Your website page speed is the amount of time it requires for the content of a particular page on your website to load correctly – or in more technical terms, “Time to Interactive“, which is the period it takes for your customer’s browser to get all of the information from your web server. Page speed is essential to your search rankings, conversion and user satisfaction.

Website performance or speed optimization is an essential factor in the success of a present-day online small businesses and ecommerce shop. Unremarkable site speed kills an organizations’ desire to have a high user satisfaction, conversion rate and revenue. In a world where products and services are at a website users fingertips, a slow site can drive users to your competitors and make growing or maintaining your online business a daily battle. A slow website also negatively affects your google rankings and search engine results.

Because of Google algorithm revisions, it is getting progressively more twisted and complex to optimize a website for better web index rankings appropriately. Intending to subdue black hat SEO applications which befouls the search results, Google’s updates (to be specific ‘Penguin’ and ‘Panda’) center to guarantee that only quality, easy to use websites acquire top keyword positions.

These algorithm changes require continuous updates and work on your end to maintain site speeds, add quality content and update other aspects of your website pages to get and maintain search engine prevalence. Even though link building and optimized website content are still relevant factors, website load speed is a frequently neglected aspect that can affect SEO performance. Also what’s unique about this type of website optimization is that better load speed is merely average – nothing hidden about it.

Fast browsing speeds and improved website loading time are significant for two fundamental reasons: 

• Visitors can have a superior experience on your website. (usability) 
• Internet search spiders and bots can crawl and index your website more productively (SEO)

Studies shows that 16% of most online guests will leave a webpage that takes over 10 seconds to load. Unsurprisingly, if your website takes 15 seconds to load, you can expect that number to jump to more than 50% of your website visitors. Therefore, it is critical to recognize the importance that the speed of your website has on your search engine optimization (SEO) and users experience.

WordPress is exceptionally famous in content management nowadays and is very versatile allowing businesses and developers to create unique functionality. However, this variety of plugins and functionalities can slow a WordPress site down if not properly tested. Although many developers worked admirably in improving WordPress’ speed, there may still be a few things that  you can do to make your WordPress site significantly faster.

Waiting for a page to load is like waiting on the queue in the real world. But online you can quit and head off to some other place. Forrester Research and Gartner Group reported that online business sites in the US alone are losing $1.1. to $1.3 billion in income yearly to client click-away brought about by slow-loading websites. Is your slow WordPress website sending your potential clients or customers away? If you answered Yes, you are not alone This is a very common problem that many website owners and bloggers experience and don’t know how to fix. The first and most important step should be to identify and understand the general causes of a slow WordPress Site.

So, What hinders website speed and makes a slow website?

There are 6 things that generally cause a WordPress website to load slowly and a simple way to fix them.

1. The speed at which the webserver process the page.(Slow Webhost or plan)

There are many notoriously slow webhosts and plans. Most of the time as your site grows you will need to change from shared plans to a dedicated web server plan to keep up with traffic and web site needs. Check out our blog post for top eleven hosting plans for website speed. 

2. Slow or burdensome Plugins (ex. Contact Form 7)

Not all WordPress Plugins are created equally. Many of them are slow, insert unneeded codes on every page and slow down your site. One of the first optimization steps we, here at Branching Software, recommend is disabling all plugins one by one to see if any are causing the site to be slow. If you are able to find one that causes slowness we recommend removing it and finding an alternative option to get the needed functionality

3. Page Sizes

Reduce the overall size of the page by combining and minifying java script files, optimizing images, combining and minifying CSS files. Remove unneeded or excessively large images.

4. Size of Images and Image Format

Add images with the exact dimensions that will be displayed on the website. This will reduce the webservers need to size the images when the page is requested by a user. You should also utilize the modern image formats such as webp for all your images. This will help to protect your images and your website to load faster. Always optimize your images for the web before uploading them.

5. The distance from the customer to the webserver.

Usually, this depends on your users and where they are located but one thing you can do is see if your Webhost will allow you to select a webserver that is located near your clients. This is especially important for local business owners that provide a service.

6. The broadband (or dial-up) connection speed of the browser.

This is out of your control. Generally, you should optimize your website for use on a slower cell phone or  broadband connection so you can provide the most benefit to as many users as possible. Those with faster connections will also benefit from this. When using the below tools always try to see if you can adjust the connection speed of the browser to optimize for these slower connections.

Below are a few website test tools and WordPress plugins we  recommend when optimizing your website speed.

Pingdom Speed Testing Tools 

Pingdom Tools is an essential site testing device that breaks down the speed and offers a bunch of results and fixes. Scope of reports is selected once the speed of a site has been tried through this website service. This instrument gives separate messages on the testing rate of style sheets and image templates and so forth. All the more along these lines, this instrument makes it simple to think about the load time and page size of a site.

Gmetrix Site Speed Test 

Site page test is another well-known instrument to check the loading speed of a site. Additionally, a site’s performance can be made better through its improvement in the loading speed. This instrument ensures that the load test is completed from different areas from over the globe and allows you to pick connection speeds when logged in.

Google PageSpeed Insight

PageSpeed Insights (PSI) gives an account of the presentation of a page on both desktop and mobile devices and offers recommendations on how that page might be improved. 

PSI gives both lab and field information about a page. Lab information is valuable for investigating issues that have to do about performance, as it is gathered in a restrained environment. Nevertheless, it may not capture real-life website speeds. Field information helps catch valid, genuine client experience – yet has a more restricted arrangement of measurements and correlation as your users internet connections will vary greatly.

This is a great tool that can be accessed individually or reviewed in you google analytics pages. The page speed option in google analytics is especially helpful because it retains a history of speed that can help you correlate to specific changes made on your site.

WP Rocket Optimization Plugin

WP Rocket is an excellent caching and speed optimization plugin for WordPress. WordPress experts acknowledges it as the most impressive caching option. Because of its broad scope of choices and programmed optimization features, it tends to be effectively utilized by experienced WordPress engineers and even some novices. Uniquely different from other caching plugins, you don’t need to be a scientist to dispatch this rocket!

As you can see website speed optimization is the work required and done to improve you sites speed. It is important and can help you to maintain or grow your business without bringing in new traffic. Speed is by far one of the most important factors for a website and for your SEO. If you are struggling with website speed contact us or give me a call and we will be happy to optimize your website speed.