WordPress,Your guide to speeding up your website

Do you have a problem with your website being so slow that it affects its ranking in search engine results and user experience, and you don’t know why? Well, throughout this article, we are going to learn about the importance of your website speed, its impact on website ranking and user experience, and how to speed up your website.

Why is website acceleration important?

Have you ever entered a website and found it slow and unresponsive, how did you feel? I suspect you were very upset and probably left the site quickly. This is the case for everyone, no one likes slow websites, they are boring, leave a negative impression and make the user experience bad.

1. Site speed forms the first impression of your site

The speed of loading your pages forms the first impression about your site, as the fast site suggests to the visitor that he is on a professional, serious and reliable site. But if he finds it slow, he will feel that the owner of the site is an amateur who does not know what he is doing, and this will harm your site’s reputation in the long run.

2. Improve site ranking

Website speed is one of the most important ranking factors adopted by Google and other search engines. Users do not like access to slow sites; Because they are annoying and waste their time. Therefore, Google prefers to present fast sites and pages in search results, especially in mobile searches.

3. Website speed affects visits

One second increase in page load time will reduce the number of visits to your site by 11%. Every website owner knows that increasing the number of visits to the site is not easy, and requires a lot of time, effort and money. So, before you start designing an SEO or marketing plan for your website, you must first work on speeding up your website to the maximum, otherwise your effort will be in vain.

4. Website speed affects bounce rate

The slower the site, the higher the bounce rate, which is a metric that measures the percentage of visitors who leave the site without browsing additional pages of the site. Bounce rate is one of the most important indicators and measures of sites, and Google attaches special importance to it, so that it made it a measure, especially in the Google Analytics tool.

Statistics prove that the page load time is directly related to the bounce rate, as the bounce rate increases by about 32% if the loading time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, and increases by 90% if it increases to 5 seconds.

5. Site speed and user loyalty

The Internet has expanded greatly in recent years, so in any field you go, you will find great competition, especially in profitable areas such as e-commerce. Therefore, gaining and maintaining user loyalty has become one of the strategic goals of digital projects.

52% of users confirm that site loading speed is important to their site loyalty, and this is normal. Loyalty to the site means that the user visits the site frequently, and relies on it to find out information and the latest developments, or to obtain the services he needs, whether for communication, entertainment, learning, work, or others. They will probably enter it every day, and no one wants to suffer every day waiting for the pages of a slow website to load.

6. Speed is important on mobiles

Most Internet users use their mobile phones to surf the Internet. This makes the site loading speed the most important thing on mobile phones. In addition, most mobile users are accustomed to using applications, especially applications owned by large companies.

These applications are fast and provide their services almost instantly. Therefore, mobile users expect websites to be as fast as applications, so there is no doubt that 74% of mobile users leave the site if it takes more than 5 seconds to load.

7. Impact on sales

Online stores are the sites most affected by loading speed. The slow store loses a lot of customers and sales, because the digital buyer wants an easy, fast and comfortable buying experience, and is not ready to wait for a long time to navigate between the pages of the store.

More than half of cart abandonments are due to a slow site, and this is a huge loss for the store owner who worked so hard to attract the visitor and then convince them to buy. Even if the visitor filled the shopping cart and was about to pay, he retreated and left the site without buying.

Website acceleration should be a top priority for every shop owner, otherwise he will lose his marketing efforts and be in vain, depriving himself of many sales and customers.

8. The impact of website acceleration on user experience

We all hate long waits, especially while surfing the Internet. We are used to a fast browsing experience, especially on large sites such as Google, Facebook, and others. So when you go to a normal site, you expect a similar experience in terms of speed.

Google has become focused in recent years on the user experience, so that it recently announced a major update called Page Experience, an update that aims to measure the quality of user experience provided by sites based on some indicators, on top of which are the Core Web Vitals performance indicators.

What are the key web performance indicators and their relationship to site speed?

Core Web Vitals are the main metrics that Google relies on to measure the level of performance of your pages, and they are based on three pillars:

The speed of displaying the largest part of the content on the page (LCP)

Measures the time required to display the largest element on a page, which is usually a large image, video clip, or large text section of the page. It is calculated relative to the moment the page was loaded. Loading time should not exceed 2.5 seconds to ensure a comfortable and good user experience.

First Input Timeout (FID)

It means how quickly the components of the page interact with the user, and it is an indicator that represents the time between the moment the visitor interacts with the page (clicking on a link or button, scrolling the page…), and the moment the page actually responds to the visitor. Google recommends that this indicator should not exceed 100 microseconds.

