As a WordPress website owner, site speed is a critical element to keep in check. The faster your site loads, the higher chance of a better user experience, lower bounce rate, and higher search engine rankings. With that being said, this post will provide you with our ten top tips to optimise your WordPress website speed.

1. Invest in a faster web host: One of the primary factors that determines the speed of your website is your web hosting. It is essential to choose a reputable web hosting provider with fast and reliable server speeds. We love WP Engine, their server speeds and managed site hosting is the best around in our opinion.

2. Optimise your images: Large size images may significantly slow down your website. Consider reducing image size with lossless compression tools or quality photo editors. This way, you would not compromise on the image quality, and the overall size will be minimised, resulting in enhanced loading speed. There are a number of plugins available for optimisation of you sites images, in our opinion Imagify is one of the best.

3. Use caching plugins: By enabling caching plugins, you allow your website to store an entirely cached version of your website. This cached version loads much quicker than your regular post/page HTML code. It would help if you considered installing plugins like WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache. There are many settings available within these plugins and some can have a detrimental effect on the site so ensure you do your research and make a backup of your sites database and files before starting to play around with the sites cache settings.

4. Minimise HTTP requests: The more requests a page needs to fetch to load, the longer it takes to load. Try to minimize the number of CSS, JavaScript and other external files as they slow down loading time. It’s best to combine them into a single file to help reduce requests.

5. Optimise your database: Database optimisation is essential to speed up your WordPress website performance. A vast collection of irrelevant data and media can slow down your website. Clearing your website’s database and removing unwanted files, drafts, and revisions can significantly help. Always backup your database before doing any database optimisation as you can then restore the data should something not work correctly after the optimisation process.

6. Use Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN ensures that your website’s data is stored across multiple servers worldwide, allowing users to access data that is located closer to them, thus reducing page loading time significantly.

7. Optimise your WordPress theme: Opting for a lightweight and feature-rich theme appropriate to your needs can improve site performance. A fast-loading and responsive theme with an organisational structure and layout can boost the user experience across your website.

8. Keep your plugins updated and limited: WordPress plugins are one of the significant elements that significantly impact site speed. It is crucial to update the plugins regularly and remove what is not necessary. Adding plugins that slow down your website can harm your website’s overall performance.

9. Optimise your website for mobile users: With the upsurge in mobile usage, it is necessary to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. A responsive website design that adapts to different devices/web browsers.

10. Use fast and efficient DNS: DNS resolver speeds can have a considerable impact on the website’s speed. Choose a DNS resolver that resolves requests efficiently and quickly.

So to conclude, is site speed important? YES! Your site speed plays a significant role in the success of your website, resulting in better user engagement and search engine optimisation. By adopting the tips mentioned above, you can optimise your WordPress website, create a better user experience, and ultimately increase your website’s conversion rates.

If you are not sure about how to do the above and need some help maintaining and optimising your site get in touch with us.  We have many years experience helping customers improve their WordPress sites, to ensure they run lightning fast and maximise their online potential.