Speed always matters in everything from a high speed car to a speedy loading business website and it can never be ignored in anything at all.

WordPress is undoubtedly comes at the top list of all content management systems but it does not mean it should be faster by default, in fact, webmasters have to take steps to make it as faster as possible and if they don’t optimize its speed, they can’t get maximum benefits from it.

Why Is It Important to Improve WP Website Speed?

If you are wondering what benefits you can actually get from the speedy and faster WordPress website, you are right to think about it and it is an absolutely relevant question. An improved speed is really important and some of the benefits that you can get from the high speed WordPress website are as follow:

1: Greater User Experience

Only a high speed website can provide better user experience and it has been proven in the last few years. In fact, UE is really an essential feature of any website and this is the reason why it is given special importance at the time of designing and development. If you have a great looking business website which attracts visitors but don’t have better speed, the chances of providing them great experience will be much lower and they would not like to speed time on a slower place.

2: Greater Site Conversion Rate

You can find a lot of articles about the disadvantages of slower loading of pages when visitors prefer to move to other sites rather than waiting which simply means you are not just losing visitors but you are actually losing potential customers who are attracted by high speed site that don’t make them wait long. It is just the matter of seconds and not even minutes. You can check out some of the websites with more likes, followers and subscribers and one of the reasons they were able to attract more people was an increased loading speed.

3: Higher Ranking in Search Engine

Google also announced some time ago that the speed will be considered as an important factor when it comes to the search engine rankings and it was not just limited to the Google but other search engines also takes it seriously. As you should be well aware that all of the major search engines want to provide better user experience to the visitors and thus, it is quite natural for them to show up those websites which have better loading time.

How to Improve WP Website Speed?

There are various ways with which you can try to improve WP Website speed and make them much faster than ever before. It you have basic info about the working of WordPress, you can easily understand how to do this all. There are some important factors which will be greatly helpful for you to increase site speed.

1: Regular Cleaning of Site Databases

A lot of activities are regularly held such as adding new posts or deleting old ones, adding new tags or removing comments, installing or uninstalling plugins or themes and when these activities take place, the site database can be overstuffed with residue and therefore, it is really important to clean it on regular basis. For example, trash can be empty or a shower can be taken for cleaning purpose. There are various useful WP plugins which can be really effective in clearing database but of course, you need to choose the one that is best and can really work to improve speed without creating further problems. So far the best plugin is known as WP-Optimize which is simple yet so effective.

2: Use Caching Plugin to Show up Files

WP content management system depends upon a database for storing site content. Now the relationship between site setting and available content plays a vital role in this regard as every time a page of the site is viewed, the database gets engaged to show up data to visitors. However, it eventually requires lots of time because when data is stored in memory of the server, it definitely takes time to show up in most of the cases. This is where the role of caching plugins comes in existence and the data is held in Caches rather than inside the memory and whenever someone makes a query, caching plugin shows the data instantly. There are various caching plugins easily available and you can choose any of the best from them. As a ready reference, you can give a try to W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache as both of them are considered to be really useful.

3: Combine Similar Types Java and CSS Files

CSS, HTML and JavaScript are used as most important part of the site but Java codes and CSS are normally used as distinct files. When a visitor makes a query, browser sends requests to the server to show up files which are put together to be seen by the visitor. When classy plugins or themes are installed which are brought in front end, in the results, more Java and CSS files will be served. All of the requests can be made by the browser at once but each request might take a millisecond delay which will be converted into seconds and the visitors will not wait too long but will prefer to leave the site. The solution is that all same type files can be combined together and sever as a single JavaScript or CSS file. For this purpose of combining files, there are plugins which will work perfectly. The same plugins will also delete all unnecessary items and remove whitespace and this will result into better loading time. There are various plugins from the category of combination and minification but the one that is considered the best is called Auto optimize.

4: Use of Content Delivery Network

Every webmaster wants to show up his visitors interesting videos but uploading videos on the server might affect loading speed and therefore, the better solution to deal with this problem is to upload videos on YouTube instead of main site and this can be really useful for improving speed. The same strategy can be used for the images, JavaScript and CSS files. For this purpose, content delivery networks which are commonly called as CDNs are used, these networks server the purpose very efficiently. CDNs are found to be much faster than site server and this is possible because of cloud enchantment. Moreover, it is quite natural that when you get files from 2 different servers, it automatically increases the speed. Though, most of the CDNs services are paid such as MaxCDN or CloudFront, there are still various other services which cost nothing.

5: Use of Plugins to Optimize Images

One of the most important part of any website is its image gallery and if the site has beautiful images they can make the site look more attractive but the problem is that when you use a lot of images, the weight of the site automatically gets higher which may be resulted into longer loading time. If you want to work on speed optimization, you might think of uploading fewer images which will definitely be a good move but the second option is that you should optimize all those images as they will not take more space and the loading time will also be decreased. The popular options for image optimization are WP Smush and EWWW Image.

6: Use of Simpler & Lighter WP Theme

Did you even try to evaluate the overall performance of the theme you are using for your WordPress website? Well, if you didn’t, that is not something unusual because a large number of people don’t look at the performance but just look at the overall look of the theme. If a theme requires you to have lots of images but is lacking well optimized CSS and HTML or there are unlimited queries on different pages of the site, this can be really harmful no matter how great it apparently looks. You must check out the speed of your website and also install queries plugs to properly evaluate the performance of your theme and if you notice that the main culprit of slower speed of your site is theme, don’t be afraid of trying some other simpler one. When you are choosing a theme, it is important to keep in mind that a good design theme should not be taken as something with high graphics but it should be something that can provide better loading time.

7: Use of Mobile Device Theme for Mobile Users

Nowadays, most webmasters prefer to use responsive web design because it automatically arranges entire website design for variety of screen sizes for different devices from PCs, laptops to Mobile phones and in this way users are more capable of seeing pages easily and quickly. However, when you are doing this, it simply means you are using a page with same weight but you are also changing overall design to enable it to get fitted into device screen other than PCs. Mobile users normally have slower internet connection which does not bring higher speed and in the result, it takes more time for the page to get fully loaded. If you want to make even a better user experience, rather than making changes in site design, you might like to give a totally different yet so cleaner and more attractive design for the mobile devices. WordPress brings a module which is called “Mobile Theme” that is simple but really great theme for mobile users. There are various other paid and free plugins which can bring you better user experience.

8: Get Hosting from a Well-Known Company

It has also been observed that even the most optimized websites come up with slower speed on weaker servers. When you want to speed up your WordPress site, you should also consider high performance hosting service provider as these servers normally have very high quality equipment which can be really great in boosting overall speed of the site. Also make sure to hire services of experienced technical staff, which will be able to examine your website and will let you know what you actually need to do to increase the speed. You can also look for exclusive WordPress Hosting on Google or other search engine. There are exclusive and fully specialized environment for WordPress that will be really helpful for you. Though, better service providers will also cost you more but they will also help you increase your sale which is of course your ultimate goal.

Conclusion

No matter how high graphical and great looking WordPress website you have, if you are not able to provide better user experience to the visitors by boosting the speed of your website, they will not come back and it simply means, you will be failed to achieve your targets. Therefore, it is really important to follow the above described tips and increase your website pages loading time.