Cumulative Design Variables (CLS)

Measures the sum of all the displacements of the elements on the page from their original positions. A value of 0 means that there is no shift, and all page elements stay in place, and the more elements are shifted, the higher the CLS value.

Google has adopted this indicator to prevent manipulation attempts by some sites, as it deliberately changes the positions of buttons and controls at the last moment to force the visitor to click on a button or link without intending it.

A value of 0.1 is what Google recommends that websites not exceed.

The basic web performance indicators have become one of the basics of SEO that all SEO experts and site owners should learn to measure, as Google will integrate them into all of its analysis tools, which proves their future importance in measuring the user experience that has become a focus of Google in recent years.

If you meditate on the axes of the three basic web performance indicators, you will notice that the first two indicators (LCP and FID) are directly related to the speed of the site. The first measures the speed of drawing page components, and the second measures the speed of page response. Google, making it the basis for measuring two key web performance indicators.

Website speed test tools

Website speed is an intuitive thing, you can tell if your site is slow without any tools, but it is preferable to use specialized tools because they give you accurate metrics that you can rely on to measure the progress of your website acceleration strategy.

They also often offer tips for speeding up the website, and alert you to kinks in your site, or elements that slow down the site as a whole. Here are a range of free tools that will allow you to measure your site speed:

PageSpeed Insights

A tool from Google to measure site speed that provides a detailed report on the site and loading speed. PageSpeed Insights is the best site speed measurement tool because it is from Google, and since Google is the largest search engine responsible for ranking your site, its evaluation of your site’s speed is the most important, because it reflects its point of view.

Another advantage of PageSpeed Insights is that it will give you a detailed report on the key web performance indicators that we reviewed earlier. Thus, it will give you an accurate view of the state of your site based on these indicators, which form the basis of the latest Google update.

Enter the tool’s website, enter your site address, and analyze the details of the report that Google will issue to you. Google will show you some important metrics about your site’s speed, especially key web performance indicators, both on desktop and mobile, as well as a bunch of tips for speeding up your website.

Gtmetrix

This tool is one of the best site quality assessment tools, as it not only measures site speed, but also measures many other indicators. In addition, the basic web performance indicators adopted by Google, such as: the speed of the final loading of the site page and the download of the page’s dom tree, which is information that can benefit developers and site acceleration experts.

Using this tool is easy, just enter your site address, and the tool will show you important details about your site. The report is relatively large, and covers all aspects of the site. However, what interests us today is the performance report, which you will find in the Performance tab.

There is another feature that this tool allows you to do, which is to compare the performance of your site with another site. This is very useful for evaluating your site against competitor sites and checking that you are keeping pace with them, and why not outperform them. Click the compare button on the right of the page, then enter the address of the site you want to compare with yours, and get a detailed report on the differences between the two sites.

Performance Budget Calculator

This tool allows you to calculate and evaluate the size of site assets and files in order to reduce your site speed below a certain threshold, and what is more, it allows you to choose the type of Internet connection that you want to measure your site speed based on.

For example, if you have an online store or real estate site operating in your city, and most of the city’s residents use a 3G internet connection (about 1.6Mbps), you can rely on this tool to measure the speed of your site when it is loaded over this type of connection. It will also determine the site’s budget, that is, the maximum size of files, images, videos, and scripts that should not be exceeded to achieve the speed you want.

Click the calculate button and get a detailed report on the site’s budget. You will also get a table containing the estimated speeds for your site in all types of Internet connection.

isitwp

This tool specializes in measuring the speed of WordPress sites. If your site is built on WordPress, enter your site address and you will get detailed stats and metrics about your site, such as load time, number of HTML requests, page size, as well as key web performance indicators.

You’ll also get a detailed report and comprehensive analysis of your site, such as site assets, programmatic tasks that increase load time, and redirects. With tips for addressing site problems, gain some seconds in loading pages.

The tool will also show you which assets load on page load, and how long each one takes. This will help you to spot the assets or elements that are slowing down the site to eliminate or improve them.

Website acceleration strategies

The reasons for a slow website are many and varied, and include the software and design aspects of the website. Moreover, the type of hosting and the power of the server. If your site is slow, then most likely the reason for this is not outside the list of reasons that we review the following solutions:

Change hosting company

There are many hosting companies, and they vary in their speeds and advantages. If the hosting on which you host your site is slow in the geographical area you are targeting, then your site will be slow. Avoid cheap hosting companies, and look for companies that are well known and have a good reputation, such as bluehost or hostgator.

