The speed at which your website loads can directly affect whether you turn visitors into customers. If your site takes two or more seconds to load, many of your visitors will leave before your website finishes loading. Additionally, your page loading speed and server response time are significant factors in how Google ranks your site in search engine results. Therefore, you must solve any issues that are causing your WordPress site to be slow.
Read on to learn about possible reasons your WordPress site is slow.
Slow Server Response Time
When it comes to page loading speeds, your WordPress hosting provider may not provide you with enough speed. This could be because you’re using shared hosting where multiple websites use the same server and therefore compete for the server’s resources. As a result, your site may be slow during peak traffic times because another site on the server is experiencing a high volume of traffic and using up all the server resources. Therefore, you should consider using VPS or dedicated hosting.
Additionally, the farther your server is from your visitor’s computers, the slower the server response time will be. Therefore, it’s important to choose a hosting provider that uses a CDN. This will ensure that your visitors will experience a fast page loading experience no matter the distance between the server and your visitor’s computer.
An Overabundance WordPress Plugins
A great thing about WordPress is its plugins. They allow you to customize and optimize your site to your personal specifications. However, with all the plugin options available, it can be easy to go overboard. This is problematic because every plugin you install adds load time, and some may even double your load time.
Luckily, the solution is relatively simple. All you have to do is deactivate each plugin one by one and then test your page speed. Once you find an offending plugin, either delete it or, if it’s crucial, try replacing it with a lighter plugin or look for a coding option that accomplishes the same functions as the plugin.
Render-Blocking JavaScript and CSS
When you choose a WordPress theme and add plugins to your site, you add JavaScript and CSS files to your website’s front end. A user’s browser will need to load these scripts and CSS before loading the rest of the HTML on the page. As a result, these scripts can increase your site’s page load time, and they can also prevent the block rendering of your web page. There are a number of ways to fix this issue, but the easiest way is to use a plugin. The three most popular plugins for fixing render-blocking JavaScript and CSS are Asset CleanUP, WP Rocket, and Hummingbird.
Oversized Images
Visuals are important, but if your image is too large, it will slow down your site. For that reason, you need to compress and optimize your images so they won’t affect your site’s page loading speed. Luckily, there are a number of plugins that can help you automate this process. One of the most popular plugins to compress and optimize your images is Compress JPEG & PNG Images. After you’ve installed this plugin, it will automatically compress and optimize each image you upload to your site. You won’t see any noticeable difference in your image’s quality, but chances are it will take up a lot less space.
Summary
A slow-loading website is nobody’s friend. It can affect your bounce rate, which will ultimately affect your bottom line as it will mean fewer visitors and consequently fewer customers. Therefore if your WordPress site is running slow, you need to investigate why and solve them as soon as possible. The four most common reasons why your site might be running slow are:
- Server response time
- Too many plugins
- Render-blocking JavaScript and CSS
- Oversized images
Fortunately, once you’ve identified these issues, they aren’t hard to solve. For slow server response time, you need to look into your hosting type and talk with your provider about implementing a CDN. If you have too many plugins, you should delete the ones you aren’t using and look for lighter versions of the ones you are using. Lastly, for issues with render-blocking JavaScript and CSS and oversized images, you just need to install and launch the right plugin.