You’ve probably heard this before, but when a person lands on your site for the first time, you only have a few seconds to capture their attention to convince them to hang around.
But if your page loads slowly, you may lose people before you even have the chance to convert them.
Most studies have confirmed that you have a very short time to load your site before people click away, especially if they’ve been linked there from another site that they visit.
1. Web Hosting
If your website takes a long time to load every time it is accessed, it is time to think about upgrading your web hosting package or switching to a web hosting provider. Even if you have just started your website, it’s a smart move to plan for the increase in traffic.
There are many reliable and managed-to-host solutions available and depending on your preference, you can opt for good web hosting with a WordPress package that offers strong technical support to back up your website. Spend some time in researching a premium hosting solution that brings out the best performance of your website.
2. Optimizing The Images
For any type of website, the use of images is imperative because it helps in creating a great impression on the visitors. The use of appropriate images enhances the readability of the blog.
It is a fact that image files consume more space as compared to text files. If you have uploaded a wide range of images, you will surely have a slow loading time. This will happen if you are not using any image optimization plugin. One of the best image optimization plugins is WP-Smushlt. It can be installed on your WordPress website for free.
3. Database Optimization
Optimizing the database is an important aspect of every website. WordPress provides many database optimization plugins, one of the most efficient ones of them is the WP-Optimize plugin. With a properly optimized database, the web hosting server can respond to queries without any delay, thereby having a positive effect on the overall website speed.
4. Restricting The Number Of Plugins
Although you might be allured to install a lot of plugins that suit your website, it is important to download, install and use only the specific plugins that are necessary for your website. Plugins and themes acquire additional space that can slow down a website. It is true that some plugins are valuable and important and you must have them, however, it is important to keep a check on the number of plugins you are downloading and the ones that are being utilized.
Eliminate all the plugins and theme files that you don’t require for your website. For the plugins present on your website, make sure that you have the latest versions. Even deactivated plugins can slow down your website and also make it vulnerable to malicious activities.
5. Caching Plugin
Your WordPress blog might contain old and static content that is no longer read. A new server request is initiated for this type of content as well every time a visitor comes back to your blog. The page load time can be reduced to a considerable extent by installing a caching plugin.
There are a number of great caching plugins that you can choose from but it’s important to choose the one that will work with your hosting and service provider! Whatever you choose to use they ultimately will help in similar ways, providing caching options for any website type and making scaling easy in any hosting environment.
