11 Killer Tips to Improve WordPress Site Speed for Better UX

When you have checked your website’s speed? Do you have an idea that your website’s speed affects your UX(User Experience) and search engine ranking too? Your website shouldn’t only engage your visitors, but also ranks high in the Google SERP(Search Engine Result Pages). The bottom line is you can’t afford to have low speed site, so here are some killers tips provided after research that improve your WordPress website UX through it’s speed.

1. Reduce HTTP requests

Ensure to limit the counts of files needed to show your website. It is must to send the corresponding files to that person’s browser, when he/she visits your website. This will include Javascript library references, CSS files, and images. It is expected that every filed used in your website improve designs detracts from its performance. Moreover, WordPress plug-ins is an option to insert extraneous CSS code without adding required styles to your stylesheet.

2. Manage Plug-ins – The Most Better Way

One of the biggest strains on WordPress load times is an excess use of plug-ins. Many plug-ins are required to enhance functionality while some surplus plug-ins should be diminished to enhance site’s speed. So, it is advisable to check the performance of site after installing certain plug-ins. Additionally, you can also find out more lightweight solution to enjoy same functionality. Ensure to use the latest version of WordPress along with the most updated plug-ins to make your site smoother.

3. Cache Content

W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache are the great plug-ins for generating static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog. That simply means you don’t have to create pages over and over again. It is very simple to use plug-in without doing any changes. Moreover, it also delivers better loading speed along with heightened traffic.

4. Minify HTML, CSS and Javascript

Before serving WP site to your visitors, it is advisable to remove all white space from code. Tabs, spaces, and orderly structure that used in coding are more human-readable than HTML, CSS, and Javascript. What the code looks like doesn’t bother by servers and browsers until it’s valid and executes without error. It is advisable to remove whitespace before serving your code for enhancing downloading speed. It is must to leverage a plugin like WP-Minify (good) or W3 Total Cache for handling white space from files as it doesn’t affect the files after editing.

5. Optimize Home Page For Quick Loading Time

It is compulsory for any site owner to optimize home page to reduce loading time as users will be landing there the most regularly. While optimizing home page, it is must to look after many things like:

• Minimize the number of posts on the page
• Remove inactive and unwanted plugins and widgets
• Demonstrate excerpts rather than full posts
• Take out needless sharing widgets from the home page

Implementing all such points helps to optimize your page better ways and helps to load quicker than before.

6. Upload Clear and Small Image Correctly

We have seen many images include a ton of extraneous metadata that enhance your file’s size. Although some experienced hired WordPress developers are failed to reduce image before uploading it on the web that results into be dramatic change in image-intensive designs. Another mistake created by inexperienced webmasters is they are uploading bigger image than what required in design. Pixlr and Image Optimizer are the best tools to use for uploading images without concerning size.

7. Clear Spam Comments

Have you enable service like commenting and trackbacks on your site? If yes, then it is must for you to manage your incoming pingbacks and comments. It is must to empty your spam folder regularly that database doesn’t get caught up with thousands of spam comments that decrease your loading time.

8. Place scripts at the bottom

Give a fair chance to load your file content before any script. Create an aim in your mind about delivering content faster, so users can have more interest to access your website. Below given are some priorities that you must add in your site

• Don’t permit unstyled content to emerge in the browser instead you should place CSS in the <head>
• Load the files needed for interaction like certain external API calls, tabbed widgets, and so on lastly
• Deliver content to visitors faster

9. Pingdom Tools

Pingdom is one of the most well-known tools to uptime performance monitoring services for servers and websites. Admin is using this tool to check the load time for web pages. A complete HTML page, including objects like RSS, Flash, images, CSS, JavaScripts, and frames/iframes are loaded by Full Page Test and shows load time with time bars. 

10. Enabling gZip Compression

Compressing your HTML and CSS files using gZip saves about 50-70% of the file size. This reduces the transfer time as files are much smaller. If you want to add gzip compression then you require IIS or Apache server or something else entirely.

11. Using A Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Using a content delivery network is also one of the best options to deliver web content speedily to numerous users by duplicating the content on many servers and directing the content to users on the basis of proximity.

According to some research, it is studied that implementing all above given points enhance your site’s speed by more than 50% and deliver remarkable User experience that what you are looking for.

After implementing all the points, it is must to check your website speed in the handy resources. Don’t bother the Google. Here we have free online tools for testing website’s speed to measures the affect for better UX.