The speed of a WordPress website has become a prominent factor affecting its popularity. Recently Google has announced that speed will be considered as a factor while determining the search engine rankings. This has highly increased the role of the speed of a website. According to a stat, 40 percent of the users will leave the site, which takes more than three seconds to load. It is not a surprising factor but an obvious fact that high speed will add to the success of any website.
A faster website ensures your number of page views and a larger user base. A slower website can cause you a severe downfall in popularity and sales. If your site is loading slow, then you have to look into it quickly.
As it is a clear fact that the speed of your WordPress website matters a lot, the question arises what can be done to speed up the site? Let us see some factors which can help in increasing the speed of your website:
Choosing a good WordPress Web host:
Choosing a good web host for your website is the first step in the direction of a high-speed website. Your web host plays a vital role in deciding the speed. A bad host may cause a very slow speed and frequent downtimes.
A good web host will ensure you with the high speed of your website by improving the response time. Moreover, it does not lead you to a situation like even in high traffic. So choose a web host wisely and avoid the slow website speed.
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Use a CDN:
A CDN is a content delivery network. It allows static files (CSS, images, and javascript) from a network. The CDN takes all these static files from the website and serves them through a server that is nearest to the visitor location. CDN decreases the response time of your website, making it load faster. Max CDN is considered one of the best CDN, which can be used for WordPress websites.
Minimizing the number of HTTP requests:
You add CSS files or Javascript or images to enhance the design and functionality of your website. Each file acts as a new HTTP request. Even plugins you add have their own CSS and Javascript. When a user comes to your website, then all the corresponding to the page need to be sent to the user’s browser. The more the number of files, the more is the time taken by the site to load.
Reduce the number of HTTP requests by eliminating everything that is unnecessary will help you in this case. One more thing you can do to reduce the requests is combining the CSS and JavaScript files into a single file. It will also help to speed up the load time.
Minifying the Code:
Minifying the code means removing the white spaces wherever possible. It helps in reducing the file size. You can use some plugins for this purpose rather than doing it manually.
Optimize the images:
Optimizing the images is another thing that can help you in speeding up your website. Images are the largest files on you and take more time to load. Reduce the image file size to as low as possible while not losing the quality to reduce the load time.
Proper Caching:
Caching is one of the most important factors in speeding up your WordPress website.
Caching enables the browser to store some files. When the user again visits your site, these files are to be loaded from the cache of the browser despite requesting them from the server again. It saves the load time and increases the speed of your website.
Using an effective caching plugin can help you a lot in this case.
Database optimization:
Optimizing the database is something like fragmenting the hard drive of your computer. Optimizing the database will remove the unwanted stuff from the database and make it efficient. It improves your site speed. Although it can be done through the cPanel, you can use some effective plugins for this purpose.
Using CSS Sprites:
A sprite is a large image consisting of other images used in the design combined altogether. It is easy to load a single large image as compared to load many small images. It reduces the page load time and speeds up the website.
Replace PHP with HTML:
HTML code can save a lot of processing and loads faster. It may require a bit of coding, and you can replace the PHP with HTML wherever possible. It will help in increasing the speed of your website.
The loading speed of your website is one of the most important deciding factors of its popularity. Slow loading sites will give the users a bad impression, and that is something you’ll never want. You can improve the speed of your website by acting smarter. However, you can do many other things to speed up your site, using the techniques may help you solve the purpose easily.
Author Bio: Marie is a WordPress Developer by profession and writer by hobby. She works for Wordsuccor Ltd., having a team of skilled and dedicated WordPress Cms Developers providing web development services to global clients. Get in touch with her on Twitter.