People are all about their self-expression, and that’s why we seek website hosts that let us customize them to our heart’s content.
There really are WordPress plugins for everything these days, meaning you can represent your services in many great ways. That’s why keeps customers coming back and what makes WordPress so popular.
But what happens if you notice you have a slow WordPress site on your hands?
SiteUpTime specializes in monitoring how well websites are working all the time and how stable their connection is.
We know that many people are used to websites loading extremely fast these days. The internet’s technology has improved so much that we can have expectations like that.
But when a website loads slowly, people are likely to click out after just 40 seconds– and that’s being generous. Most leave after just a few seconds of waiting for a site to load.
So if you are dealing with a slow WordPress site, you’ll want to take action fast if you want to preserve your user base!
How to handle your slow WordPress site
If you use the internet pretty frequently, chances are you’ve come across another WordPress site while you’ve browsed!
It turns out that 22% of new domains are linked to WordPress accounts, making it a force to be reckoned with in the digital world.
WordPress can also boast hosting 14% of the world’s most successful sites.
The point? We know that WordPress can host businesses successfully and let you enjoy your custom website without too much legwork.
So here’s what you can do if you notice your slow WordPress site isn’t pulling its weight.
Remove unnecessary plugins
One of the greatest things about WordPress is that it has so many plugins. There are over 47 thousand if you want to get technical.
But they could also be one cause to your website being slow.
Making use of plugins should be something that you do. After all, they’re there to support you but make sure that you aren’t using too many of them at once.
When someone visits your website, their network will have to download everything on that page instantaneously. This means that the more minimalized your site is as far as plugins go, the faster it will load.
So if your website is loading slowly, you’ll want to ask yourself these questions:
- Have I added a new plugin lately?
If you have, experiment by removing it and seeing if it was the direct cause of your slow WordPress site. This is a quick way of troubleshooting and saving yourself some time.
- Are there any plugins that I can do without?
Many people use more than one plugin on their site, but you may want to take some time to reflect on each one.
Does each plugin you’re using add to the quality and usage of your website? Do people come to your website and make great use of what you’ve added? If not, you’ll want to remove these plugins.
Trimming down excess plugins can clear up your site and allow it to load at faster speeds once all the bulk is gone!
Reduce image sizes
If your WordPress site has many photos on it, you may want to take a second look at the way you’ve set everything up.
Similarly to plugins, having a bunch of photos on your website could slow loading down.
Do you remember the times of dialup? And how we had to wait for an image to load by watching it come up (usually blurry) piece by piece?
Your WordPress site may not get slow enough to take us back all those years, but loading photos does take a lot of time and power.
Help your site work faster by reducing image sizes when you can or creating a separate page for your images by linking to a gallery with a simple “Click to see more” button.
That way you won’t lose your photos and you can speed up your slow WordPress site all at once.
Enable caching
This may be a slightly more technical tip to speed up a slow WordPress site, but it really works.
To help your load times, you will want to enable caching.
Essentially, caching saves your website as a series of files that are much easier for a user’s network to download. In the future, when that same person opens your website again, the “files” will already be saved and easy to open.
WordPress offers a few options to help you cache and optimize your website, as well as some great instructions to help you through the process.
Take steps to help out your homepage
It seems like minimalism is a trend that isn’t going away anytime soon.
Dozens of books and articles have been published about how we should declutter our home and make our lives better. The same goes for our websites and that’s a good thing if you want to speed things up.
If you have a blog, you can speed up your site by only showing small excerpts and linking to the rest of the post with a cut. That way your users can still view everything, just like that photo gallery, without having to load everything all at once.
This can also make your site look more streamlined and approachable once people aren’t greeted with a huge wall of text right off the bat.
You can also remove extra widgets from your landing page by asking yourself if that “visit count” widget is really doing much for you.
Remember, the goal of “minimalism” with your website is to only keep what’s working for you.
Trim down the excess and enjoy faster loading times as a result.
Want to know more?
If you want to learn about other topics that can really help you boost the way your company is online, take a look at the rest of our blog posts!
Our job is may seem simple but it’s essential and that’s why over 125,000 companies choose to work with us!
And if you have any questions, we are always here to help you! Contact us anytime and we’ll get to work changing the amount of time your site spends earning you money online.