If your site is on a slow hosting, you should move it immediately to another hosting, because web hosting is the foundation on which your site is built. If the foundation is not solid, attempts to speed up your website won’t help, because the problem is at the source.

Moving a site might sound daunting, but you can actually move all of your site’s content from one host to another in no time. If you do not have the programming experience for that, you can purchase a programming service to transfer the contents of your site to another faster hosting in a short time from the Khamsat platform, the largest Arab market for microservices.

Reduce large files

When a user enters your site’s address into the browser, the browser loads all the content of your site to display to the visitor. So, if your site has large files, such as images and videos, it will naturally take longer to load.

Avoid multiplying photos and videos unless necessary. Also, make sure to compress large images to reduce their size. There are plenty of tools that allow you to compress images for free, such as tinyjpg, which compresses both png and jpeg images.

Compress CSS and JavaScript files

Your site requires downloading CSS and JavaScript files, which are software files that allow you to adjust the design and appearance of your site’s pages, and control the behavior of the site and how its elements interact with the user. If your site is complex and has many features and advanced designs, this may require the use of dozens of CSS files and JavaScript. If these files are not optimized and compressed, they can add significant time to your loading time and make your site slower.

Although the size of these files is generally small compared to photos and videos, their impact is more serious. Unlike images and videos that even if they are loaded late, your site will function normally, CSS and JavaScript files are necessary for the site to work, and your site will not respond to the user until it is fully loaded.

This means that your site will be paralyzed until it is finished downloading, and this will be very annoying to visitors and affect the user experience very negatively. Therefore, these files must be compressed and reduced.

There are several free tools that allow you to compress CSS and JavaScript files into two files (one for CSS and one for JavaScript) to speed up their loading, such as the minifier tool that compresses files directly from the browser.

Avoid excessive use of fonts

Avoid excessive use of text fonts. It is preferable to rely on two or three lines as a maximum on your site. That’s because fonts, like all visual page elements, increase load time, and too many fonts can slow down your site.

Use of Content Delivery Networks

A content delivery network are servers distributed all over the world, usually hosting css, javascript, etc. files and scripts. Any site can use them to send part of the site’s contents through them, as these networks allow relieving pressure on the server hosting the site.

When a visitor enters your site, their contents are downloaded from your server and sent to them wherever they are, even if they are on the other side of the earth. This puts a lot of pressure on the server and increases the load time. That is why many website owners resort to content delivery networks to send part of the site’s content through the servers of these fast networks distributed all over the world.

Use website caching

Caching technology relies on storing the contents of your site on the customer’s machine, so that when the customer accesses your site for the first time, the contents of the site are stored on their machine. And when he enters it again, there is no need to reload the site from the server, but rather the copy stored in the device is used, unless there is an update in the content of the page to be visited.

This is one of the best techniques used to speed up a website, as it allows to speed up the loading of the website a lot. Especially, if your visitors visit the site a lot. Instead of reloading the site every time they visit your site, the content of the site will be stored on their local machine.

Avoid redirects

Avoid too much redirecting visitors to other pages, because it reloads pages from the beginning, as the visitor waits until the page whose address he entered loads, then he has to wait again until he is transferred to another page, which can double the loading time.

Improve server response time

Server response time is affected by several factors, such as hosting quality, plan type, server load, and memory (RAM) allocated to your site. Verify that all of these elements are optimized to ensure fast loading of your pages.

How to speed up a wordpress site

WordPress is the most popular content management system, and it is the first choice for Arabic website owners due to its ease of use and its many advanced features. Therefore, we will dedicate a paragraph to review some of the techniques that will help speed up the WordPress site, taking into account its specificities:

Constant update of WordPress

WordPress is an open source content management system, and new versions of it are constantly emerging. Each new release brings with it improvements to the WordPress system, bug fixes and bug fixes, all of which will help speed up your website and improve its performance.

The same can be said about plugins and templates. You should make sure to constantly update the plugins and templates activated on your site and use the latest versions of them.

Avoid too many additives

One of the best features of WordPress is the large number of plugins available, both free and paid. Whatever feature you want on your site, you will certainly find a dedicated WordPress plugin for it, and you will often find it free.

The large number of add-ons and the ease of installing them makes some website owners a lot of them, so you find many of them install dozens of add-ons, most of which they rarely use. When you install a new plugin in your WordPress site, the number and size of files and scripts that WordPress has to execute or load increases, and this increases load time a lot and slows down your site.

