Ever tried opening your website on your mobile phone only to close it again because it takes forever to load? This might happen when visitors are checking out your website.
It could end up frustrating them, making it difficult for them to browse through your service offerings, and reducing the efficiency of your website in generating leads. Despite the aesthetic appeal of your website, the users won’t necessarily love it if they have to spend several seconds waiting before being able to interact with the website.
There are times when you don’t necessarily have to overhaul the whole website in order to speed things up. Image optimization, effective caching, script removal, and resolution of issues regarding hosting are just some of the things that can be done.
Here, we will show you how you can make your WordPress website faster, score high in Google PageSpeed Insights, and offer a great experience to the users of your website.
At Perfect e Solutions, a website development company in Jaipur, we understand the importance of building websites that balance good design, useful functionality, and performance.
1. Check Your Website Speed Before Making Changes
Before making changes to your website by adding optimisation plugins or altering any other settings, identify what is causing your website to perform slowly.
One of the tools that can help you in this regard is Google PageSpeed Insights. Enter the website URL on this page and get the results for both mobile and desktop.
You may notice issues such as:
- Images that take too long to load.
- Unused JavaScript and CSS files.
- Slow server response times.
- Render-blocking resources.
- Excessive layout shifts.
- Too much JavaScript running during page loading.
One should not try to improve all warnings simultaneously. It would be advisable to start with those issues which affect the visitor experience to the greatest degree.
For instance, the optimization of the main banner image which loads too slow may be more relevant compared to decreasing the size of an icon in the footer section.
It would be also relevant to note that the PageSpeed score cannot reflect everything. Google provides simulated laboratory results and real-user experience data (when there is enough field data). Thus, one’s laboratory score will be different from the user experience.
2. Optimise Images Without Losing Quality
Big Images Are One of The Most Frequent Causes of Slow-Loading WordPress Websites
Consider a company site with a big home banner, various portfolio images, pictures of staff members, and various service illustrations. In case these images are too big, a visitor will have to download a lot of unnecessary data to be able to view the page.
Luckily, optimizing images is not a very difficult task.
Use WebP or AVIF Image Formats
WebP and AVIF images that are more modern in nature can generally offer smaller image file sizes compared to the older JPEG and PNG images while retaining good quality visuals.
For instance, a picture stored in a WebP format will take up much less space than the original picture.
Resize Images to Their Display Dimensions
To upload a picture that is 3,000 pixels wide when the picture will only be displayed on the website at 700 pixels is wasting bandwidth in most cases.
Resize pictures based on how the pictures will be displayed; provide versions for different screen sizes, if required.
Compress Images Before Uploading
An image optimizer tool or any WordPress plugins could be employed to compress the uploaded images.
It is important to note that an image should not be compressed many times as this may make the website look bad.
Apply Lazy Loading Correctly
Lazy loading will cause images that are not in view at first sight to load once the viewer approaches them.
It helps a lot for pages where galleries, portfolios, or products are presented. But be careful about lazy loading the main image or banner that represents your page LCP. This image must be found and loaded quickly.
More useful tips for mobile design can be found in our article about the importance of mobile sites and how to begin SEO.
3. Choose Reliable WordPress Hosting
While you can optimize all images and remove unnecessary scripts, slow server may also be an obstacle.
Each time a user lands on your site, server needs to process his request and send information about the webpage to the browser. Should the server take too much time for responding, the user may wait until page starts loading.
That’s why hosting requires to be considered while solving issues related to WordPress performance.
Find hosting that offers good server resources, performance, server-side caching where needed, and supports your website’s traffic and technical demands.
Should your website attract more users than your hosting can accommodate, consider revising the number of resources or your hosting service.
You need to evaluate PHP version, database performance, and server response time. Keep your software up-to-date and make sure that any new versions work well with your theme and plugins.
Content delivery network (CDN) will also help to deliver static data – images, CSS, and JavaScript – from locations closer to your visitors. Effectiveness of CDN depends on your audience, hosting provider and caching settings.
Should you have persistent problem with slow response time, start investigation of your server first.
4. Set Up WordPress Caching Properly
WordPress may generate pages using PHP and database queries. If there is no adequate caching, the server may have to redo some of these operations for every visitor.
Caching allows storing reusable data so that future requests can be executed faster.
There are various kinds of caching, such as:
Page caching: This caches a generated page and allows serving the page without regenerating it for each visitor.
Browser caching: This allows visitors’ browsers to cache certain files instead of downloading them each time they come to your website.
Object caching: Caching of database query results or other application objects to reduce redundant database calls in cases when it is needed.
