One of the downsides to using a CMS is that websites built with content management systems tend to get heavier than static HTML sites.
Adding the weight of themes and plugins makes things even worse. But, if you’re using WordPress for your business you’re in luck, because WordPress offer many different ways to optimize a website to perform at its best.
Why should you care about your website’s loading speed? Well, the success of your entire business depends on how fast your website loads. People have very low patience when it comes to browsing the web and if a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, they will immediately close the tab and move on.
You may have already tried all the basics, like finding a fast web hosting provider and installing caching plugins. Now it’s time to try something different. In this article, we share some of the unique tricks you can try to boost your website performance. Have a look.
Offload JavaScript Libraries
Google recently opened up a database full of open-source JavaScript libraries called The Google Hosted Libraries. What this library does is it allows you to load popular JavaScript libraries from Google’s global content distribution network instead of loading them locally from your servers.
This will not only speed up your website’s loading time but it will also make sure your website’s core files are always stable and up-to-date.
To implement this strategy, you’ll have to carefully scan your website theme to see if it uses any of these popular open-source JavaScript libraries and replace them with the direct links from Google Hosted Libraries.
Obviously, you should seek help from an expert to get this part done and always remember to make backups before making any changes to your website.
Replace JavaScript With CSS3
Most of the today’s WordPress themes use many fancy JavaScript effects like parallax scrolling and animations to grab the attention of the visitors. This is an effective strategy used to increase user engagement.
However, a major downside to using animations and effects is that it adds a considerable amount of time to a website’s page loading speed. Don’t worry you don’t have to get rid of your beautiful animations. Just consider replacing JavaScripts.
You may not be aware that the latest version of Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS3, is now capable of doing much more than styling web pages. CSS3 is now a powerful web language of its own and it’s even capable of replacing JavaScript.
Try to use pure CSS3 effects and animations instead of JavaScript whenever possible to cut down a few seconds off your page loading time.
Compress The Images
Images are one of the biggest culprits behind slow loading websites, especially for blogs since they use lots of images in every blog post.
Even if you resize the images before uploading them to your blog, those images will still add up to most of your page size. The best way to fix this problem is to compress your images.
You can use a WordPress plugin like SmushIt or Imagify to get that job done. These plugins will automatically compress and optimize your blog images without affecting its quality. You won’t even need to resize your images.
Lazy Load Images And Comments
No matter how you compress and optimize the images on your blog, they will still take up most of the page loading time. An easy way to fix this is to load images on request. This will make sure that each image on your web pages and blog posts are loaded only when a user scroll down the area containing the image.
You can do the same for your comments section to lazy load the dozens of gravatar images and make them appear only when users scroll all the way down to your blog posts.
BJ Lazy Load is a popular plugin you can use to lazy load both images and comments at the same time. The plugin is also compatible with iFrames so it will lazy load the embedded videos on your blog posts as well.
Reduce HTTP Requests
If you’ve already tried the Pingdom Speed test, then you may have noticed a scoring factor in its results page that says “Requests” with a big number right below it. That section shows the number of HTTP requests on a certain webpage.
HTTP requests are sent for each and every component on your website, including the stylesheets, images, scripts, trackers, and more. The more components your website has more requests will be sent and more time it will take for your page to load.
Cutting down on HTTP requests is not a job for a beginner. You should seek help from an expert developer to fix these. Nevertheless, if you have experience in web development, you can do it yourself by minifying your CSS stylesheets, removing unnecessary JavaScripts, and getting rid of Flash-powered elements.
Switch to HTTPS
The difference between HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) is pretty big. It’s not just a technology used to securing connections and information transfer but it also offers faster loading times.
According to developers, HTTPS websites are about 80% faster than HTTP websites. There are many reasons behind this speed boost, like the use of HTTP/2.
Switching to HTTPS is easy. You can grab an SSL certificate for your website for free and switch your WordPress website into HTTPS using a plugin like Really Simple SSL to easily configure your website to use HTTPS.
Keep in mind that once you turn your website to HTTPS, all your social media share counts will reset. You’ll also have to update your Webmaster and Analytics settings as well. But, if you’re starting a fresh website you won’t have to worry about that.
Use A CDN
A CDN or Content Delivery Network is a technology currently being used by the majority of blogs and websites all around the web. The main task of a CDN is to deliver your website content to your visitors through a network of proxy servers located around the world, making the data available to your visitors faster than ever.
Cloudflare is one of the most popular CDN providers available today. Their free plan is great for a small blog or a website. The site also includes a series of Video guides on how to switch to a CDN, which you can follow to easily add a CDN to your website.
Implement AMP
If you’ve ever noticed a website load instantly on your smartphone or tablet, then you have already witnessed the power of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
“51.3% of all users are now using mobile devices to browse the web while only 48.7% use desktop computers,” according to StatCounter.
AMP is an open-source project that is used to create mobile-friendly versions of a web page to make websites load faster on mobile devices. Google is a big fan of AMP supported websites and gives a major boost to AMP pages on search results as well.
WordPress has an official plugin that generates AMP versions of blog posts and pages on your website. You can use the plugin to get started with AMP and optimizing your website to perform faster on mobile devices.
Over to You
It’s like how they say, there’s more than one way to supercharge a website. There are plenty more ways you can try to boost your website loading speed, like removing unnecessary plugins and compressing static files.
Don’t end your search here. Keep looking for more ways to improve your website performance. And if you know any other great strategies, share them with us in the comments section.
BIO: Pulkit is a WordPress writer and tech follower. He loves helping people with website growth and content management. When he is not writing for tech sites, he can be found discovering new WordPress tools.