The matter becomes worse if the owner of the site installs a poorly written add-on, as the WordPress plugins repository is open and free, any developer can develop an add-on and then upload it to the repository for people to download, even if the developer is a beginner. As a result, some of the plugins are shoddy and can choke your site down and slow it down.

Only install the plugins you need, and before installing any plugin check that it is fast and won’t slow down your site. And if you notice that your site slows down after installing an add-on, disable it and then measure the site speed to verify that it is not the cause.

Avoid lazy molds

Sometimes the problem is with the theme and not with the plugins. As with plugins, anyone can develop a WordPress theme and upload it to the theme repository. Therefore, some WordPress themes are slow, whether because of their poor programming, or because of the large number of features they are trying to add to the site.

Verify that the template you’re working with is fast and uses established coding best practices. There is another solution, which is to develop a WordPress template from scratch, because unlike ready-made templates that try to add the largest number of features to attract website owners, especially paid templates.

Developing your own theme means that you will only add the features that you want, and that you will not burden your site with features that you do not need, which will help you speed up your website. On the Khamsat platform, you will find dozens of high-quality services for designing WordPress templates by experts who specialize in programming and designing fast templates that meet your needs and include only the features you want.

Thumbnail add-ons

We talked about the problem with large images earlier, and how they can slow down websites. Fortunately, the solution to this problem is very easy for WordPress site owners, so they don’t have to waste time optimizing and compressing images, as there are several WordPress plugins that will automatically compress your site’s images, such as Smush, which has more than a million websites running.

Caching plugins

There are several free WordPress plugins that allow you to add caching to your site automatically and without any programming experience, such as WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache plugins that are powered by millions of websites.

Background task management

WordPress performs some background tasks from time to time, which are scheduled tasks that the site performs on the server. Most of these tasks are done by the installed plugins. For example, some plugins create backups of your site every now and then. Other plugins add or import blogs and articles at scheduled times, in addition to some background tasks that WordPress itself performs, such as automatic and continuous updating of plugins.

Try to minimize background tasks as much as possible. If you are using a WordPress plugin to create backups of your site, be sure to reduce the number of times you create copies, and try to schedule them so that backups are created at times when traffic is low on the site, such as midnight.

Split comments

If your site has a lot of comments, loading them all can slow down the page, so it may be best in this case to split the comments into parts that load only as necessary.

To break comments into pieces, go to Settings > Discussion, check the Limit number of comments box and choose how many comments will appear on each comment page.

Avoid uploading files and videos directly to WordPress

WordPress allows uploading large files and videos directly to the media library, and using them in your site’s pages and articles. If your site has a lot of videos, or you allow visitors to upload large files stored in the server, it will slow down your site a lot. Every visitor who uploads a file or video will drain your server resources and slow down your site.

For example, if you own an educational site that offers video lessons, instead of hosting those lessons on the site, it may be better to host them on YouTube and display them on your site. This will reduce the load on your site, as the transmission of video data will take place through YouTube’s servers, not through your server.

Use lazy load

If your site has a lot of images and videos, it is recommended to use deferred loading technology to speed up your website. Deferred loading technology is based on uploading only the images and videos that are visible to the visitor, and as the visitor scrolls the page and descends to the bottom, the other images and videos are loaded.

This technology will speed up the website; Because it rationalizes the use of server resources. Because when a visitor enters one of your pages, WordPress defaults to loading everything once even if the visitor exits after 1 second, which would be a waste of the site’s resources.

There are several WordPress plugins that allow you to add the deferred loading feature to your site, such as the Lazy Load plugin, which makes sure that your site does not display images and smart frames unless they are visible to the visitor.

Clean up the database

Over time, data accumulates in the database, and much of that data you don’t need, such as data left behind by broken or deleted plugins, or outdated templates. You have to constantly clean your database of unused data.

There are several WordPress plugins that allow you to clean up your site’s database, such as WP-Sweep which removes deleted or spam comments and duplicate post metadata, as well as optimizing database tables to speed it up.

Use the latest version of PHP

WordPress uses PHP as a back-end language for server management and dynamic content generation. PHP is an open source programming language, and new versions are constantly emerging. So you should make sure that you have the latest version installed on your server, as it is usually faster.

Website acceleration has become very important, especially after Google’s latest page experience update that went into effect in May 2021. If you need professional help to speed up your website as much as possible, you can purchase site acceleration services from experts who will analyze your site and spot the kinks. The defect in it and the reasons for its slowness, and they treat them in order to speed it up faster.