12 WordPress Optimizations for Improving Speed Performance

Just how important is website speed? Here is some perspective.

Research shows that 47% of consumers expect a website to load in two seconds or less, and 40% of visitors will abandon any website that takes more than three seconds to load.

In other words, loading speed is paramount for a website when it comes to making a good first impression. Although important in their own right, factors like aesthetics, functionality, and features are decidedly secondary considerations.

Optimizing your website for speed is vital for three main reasons:

• Speed is key to determining user experience. Visitors perceive faster websites as being more responsive, professional, and competent. Nothing can be more annoying for speed-obsessed visitors than a slow-loading website.
• Speed affects a website’s SEO ranking. Google prioritizes site speed to determine rankings for search engines because it understands that faster websites create happier users. Speeding up is as important for website owners as it is for internet users.
• Website speed determines conversions. Studies show that a one-second lag in web page response time can cut conversions by 7%. For an e-commerce website, that could mean thousands or even millions in lost revenue annually.

This article lists the best tips to help you speed up your WordPress website. You’ll learn how to:

1. Choose a good host

2. Use a lightweight WordPress theme

3. Install a page optimization plug-in

4. Delete unused plug-ins

5. Clean up your media library

6. Optimize your WordPress images

7. Keep your WordPress website up to date

8. Don’t upload audio/video files directly to WordPress

9. Delete or limit unused fonts

10. Disable WordPress auto-updates

11. Focus on a mobile-friendly approach

12. Use HTTP/2

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1. Choose a good host

The speed and performance of your WordPress site depend on your chosen web host.

Additionally, there are several different WordPress hosting plans to suit different kinds and sizes of websites. The type of hosting plan you choose also impacts website speed.

WordPress hosting plans include the following.

• Shared hosting. Runs off large shared servers. Ideal for blogs and basic websites.
• Managed WordPress hosting. Offers extra privacy and services like automatic WordPress updates.
• VPS hosting. Combines added privacy and control. Good for high-traffic blogs and small businesses.
• Dedicated server hosting. Runs off leased physical web servers. Ideal for very high-traffic websites.
• Free hosting. Often slow, with strings attached (like mandatory ads).

With so many companies claiming to offer the fastest WordPress hosting, deciding which to use can be difficult.

Keep these two things in mind:

• Server load speed should be under 300 milliseconds
• The host should verifiably provide at least 99% uptime

Choose a host that guarantees quick loading for your website’s type and size.

Use resources like Google Analytics, Google’s Core Web Vitals, or Pingdom to understand how users experience your website.

2. Use a lightweight WordPress theme

WordPress themes make a huge difference in your website’s load speed.

Elaborate themes with high-resolution pictures and multiple functionalities can be great for some uses, but they end up slowing down the user experience.

A lightweight WordPress theme is SEO-friendly and coded to the high standards of your users.

WooCommerce has a wide selection of lightweight themes for e-commerce websites.

However, given the hundreds of thousands of themes out there, selecting a lightweight theme is easier said than done.

Several factors determine how fast a WordPress theme works:

• Weight. Things that add weight to a theme include high-resolution images, effects, and animation. The amount of coding required for these drags down page speed.
• Design. Responsive designing automatically loads your website according to the visitor’s screen size. It means you don’t need separate versions for desktop and mobile devices.
• Compression. This is the process of reducing file sizes to enable faster site loads. The best compression methods can reduce data sizes by up to 70%.

Multiple online resources let you speed-test WordPress themes before making a choice.

3. Install a page optimization plug-in

WordPress speed optimization plug-ins (SOPs) can radically improve page load times.

Plug-ins like Autoptimize improve website performance and speed by making small changes to its back end, like caching website files, cutting down image sizes, and compressing code.

You can expect several benefits from WordPress SOPs, including:

• Reduced page size and bandwidth savings of up to 80%
• Improved user experience and increased visitor time on pages
• Higher search rankings for both desktop and mobile devices
• Overall website performance improvement

WordPress SOPs have different approaches to speeding up websites. They include:

• WordPress caching plug-ins. These store frequently accessed website data in a cache for faster access. For instance, WP Rocket and W3 Total Cache.
• Minifying plug-ins. Minification compresses CSS files and JavaScript files to improve responsiveness and load speeds.
• Lazy load plug-ins. These load specific website elements like images and thumbnails only when needed. Smush is one such plug-in.

You can choose to install just one or a combination of plug-ins to reduce bounce rates and dramatically improve page load times. There are also plug-ins like W-P Optimize that pack multiple functions.

Use an analytics tool like GTMetrix to test the performance of your web pages after installation.

4. Delete unused plug-ins

Plug-ins bring functionality to your website, but they also add weight to your WordPress database and slow download speeds. Unused plug-ins can clutter your dashboard and add vulnerability to your website. So if you’ve no use for a particular plug-in, removing it is best.

WordPress allows users to turn off or deactivate plug-ins as an alternative to uninstalling them. Deactivating makes sense only if you wish to turn off specific functionalities for a plug-in. A full delete works best if you’re sure you won’t need the plug-in again.

Deactivating and deleting unused plug-ins is fairly straightforward. However, WordPress doesn’t allow you to delete a plug-in immediately; you must deactivate it first.

You’ll have to do a cleanup after deleting a plug-in to ensure it hasn’t left any unwanted data behind. There are several ways to do that, including manually or using another plug-in.

5. Clean up your media library

Anytime you upload an image to your media library, WordPress makes several copies of it to fit different theme and plug-in requirements. As your website grows, you’d be adding hundreds or thousands of images with multiple copies.

