.
They also keep their server software up to date—think PHP versions, database optimizations, and HTTP/2 support—all of which contribute to faster processing and delivery of your site’s content.
Lack of Compression
There’s no question that high-resolution images and videos make your site look fantastic. But they are large in terms of file size.. If you’re not compressing these files, they’re taking up more space than necessary and slowing down your load times.
Compression reduces the file size of your images, scripts, and stylesheets without sacrificing quality. You can use tools like Pingdom and GTmetrix to scan your website and see whether images are slowing down your site.
Tools like Gzip for scripts and stylesheets, or image optimization plugins can help streamline your site’s content for faster delivery.
Caching
Every time someone visits your website, their browser has to load all the elements—from images and videos to scripts and stylesheets. If caching isn’t enabled, this process happens every single time, for every single visitor.
Caching stores a version of your website on the user’s device after their first visit. So, when they return or navigate to another page, the site loads much faster because it doesn’t have to fetch all that data again. It’s like remembering a shortcut after taking the long route the first time—you get there quicker.
However, caching doesn’t typically store dynamic content like real-time updates or personalized data. This ensures that users still receive the most current and relevant information where it counts. Also, caching isn’t permanent—it has an expiration period after which the browser will fetch the latest version of your site. This means any changes or updates you make will eventually be seen by returning visitors, striking a balance between speed and freshness.
Delayed Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how long it takes for the largest content element on your page to become visible to users. This could be a big image, a video, or a large block of text.
If your LCP is delayed, visitors might stare at a blank screen longer than they’d like. Factors contributing to a delayed LCP include slow server response times, render-blocking JavaScript and CSS, or unoptimized images. Improving your LCP not only speeds up your site but also enhances user experience and boosts your search engine rankings.
Why Does My WordPress Site Load Slowly on Mobile?
Mobile users make up a significant portion of web traffic these days. Google has made it a point for websites to prioritize mobile loading times above all. Let’s explore why your WordPress site might be sluggish on mobile devices.
Unoptimized Code
Your website’s code might be perfect for desktop browsers but not so friendly for mobile devices. Heavy CSS and JavaScript files can bog down mobile browsers, leading to slower load times.
Optimizing your code for mobile involves minifying CSS and JavaScript files—essentially cleaning up the code to make it leaner. It might also mean deferring the loading of non-critical scripts so they don’t block the rendering of your page content.
Lack of Mobile Caching
Some WordPress themes (or plugins) create a truly distinct mobile version of your site—think different templates or layouts. If that’s you, having a separate mobile cache can stop heavy desktop assets from slowing down mobile users.
On the flip side, if your theme is fully responsive and serves essentially the same site to every device, “mobile caching” won’t help much. There’s no special mobile page to optimize. The key is understanding your theme: if it offers a standalone mobile mode, caching it can be a game-changer. If not, focus on general speed tricks—like image compression and efficient scripts—to keep all visitors happy.
Heavy Plugins and Scripts
Some plugins and scripts are resource hogs, especially on mobile devices with less processing power. Features that work seamlessly on desktop might cause delays on mobile.
Audit your plugins and scripts to identify any that are unnecessarily heavy. Consider replacing them with more lightweight alternatives or disabling them altogether for mobile users. Sometimes, less is more.
Techniques to Speed Up Your WordPress Website
Alright, we’ve pinpointed the problems. Now let’s tackle the solutions. Here are actionable steps you can take to boost your WordPress site’s speed and keep your visitors happy.
Optimize for Mobile
Mobile usage is continuing to increase globally. So, optimizing your site for mobile is a must! Use responsive design principles to ensure your site looks and functions well on all screen sizes.
Consider reducing your reliance on external scripts and fonts, minimizing CSS and Javascript, and making sure there’s nothing extra weighing down your site. When you optimize for mobile, you optimize for desktop, and this doesn’t always work the other way around.
Get Rid of Unused Plugins
Plugins are great for adding functionality to your site, but too many can slow things down. Unused or outdated plugins not only affect performance but can also pose security risks.
Go through your list of installed plugins and deactivate any that you no longer need. Then delete them entirely. This cleanup reduces the amount of code your site has to process, speeding up load times.
Additionally, some plugins require other plugins to be installed in order to work. This just adds more weight to your website. If you don’t really need that plugin, forget about it.
Use a Caching Plugin
Caching is a game-changer when it comes to website speed. By storing static versions of your pages, caching reduces the load on your server and speeds up content delivery to users.
Plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache are popular choices that can handle caching for you. They offer settings for both desktop and mobile caching, ensuring a smoother experience for all visitors.
Get a Free Comprehensive WordPress Website Speed Audit by Wordzite
Whether you have technical WordPress knowledge or not, conducting a comprehensive audit on your own site can be exhausting. That’s why at Wordzite, we try to help companies by providing a comprehensive WordPress website speed audit. And it’s FREE.
We provide you with detailed feedback regarding your WordPress site’s speed, errors, firewall, hosting, and site security. So not only do you get a comprehensive speed audit, but we also provide information on potential security vulnerabilities.
You can do an audit yourself. But it’s going to take you hours. So if you want to save time, get your free audit today.
Compress Your Images
High-quality images enhance your site’s appearance but can be hefty in size. Compressing images reduces their file size without sacrificing visual quality.
Use image optimization plugins like Smush, ShortPixel to compress your images. You can also convert images to next-gen formats like WebP, which offer superior compression and quality.
Use Lightweight Themes
Your site’s theme plays a significant role in its performance. Some themes are bloated with features and code you might never use, slowing down your site.
Opt for lightweight, speed-optimized themes like Astra, GeneratePress, or the default Twenty Twenty-One theme. These themes prioritize performance without compromising on design.
Conclusion
We know—that was a lot to take in. Optimizing your WordPress site’s speed can feel like juggling flaming torches while riding a unicycle. It’s tricky, maybe even a bit overwhelming. But here’s the kicker: you don’t have to tackle it solo.
That’s where WordZite comes in.
We’re not just a “set it and forget it” kind of service. Nope. We’re hands-on, always in the trenches, actively monitoring every aspect of your site. From caching and compression to mobile optimization and security audits—we’ve got our eyes on it all.
Why stress over the technical stuff when you can have a team of WordPress experts actively managing and keeping your site secure?
Ready to give your visitors the lightning-fast experience they deserve? Let’s make your WordPress site the Usain Bolt of the internet.
Get in touch with WordZite today, and let’s kick your website into high gear!