We all know that nobody likes a slow website. In fact, more than half of internet users will leave your website if it doesn’t start to load within 5 seconds. That is a lot of pressure! Especially when considering that the average load time for websites is 11 to 14 seconds. That means most of us out there are not making our websites quick enough for the average internet user, plus missing out on potential sales and conversions!
Making your website fast can be tricky. There are lots of different elements of your website that can impact your load time and sometimes it can be tricky to work out what to do. In this article, the WorkDash team will be breaking down how you can check your website speed and what you can do to speed it up!
How To Check Your Website Speed
At WorkDash, we have tested just about every platform available. We think the best platform you can use is Google Lighthouse. This gives you all the information you need, plus it is FREE! You can check out a breakdown of what is loading on your site and how long it is taking to do so. This helps you to work out what you need to do to get the site loading faster.
Compress Your Images
One of the biggest forms of files on your website is images, especially uncompressed images. You may be aware that images come in all sorts of file types, with each file type representing something about the image. For example, PNG image file types are great for high-quality, glossy images, however they are huge in size when compared to the smaller WEBP file format. By compressing your images to WEBP you can reduce file size by as much as 80%. By reducing the size of your web pages you can decrease your site load time dramatically.
Minify CSS
If you have used a website builder plugin in your WordPress site then there is a good chance that your site is being slowed down by the structure and combination of the CSS and JavaScript on your site. If you are unfamiliar with CSS and JavaScript, they are essentially the forms of code operating on your site to make it look and work the way that it does. Within this code there are usually spaces and unnecessary characters and lines. These elements slow down the process of your site being loaded by web users. Fortunately, there is some good news! You are able to minify the CSS and JavaScript on your website by combining them and eliminating these spaces, lines and unnecessary characters. Minifying this code speeds up how browsers load your site, giving your WordPress site a faster overall load time.
Clean Out Unused Files
When you are building your site you will often upload images and other files that may never make it onto your visible site. You may also have replaced some images over time as well. Any of these processes can result in loads of unused files and images stuck on your WordPress site. The problem with this is that these unused files and images will sit on your site taking up space and increasing the time it takes to load your website. That means it may be time for a clean! You are able to do this manually within the WordPress Media Library.
What Do You Think?
What do you think about our tips on how to speed up your WordPress site? Having a fast WordPress site is crucial to the success of your business, so this should definitely be on your list of priorities! By trying some or even all of these steps you will be able to turbo-charge the speed of your website. If you need help speeding up your site, get in contact with the WordPress experts at WorkDash. We help our clients to achieve top speeds on their sites to create better user experiences and outperform their competitors.
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