A slow website doesn’t attract readers. It has been disclosed after a recent survey that if a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, up to 40% of its visitors will leave. Therefore, in this article, I will teach you how to make your WordPress website load faster.
The age-old adage that says, “slow and steady wins the race” doesn’t apply to website performance. It means your website is nowhere but on the verge of failure. – Anonymous.
Let us look at the reasons why WordPress websites load slowly.
Before we move on, I believe you didn’t miss our last article on how to add social share buttons on WordPress.
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Why a WordPress Website may not Load Faster
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Heavy Images
Most of the time when websites are slow, they do so as a result of incorrect optimization of images or not optimizing at all. Larger sized images unnecessary loads slowly as they increase the size of a webpage unduly.
Sometimes, the image format contributes to this. Images in the JPEG format typically loads faster than PNG and GIF formatted images.
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Wrong Implementation of JavaScript/Plugins
Plugins – made of JavaScript, helps in conveniently adding content to websites. However, when they are implemented incorrectly, they slow down the webpage.
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Over-usage of Flash Contents
Flash contents on websites help to improve interactions with the website users but they are usually of large size and as a result, contributing to the slowness of your website.
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HTTP requests
The use of many JavaScript, CSS, and image files increases HTTP requests, and loads of it will only make your website slow.
The webpages load slowly because they attempt to load each of these files each at a time.
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Caching
Caching helps in increasing the load time of a webpage when enabled. It stores elements of a website visited in a cached memory allowing the website to load faster on the next visit.
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Theme
Some themes are written in an unclean code. At times, elements of a theme are not compressed. Using such a theme will only increase the size of your page.
Themes, when properly compressed reduces the file size.
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Excessive Ads Usage
When Ads are used excessively on a website page, they tend to slow down the webpage load times. Ads, just like every other component on your website, also take their time load.
Over-monetization of a website may sometimes result in an unresponsive website.
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What are the implications of a Slow Website?
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High bounce rate
Bounce rate is a summary of how people leave a website. If your website has a low bounce rate, it means you are getting your onions right and people interact better with your website when they visit.
On the other hand, if a website has a bounce rate, it means that the website visitors leave quicker and that there is no much interaction.
Slow websites typically do have higher bounce rates. There is a high chance that people will close a webpage that doesn’t load on time when they visit. They won’t just leave; they might never return.
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It affects SEO
Websites that load slowly doesn’t rank well on Google and other search engines. One of the major factors Google search algorithm considers in website ranking is the website speed.
The time it takes Google to index your website depends on the size of your webpage which is a major factor in how fast or slow your webpage loads.
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Low conversion rates
A slow-loading website gets abandoned resulting in low conversion for the website. In fact, the faster a website is, the more the profit.
Mozilla reportedly witnessed a 60 million increase in downloads when they reduced their page speed by 2.2 seconds at a certain year. This alone is enough as clear evidence.
Now that you are aware of the implications, the next is to make you realize how to make your webpage load faster.
What Can I Do to Make a WordPress Website Load Faster?
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Optimize your images
To make your WordPress website load faster, it is a must to optimize your images. Images can be optimized using plugins like WordPress owned Jetpack.
Also, make JPEG images a preference over PNG and GIF.
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Defer JavaScript
If you really want to improve your website speed, consider adding the “defer” attribute to some of your scripts. You can easily achieve this using Async JavaScript Plugin.
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Limit the use of flash contents
It is not a bad idea to ignore the use of flash content, instead, find the HTML5 alternative as a replacement. However, if you must use it, try to limit the usage.
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Use a caching plugin
Try activating caching on your WordPress website W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache or WP Fastest Cache plugin. Those are some of the best caching plugins for WordPress.
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Reduce Ads
Reduce the number of adverts on your website. If you have Google AdSense ads on your website, limit them to 3 – 4 per post to increase the site’s speed.
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Find a better theme
Theme contributes a lot to a website’s load time. Before proceeding to buy any theme, try reading reviews about the theme or at least check the load time of the preview page link from GT Metrix.
A theme good for SEO should load in approximately 3 seconds.
Conclusion
There are other factors that also contribute to a website’s speed. However, the factors discussed here are the major reasons why websites load slowly.
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We have come to the end of this article on how to make your WordPress website load faster. We believe that this article will help you speed up your WordPress website. Let’s hear your feedback after and do remember to share this article with friends.
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