Server caching: Hosting-level caching to decrease execution time and increase speed of your website.
Various caching plugins, like WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, etc., have their particular features. It is up to you to choose depending on your hosting and your website needs.
Important note: do not activate several plugins that provide you with similar functionality. This may lead to unpredictable behavior and makes debugging of errors harder.
Once you enable caching, you should test important pages, forms, user logins, shopping cart and other personalized content.
5. Remove Unnecessary WordPress Plugins
Plugins for WordPress are handy since they help you implement certain features without reinventing the wheel. However, installing too many plugins without considering the effects they might have will eventually lead to performance issues.
Firstly, certain plugins load scripts and styles throughout the whole website though their functionality is required only on a number of pages. Other plugins make regular queries to the database or require additional requests from the server.
That doesn’t mean that you need to delete all the plugins from your site. An efficiently developed plugin will affect the performance marginally, whereas poorly optimized one will cause a serious problem.
Let’s start with an audit of your current plugins list.
Ask yourself some simple questions:
- Is it really necessary?
- Is there another plugin which implements the same feature?
- Does the plugin load assets which are not necessary on a certain page?
- Is there a light alternative for the same function?
- Is it supported and works with the latest version of WordPress?
- Deactivate and delete plugins which are actually redundant.
If you have Elementor, WooCommerce, membership feature, or advanced form plugin on your website, be cautious when testing anything. Deleting or upgrading any of these plugins without knowing the dependencies can mess up essential components of your website.
For more complex requirements, custom WordPress development can help create functionality that better matches the needs of your business.
6. Reduce Unused CSS and JavaScript
CSS manages the visual appearance of a website, and JavaScript allows most of its interactive functions to work.
The problem starts when the website includes lots of code that is not needed at the moment by its visitors.
For instance, the website may load scripts for sliders, animations, popups, forms, and others when there are no such features on that page.
Eliminating the unnecessary code will allow the website to work faster.
Minify CSS and JavaScript
Minifying involves removing the unneeded symbols from the code files but without altering the code functionally.
The minification process can decrease the code size, depending on how initially the assets were created and compressed.
Defer Non-Critical JavaScript
There are scripts that can be deferred so that they do not obstruct the HTML parsing procedure.
However, scripts should be carefully managed because any change in their loading order may make menus, sliders, forms, or other interactive elements stop working.
Test the website after any JavaScript optimizations.
Eliminate Unused CSS with Care
Certain WordPress optimization plugins might defer or remove CSS considered to be unnecessary. Nevertheless, automatic removal of CSS could lead to loss of layout, unstyled parts, or issues with the mobile navigation menu.
In this case, the best strategy would be to test crucial page templates and make sure that everything works properly.
In case of large-scale projects, developers will have to analyze the list of assets being loaded by each page and get rid of unnecessary dependencies.
7. Improve Core Web Vitals
Google’s Core Web Vitals can be used to measure some of the key elements of user experience, such as performance, interactivity, and stability.
Currently there are three Core Web Vitals: LCP, INP, and CLS.
| Metric | What it measures | Good result |
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | How quickly the main content becomes visible | 2.5 seconds or less |
| Interaction to Next Paint (INP) | How quickly the page responds to user interactions | 200 milliseconds or less |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | How much the page layout shifts unexpectedly | 0.1 or less |
The scores are calculated based on the 75th percentile of visits by actual users. For more information, visit the documentation page of Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
Improve LCP
Ensure that the primary content image or heading loads without any unnecessary delays. Optimize your hero image, do not delay critical resources, and explore possible slow server response times.
Improve INP
Decrease unnecessary work done by JavaScript, eliminate long running tasks on the browser main thread, and ensure that interactive elements can quickly react to users’ actions.
Improve CLS
Specify the width and height attributes for images and videos or their respective aspect ratio, allocate enough space for ads, iframes, and other dynamically injected elements so that nothing jumps around.
Improvement of these core web vitals depends on finding the root cause of the problem on each website. Adding a plug-in will not make all core web vitals pass.
8. Use Lightweight Themes and Better Page Design
Website theme and builder might impact performance.
Attractive design may become bloated due to the presence of animations, nested containers, huge background images, and many third-party scripts for each block.
That tends to happen on sites that use page builders, with additional widgets and elements being added gradually.
It does not mean that you should give up using Elementor or any other page builder.
All you need to do is check whether everything on your site adds value to visitors.
Here are some useful tips:
- Go for a simpler design.
- Limit the usage of animations and sliders.
- Do not load more icon fonts than needed.
- Use system fonts or restrict the quantity of custom font files and font weights.
- Use third-party scripts sparingly.
- Create reusable sections and not copy elements that weigh heavily.
For companies that want to build a new website or do a major update to the current one, we may offer custom WordPress theme development service from Perfect e Solutions.
9. Optimise Your WordPress Database
Gradually, unnecessary data accumulates in the database of a WordPress site in the form of expired transients, revisions of posts, and other plugin-related records.
The removal of the right type of data will allow keeping the database organized. But, it is important to note that optimization of the database is not always an answer to all speed problems.
In case of a server’s poor performance, bad queries, or ineffective plugins, there might be no results at all from database cleaning.
It is important to create a solid backup of your database before making any changes. Learn what data can be deleted without causing trouble.
For sites with bigger amounts of data, a developer will check slow database queries and decide on the benefits of database indexing, query optimization, and object caching.
10. Keep Your Website Fast With Regular Maintenance
Website speed is an ongoing process.
What was fast yesterday might slow down today as a result of installing new plugins, adding large images, running new tracking scripts, or the increase in the volume of visitors.
For these reasons, it makes sense to test website performance on a regular basis, especially after making significant changes to the website.
The following are some useful actions to take for maintaining your website’s performance:
- Testing of key pages on mobile and desktop platforms.
- Evaluating suggestions provided by PageSpeed Insights.
- Measuring server response time and using caches.
- Upgrading WordPress, themes, and plugins after proper testing for compatibility.
- Testing of forms, menus, checkouts, and other critical functionalities.
- Monitoring of Core Web Vitals based on real user data.
- Creating backup copies of your site prior to any upgrades or optimization measures.
Businesses unable to cope with such activities can consider using WordPress maintenance and care service provided by Perfect e Solutions.
11. Can You Get a 90+ Google PageSpeed Score?
Certainly, a 90+ score can be a realistic performance goal for many websites, but there is no guarantee that all WordPress instances will have this score.
The outcome will be affected by various aspects, such as web hosting, design of pages, images, external code, browser environment, and the way of testing.
In general, a 90+ score is regarded as a good indicator in terms of the Lighthouse performance score, but having a high score in the laboratory does not always mean that all real users are experiencing good Core Web Vitals.
In turn, getting a worse score on any test does not necessarily indicate poor performance for each user.
Rather than just concentrating on the score itself, consider what issues need to be fixed. The faster loading of the main content, responsive buttons and menus, stable layout, and good user experience will be much more beneficial in the long run.
Make sure to test under similar conditions, look at the same critical URLs after changes and do not make a few changes without testing.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is my WordPress website slow even with a good hosting plan?
A good hosting plan is beneficial to some extent, but not everything is achievable through it. Poor image optimization, overuse of JavaScript, poor plugin optimization, uncaching of web pages, and poor database query performance can influence site load time.
2. Which WordPress plugin is best for improving PageSpeed scores?
There is not an absolute “best” plugin for every site. Rather, this will depend on what server you use, which theme you use, page builder and any other optimization plugins you may have installed.
3. Does website speed affect SEO?
Website speed affects the user experience, and Core Web Vitals is used for the evaluation of the page experience by Google. But having high page speed will not necessarily improve your rankings as there are many other elements like relevant content, search intent, technical SEO, etc.
Visit our SEO services for more details on the relationship between website optimization and search visibility.
4. How often should I test my WordPress website speed?
Test important pages before and after major updates, redesigns, or changes to plugins and scripts. Regular checks are also useful for identifying gradual performance problems.
5. Can Perfect e Solutions help improve WordPress website speed?
Perfect e Solutions offers WordPress development, custom theme development, and maintenance services. The right optimisation plan depends on your website’s current performance issues and technical setup.
Final Thoughts
Optimizing your WordPress website does not necessarily have to include a complete makeover or purchasing an expensive suite of optimization tools. The most effective way to increase your site speed is to identify the problem areas and solve them in the proper sequence.
First of all, it is necessary to check your website, optimize images, evaluate the hosting speed, implement caching, and minimize excess code. Then, analyze the Core Web Vitals and perform testing of important pages once again.
It is worth remembering that fast website means more than just getting a good result on a metric. Speed is what allows the users to quickly access information, easily navigate through your website, and accomplish what they’ve planned to do on your website.
In Perfect e Solutions, our company based in Jaipur, we believe that a website has to be beautiful and functional. We know how to build a fast WordPress website which will meet all your expectations.
Interested in speeding up your WordPress website? Contact Perfect e Solutions and learn about our web development services.