As a result, your media library could bloat with files without your knowledge. Combine that with automatic backups that can take up considerable space on your server and increase website loads, and you’re left with files slowing down your website, reducing available storage space, and raising hosting costs.

You can easily delete unused files and images by going to the dashboard, selecting each individual item, and clicking the “delete permanently” option. There are several WordPress plug-ins for image cleanup if you find the manual process overwhelming.

You might also want to make a backup copy of your website before cleaning out your media library. Last-resort features like WP post revisions help you revert to an earlier version of your website if you forget to complete the backup.

6. Optimize your WordPress images

High-resolution images can certainly make your website pop, but they also slow it down.

Image optimization can work wonders to speed up loading time and intensify user experience. It will also free up server space and allow you to make better use of server resources.

There are three ways to optimize images to speed up WordPress websites:

• Resizing. WordPress uses four size standards for each image: thumbnail (150 x 150 pixels), medium (300 x 300 pixels), large (1024 x 1024 pixels) and full size (original image size). A built-in feature allows you to resize individual images.
• Compressing. This involves reducing the file size of a PNG or JPEG image. You can do this manually with image editing software or use an image compression plug-in to do the job for you. GZIP compression is one example.
• Using CDN. A content delivery network (CDN) redirects to the nearest geographically distributed server to load images and videos faster. There are several CDN options available, depending on your requirements. Cloudflare is one such service.

7. Keep your WordPress website up to date

Like your mobile phone’s operating system, WordPress needs periodic updating for security patches or added functionality.

Themes and plug-ins also require regular updating. You’ll want to always keep your WordPress website updated to the latest version. Updated themes ensure peak WordPress performance and enhanced security for your website.

While WordPress has an auto-update feature, we recommend doing it manually. Keeping themes, plug-ins, and WordPress updated to the latest version at all times will improve user experience and load speeds.

8. Don’t upload audio/video files directly to WordPress

Audio and videos on your homepage are great to attract visitors to your website and keep them engaged. The flip side is that they bog down load speeds by eating into storage space and bandwidth.

Uploading audio or video to your website means putting the entire file in your WordPress media library. As you add files, you strain both your storage space and hosting resources.

The easier alternative is to embed your audio and video files rather than uploading them. Most audio and video files on social media are embedded. Essentially, embedding means uploading your files to a third-party website like YouTube and linking them back to your website.

Embedding will help you optimize audio and video quality, make it easy to share multimedia content, save on bandwidth, and improve website traffic.

9. Delete or limit unused fonts

The number of fonts on your WordPress website can slow downloading speeds. Externally hosted fonts, like Google Fonts, can affect site optimization and drive down the user experience.

One way to deal with this issue is to delete external libraries like Google Fonts from your website.

Another option is to move external font files to your own server and host them locally. You can also use variable fonts, a format that lets you store multiple font styles in just one or two files instead of separate files for every font.

Deleting and limiting unused fonts can significantly improve WordPress site speeds and enhance user experience.

10. Disable WordPress auto-updates

WordPress automatic updates occasionally create havoc and, in rare cases, crash websites. Enabling auto-updates on WordPress can ruin themes, cripple plug-ins, and affect major features on your website.

These issues arise because the latest update can have compatibility conflicts with existing themes and plug-ins. Although all updates are thoroughly tested across metrics before release, it is practically impossible to test them for all possible functionality combinations.

The easy way to avoid such negative outcomes is to disable automatic updates for your WordPress website. The manual update feature lets you backup your website before testing updates for compatibility and avoid possible disruptions or downtime.

The flip side is that you’ll have to manually update WordPress themes and plug-ins. It’s perhaps better to spend a little time tweaking updates than dealing with a dysfunctional website.

11. Focus on a mobile-friendly approach

More than 92% of internet users worldwide log in with a mobile device. In comparison, only 67% use a computer.

The argument for having a mobile-friendly website is, therefore, pretty convincing. The best way to keep up with changing preferences is to optimize your WordPress website for mobile devices.

Here are a few things you can do to optimize your website for mobile users:

• Use a mobile-optimized theme. You can choose one that is already optimized for mobile devices or use a plug-in to render it. Test the theme extensively before installing it.
• Add a responsive menu. A responsive menu automatically adjusts for easy navigation according to the user’s screen size. If your theme doesn’t have an option for a responsive menu or sliders, use a plug-in to configure the feature.
• Be touch-sensitive. Mobile internet use relies entirely on touch navigation. Use a theme that allows easy interface with site elements using touch. Plug-in support is also available for this feature.

Use test tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check your website’s performance across devices.

12. Use HTTP/2

Of all the tips discussed so far, this one can have the biggest impact on your website’s performance issues.

HTTP, or HyperText Transfer Protocol, is an application used to load web pages on a browser. HTTP/2 can download multiple files simultaneously from a server to load a website in less time.

HTTP/2 is particularly effective on mobile devices, even under slow network conditions.

Here’s how HTTP/2 is faster and more efficient:

• It allows faster connections between the web browser and server
• It provides a more efficient connection
• It lets you transfer files simultaneously rather than sequentially
• It allows you to temporarily store files on the browser (browser caching) for later use

Most hosting providers like SiteGround already support HTTP/2, so implementing it for your website shouldn’t be difficult. You can also use this resource to check if your website is already enabled for HTTP/2.

Need help? Find an expert WordPress developer

Not everyone has the time or technical expertise to put these tips into action.

That shouldn’t mean postponing your WordPress website optimization. At Upwork, you can find talented, independent WordPress developers who can work wonders with your website in no time.

Browse through our extensive list of WordPress developers and hire one today.

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