Does your WordPress website fully load within three seconds? If not, it is worth taking a closer look at your website’s performance – and you don’t need any programming knowledge to do so. By following a few simple rules, you can keep your website running quickly and smoothly.
Getting started
First, check how your website is performing. Google offers a simple and free solution for this: with PageSpeed Insights, simply enter your website’s URL and click Analyse.
After a test lasting no more than a minute, your website will receive a score out of 100. Below the score, you can also find a detailed assessment highlighting potential issues that need to be addressed. PageSpeed Insights also provides suggestions for improvement, and implementing them can make a significant difference to your website’s loading speed.
Remove unnecessary plugins
One of WordPress’s biggest advantages is the huge range of useful plugins available for improving websites, but this can also become a disadvantage if you are not careful. It is quite common to stop using certain plugins after the initial enthusiasm wears off, leaving them unnecessarily slowing down your website.
It is therefore worth reviewing your list of plugins from time to time and deleting any that you no longer use.
Reduce image sizes
The larger the files used for the visual elements of a website, the longer the page will take to load. It is a common mistake, even though resizing photos and graphics can make one of the most noticeable improvements to loading speed.
If you would rather handle automatic image optimisation within WordPress, we recommend installing ShortPixel or a similar image optimisation plugin.
Install professional caching plugins
A very fast website may require some investment, but if you want to achieve better results in Google search, it can be well worth it. There are several paid WordPress plugins, some of which also offer free versions, that have proven highly effective. Once installed, they make it much easier to speed up your website and provide ongoing, reliable support for faster loading times. Examples include WP Rocket, Swift Performance, WP Fastest Cache and W3 Total Cache.
Minify your code
If you want to speed up your website without extensive technical knowledge, plugins like those mentioned above can be extremely useful. Overly complex code can have a negative impact on website speed, while a good optimisation plugin can simplify your code automatically with just a few clicks. With the popular WP Rocket plugin, for example, you simply need to tick the box next to Minify CSS files.
Delay anything that doesn’t need to load immediately
In everyday life, putting things off is not usually good advice, but when it comes to WordPress, it can be. Some website content, such as CSS and JavaScript files, does not necessarily need to load immediately. In some cases, it is enough for these resources to load when the visitor actually needs them, for example, after clicking a menu item.
The recommended plugins can make this easy too. In many cases, all you need to do is tick a box next to an option such as Optimise CSS Delivery or Optimise CSS Code, and the plugin will take care of the rest.