Your website’s speed is crucial to its success. Site speed has a significant impact on many key metrics such as visibility and conversion rates. It is a must to optimize your website’s speed, but it can be difficult to figure out how.
There are many speed tests that you can access to check how your site performs. There are many reasons why your site might be slow. However, there are free WordPress plugins that can help you fix them all.
This post will explain why website speed is so important. We’ll then share solutions for 12 common problems that can cause poor website performance. Let’s get started!
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How important is your website’s loading speed?
Users expect websites to load quickly these days. If pages take longer to load than they are expected, this negatively impacts the User Experience (UX). This is important because if your UX suffers, your conversion rate will also suffer.
Additionally, you’ll see increased page abandonment rates and bounce rates. Studies have shown that a two-second delay in loading can lead to a 103% increase in bounce rates. A 100-millisecond delay in loading can result in a 7% decrease in conversion rates.
Optimizing your website’s performance is essential. Even a fraction of a second counts. Website speed is not only important for whether visitors stay on your site and convert, but it also impacts whether they are able to find it.
Website speed is now a Google ranking factor both for desktop and mobile websites. Your site’s visibility in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), may drop if it is not performing well. This can lead to lower traffic levels.
Speed is crucial for your website’s success. To determine the current status of your website, you can test it if you feel overwhelmed. To find out how long users wait, you can run load speed tests and then work to reduce those numbers.
12 Reasons Why Your Website is Slow and How to Fix It
Once you have a clear picture of the site’s current performance, you can begin optimizing key factors that affect site speed. Let’s take a look at 12 common issues that lead to slow websites, and then discuss what you can do to fix them.
1. Render-Blocking JavaScript Delays Page Loads
JavaScript is the code that makes your site functional and interactive. Your site would look pretty boring without JavaScript. JavaScript, however, can slow down your pages’ loading speed if it isn’t optimized.
A browser must stop trying to display a webpage and load all JavaScript files that it finds first. JavaScript is used to prevent the page from loading quickly.
There are three options to deal with JavaScript render-blocking:
- You can use inline JavaScript to replace the JavaScript files that are external.
- JavaScript can be loaded separately using asynchronous loading.
- Defer JavaScript loading, until the rest is visible to the user.
Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Inline JavaScript can only be used sparingly to improve page speed. Asynchronous loading can lead to issues because files are not loaded in a particular order. Deferring JavaScript is a good option.
2. You are not using a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
A Content Delivery Network is a group of servers located in strategic geographical locations. These servers can hold copies of your website so that users far from your main server can quickly load it.
There are many CDN options available for your WordPress website. Cloudflare, which is also available for videos and images, is one of the most preferred solutions. Customers who purchase our DreamPress Pro and Plus plans will get unlimited CDN usage powered by Jetpack.
You can also load jQuery from a CDN if your website uses it. Because jQuery requires far less code than JavaScript, it can help boost your website’s speed. Google and Microsoft are two of the most popular jQuery CDNs.
3. Your Database has an excessive overhead
Extraneous items are extraneous that can build up over time. These could include logs, transients and other entries generated by plugins or themes. Database queries can take much longer if there is too much “overhead”. Sometimes, this can cause your web server’s to slow down while it waits for your database response.
Optimizing your database by removing overhead will prevent this. Many web hosts permit you to access the database management platform phpMyAdmin through your hosting account. You can access the WordPress Command Line Interface if you’re not able to optimize your tables using phpMyAdmin.
4. Your CSS is not optimized
Your site’s CSS, the code that styles its pages, can cause delays in loading. It is similar to JavaScript. You have a few options to make your CSS look better.
- Combine multiple CSS files from other sources into one file.
- Use inline CSS to replace external CSS.
- To specify when certain CSS files should load, use “media types”
Inline CSS, like inline JavaScript, is limited to small sections of code. You shouldn’t attempt to include all the CSS files in your HTML file if you have many large CSS files. If you have multiple CSS files, it is worth specifying media types and combining them (if possible).
5. OPcache Isn’t Enabled
OPcache, a caching engine built into PHP’s coding language PHP, is a feature that can be used to speed up the loading of your pages. Having OPcache enabled on your PHP site can speed up the loading of your pages and increase its performance.
OPcache will be enabled automatically if you have a website hosted with either our Shared WordPress, or DreamPress plans. Enable it manually if your site is hosted with one of our plans or another web host.
6. Caching Issues Prevent Optimized Page Loading
Browsers can store static files of your website using cache. When users visit your site, their browsers will display the cached data rather than having to reload it.
WordPress users have many options for caching, including using a caching plugin like WPSuper Cache.
7. Large Media Files are Increasingly Loading Times
Images and videos can be large media files. Optimizing media files through compression will help reduce their size and improve your loading speeds.
TinyJPG can be used to compress images online. You can also use several plugins to compress media files within WordPress such as Smush image compression and Optimization.
8. Poorly written scripts can conflict with other site elements
Poorly written JavaScript can lead to compatibility issues that may affect other areas of your website. This can cause longer loading times. A speed test can be done using tools like Pingdom and Webpage Test. This will often highlight scripts that take a while to load.
These files can then be examined more closely to see if there are ways you can improve their performance. You may find it useful to temporarily disable potentially dangerous scripts to observe how your performance scores change.
9. Your site’s code is too bulky
Your website will take longer to appear if there is more code that your web browser must load. the site might be slower if your code is too bulky or has unnecessary characters and line breaks. You can respond by “minifying” your code, which means removing unnecessary elements.
Two popular plugins are available to accomplish this task. Autoptimize Minified code. This includes inlining CSS and optimizing JavaScript. It integrates well into WP Super Cache.
10. Missing Files Are Causing Errors
Sometimes, your WordPress installation might be missing files. Users may experience slower loading times if this happens. Additional requests will be made to locate the files. If the files aren’t found, this process will eventually produce a 404 error .
There are many causes of this issue. Instead of trying to find the cause of the problem, restore your website from the most recent backup. You should then replace the files that are missing with the backup versions.
11. Plugins are weighing down your site
Too many plugins, or too few, can slow down your website and lead to poor performance. To minimize the possibility of this happening, it’s a good idea to remove all plugins that you are not using.
Some plugins may also cause caching issues on your site’s pages. You can identify which plugins are causing problems if you use the Proxy Cache Purge plugin, as described in this article. Navigate to Proxy Cache >Check Caching.
12. Internet issues are affecting specific users’ performance
Poor website performance could also be caused by issues with the Internet Service Provider (ISP) of the user, rather than your site. Slow site speeds could be caused by network congestion, bandwidth restrictions and restrictions, data discrimination, filtering or content filtering.
To determine if your website is experiencing slow loading speeds, you can run traceroute from your computer to your website. This will give you an indication of whether the problem is with your ISP or a site-wide issue.
Why are some websites slow?
Website performance and response times are directly tied to website success. It is worth taking every opportunity to improve them. It is possible to improve your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and User Experience (UX), which will result in better visibility and a higher conversion.
This post has covered 12 common reasons for slow site speeds. Although you should optimize your site in every way possible, it is best to start with the most important issues.
