No matter how good your website’s content is, it will count for surprisingly little if the website doesn’t load quickly enough for many people to stick with it. In the 2020s, a webpage shouldn’t take any longer than three seconds to load if you want it to remain competitive.
You can easily ascertain your website’s overall zippiness by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. However, if your site’s PageSpeed performance is lacking, what can you do? While there’s no entirely foolproof method, here are a few strategies from which you can generally expect results.
Adopt a responsive theme for a WordPress website
WordPress is a platform often used in the creation of websites – we use it ourselves for the content management system (CMS) websites we provide. However, if you have a WordPress site that still uses a free theme, now is a good time for you to switch to a premium one.
The best-coded themes are also the most responsive – largely because they decrease the number of redirects your website’s visitors would be sent on before they can finally see your content.
Optimise your website’s images
A website’s code can be like a tree or hedge; left alone, it can grow excessively and consequently become more and more difficult to manage.
Don’t worry, though – as pruning this code wouldn’t necessarily require you to pore through reams of confusing HTML. You could use a plugin like Smush to optimise your site’s images, such as by suppressing their code or barring them from loading until they are genuinely needed.
Cache if you can
Yes, that’s a pun – as you probably won’t struggle to cache your website provided you use suitable plugins. Good examples of free-to-use caching plugins include W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache.
But what is caching, anyway? It’s basically a process where copies of files comprising your website are stored in a cache so that, when someone visits a webpage a second time, their device doesn’t necessarily have to reload every single part of the page.
Find a new hosting provider
The company responsive for your website’s hosting is basically the company owning the servers on which your website resides. However, as web hosting packages can significantly differ in quality, your own package might not quite be meeting your site’s needs.
We offer a web hosting service of our own, where websites are stored on Windows servers with full Perl and PHP support. Through contacting our digital marketing team, you can learn more about what is included in this service and thus whether it would satisfy your particular requirements.
Don’t overdo it with plugins
Yes, it’s an ironic recommendation, given how many plugins we have advocated in this article – but using too many plugins can be another drag on your website’s speed.
Hence, you should be selective about which plugins you do use. Stick to highly-related ones that are updated frequently. If updates seem to have run dry for a particular plugin, you should probably axe it, lest hackers potentially exploit it.