The loading time of a website is a decisive factor for success on the Internet. Slow loading times can not only deter potential visitors, but also have a negative impact on search engine rankings. In this blog post, you will learn how you can optimise the loading time of your WordPress website.
That's why a short loading time is important
Before we get into the technical details, let's talk briefly about the importance of load time. A study by Akamai states that a delay of just one second can decrease conversion rates by 7 % and that 40% of users will abandon a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. In addition, search engines such as Google take into account the loading speed of your website when evaluating and ranking it in search results.
What can you do to improve the loading time of your WordPress website?
1. choose a good WordPress hosting
The first step to optimising the loading time of your WordPress website is choosing the right hosting. A fast and reliable hosting provider can have a significant impact on the loading speed of your site. Many hosters offer hosting that is specially optimised for WordPress. This has great advantages for speed and administration.
- Shared hosting:
- Inexpensive, but less powerful. Suitable for small websites.
- VPS Hosting:
- Offers more resources and better performance than shared hosting.
- Dedicated Server:
- Highest performance, but also the most expensive option.
- Managed WordPress Hosting:
- Specially optimised for WordPress and often offers additional features to improve loading times. An excellent WordPress hoster is Raidboxes, Münster (Link in the footer).
2. use a light theme
The design of your website also plays an important role in the loading time. Use a lightweight and well-coded theme. An excellent example is the leanly programmed and very powerful theme GeneratePress, which I use as the basic theme for all websites. It is fast, stable and is excellently maintained and supported by its development team (Link in the footer).
3. reduce the number of plugins
Plugins extend the functionality of your WordPress website, but too many plugins can significantly slow down the loading time. Deactivate or remove unnecessary plugins and only use the ones you need.
4. implement caching
Caching can significantly reduce the loading time of your website by saving and reusing frequent requests.
- Server-side caching / varnish cache:
- Server-side caching may be even more effective. The host of this website, Raidboxes, uses Apache servers with Varnish caching for this purpose. This cache has the great advantage that the cache is located before the server and cached calls no longer cause any load on the server.
- Caching plugins:
- If you do not use server-side caching, you can use a WordPress-side caching plugin such as WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache.
5. image optimisation
Images are often the largest files on a website and can significantly affect the loading time. Optimise your images to improve the loading time.
- Image formats:
- Use suitable formats:
- WEBP for photos,
- SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) or PNG for graphics.
- Compression:
- Compress your images before uploading them to your WordPress media library.
See article: Edit images before uploading
- Lazy Loading:
- Lazy loading of images means that they are only loaded dynamically when scrolling and not all of them when the page is called up. Since version 5.5, WordPress uses lazy loading of images by default, which has a particularly positive effect on pages with many images, such as blog overview pages.
6. content delivery network (CDN)
A CDN distributes your website content to different servers worldwide, which shortens the loading time for visitors from different geographical regions. Popular CDNs: Cloudflare, MaxCDN and Amazon CloudFront.
7. minimisation of JS and CSS files, delayed loading of scripts
Minimising and combining CSS and JavaScript files can reduce the number of HTTP requests and significantly improve the loading time. Recommended tools:
There are a large number of plugins for this purpose. What many of them have in common is that the optimisations made are not exactly easy to understand for the normal user, so that you are often in the dark and have to try things out until you have achieved the optimum settings for your own website. In my own tests with a large number of tools, I therefore looked in particular at user-friendliness and here are my three favourites with which I was able to achieve good to very good results:
- Perfmatters (my favourite):
- In combination with the server-side caching from Raidboxes, I achieve the best results with this excellent tool. Every possible setting is described simply and quickly, especially the type of optimisation and the associated consequences for the website. Perfmatters has the most detailed setting options and can, for example, only load plugins and scripts on certain pages. Perfmatters is my favourite overall (Link in the footer).
- Autoptimise:
- The basic version of the optimisation tool is free of charge and is a good introduction to optimising your own website.
- WP Rocket:
- Is a caching plugin with minification and combination settings for Javascript and CSS files. If you do not have server-side caching available from your hoster, it is a very good way to get caching and minification with one tool.
8. database optimisation
An optimised database can significantly improve the loading time of your website.
- Regular clean-up:
- Regularly clean your database of superfluous data.
- Optimisation tools:
- WP-Optimize or WP DB Cleaner can help you to optimise your database.
9. minimise external scripts
External scripts, such as social media widgets, Google marketing services or adverts, can slow down the loading time of your website. Reduce the number of external scripts to the necessary minimum and optimise the loading time for the indispensable ones, e.g. with a tool such as Perfmatters.
Conclusion
Optimising the loading time of your WordPress website requires a combination of different techniques and best practices. By following the above points, you can significantly improve the loading time of your website, resulting in a better user experience and a higher search engine ranking.
With a fast and responsive website, you can ensure that your visitors stay longer, view more pages and ultimately increase your conversion rate. Invest the time and effort in optimisation - it will pay off in the long run.
If you want to optimise the loading time of your website: