Did you know that there are more than 1.1 billion websites on the internet as of 2022? A large chunk of that number consists of WordPress websites which might be unsurprising to you since WordPress is one of the most popular website platforms out there. For that reason, you might think that it’s easy to build a successful website on WordPress simply because the platform itself is popular, but this might not be the case if you are making some common errors with your site.
Speed is often a problem, so what are some easy ways to speed up a WordPress site? More than that, why is website speed an issue in the first place? Can’t viewers just wait around until your website loads?
Keep reading and learn more about the importance of website speed and how to speed up up site without code.
Why Is WordPress Website Speed So Important?
We currently live in a very fast-paced world and as a result, most websites load very fast. Because most people are used to websites that load in a flash, they will notice if your website is slower than usual. You might think that waiting a few extra seconds for your website to load isn’t that big of a deal, but you would be wrong.
Most people would get impatient waiting for a website to load even if they do only need to wait a few extra seconds. For that reason, they would have no qualms about clicking away from your site in favor of a site that loads almost instantly. This is bad news for your website because if people click away before your website even loads, they won’t be able to see what kind of great content your website has to offer.
More than that, you will be losing many potential customers because of those few stubborn seconds that it takes for your site to load. The problem is that many people don’t know how to fix the speed that their website operates because it often requires the person to dive into the code to do some adjusting. Coding can be complicated and it can be difficult, if not impossible, for some people to learn.
Does that mean you’re out of luck if you have a slow website and can’t fix it without learning code? Not at all! In fact, there are many ways to speed up a website with no code.
All you need to do is adjust some simple aspects of your website. Then, you should be on your way to getting a faster website. If you want the best results, your website should load within two seconds or less.
Don’t Use So Many Plugins on WordPress
If you want to speed up a site, you will have to stop using so many WordPress plugins. One of the biggest reasons why WordPress sites tend to be slow is because there are too many plugins all at once. This is a common mistake that people new to WordPress make.
Many people think that the more plugins they have, the better, but this is not always true. Of course, some plugins are helpful. Some plugins in particular are essential when it comes to building a good SEO strategy and growing your website in different ways.
But then there are plugins that are not so helpful. These plugins might help you accomplish small goals and tasks, but in the long run, they aren’t really doing all that much. You might be reluctant to get rid of some of your plugins, but keep in mind that if you have a lot of them installed, you probably don’t need the majority of them.
By uninstalling a large chunk of your plugins, you will find that your WordPress site will be running faster in no time. This, of course, does not mean that you have to say goodbye to all of your plugins (even though this would make your site as fast as possible). Instead, you will want to keep the plugins that help you the most.
Keeping a few essential plugins on hand won’t do much to harm the speed of your website. The main thing you need to do is downsize your plugins. A good rule of thumb is to never go beyond 20 plugins.
Of course, 20 is the maximum number so you will ideally want to have fewer plugins than that to speed your website along.
Make Sure Your Site Is Staying Updated
WordPress is a very modern platform and it does a good job of staying up to date. However, there are cases where some WordPress sites don’t get the memo and continue to run on an outdated version of WordPress. When it comes to the speed of your site and how to speed up WordPress site fast, this is bad news.
Every time WordPress updates, it does away with any undesirable features from the previous version. In the new, updated version, there are usually a few new features and improvements, even if those features are small. With every update, WordPress sites are able to glide along the cutting edge of technology and load as fast as possible.
But if your WordPress site doesn’t update for whatever reason, your site might start to fall behind due to its slow loading speed. If you have already uninstalled a large chunk of your WordPress plugins and still find that your website is on the slow side, it likely has something to do with the version of WordPress that you’re using. Most people don’t even know that their site has failed to update, so don’t forget to double-check and see for yourself.
If you find that, indeed, your site has failed to update, don’t worry. An easy way to speed up a website in this case does not require any coding or anything complicated to fix. All you need to do is get your site to update to the latest version of WordPress.
While you’re at it, you will also want to make sure that your plugins are operating with the latest version as well. Otherwise, outdated plugins may contribute to the slowness of your website. After the update, you should notice that your website is faster than before.
Fix the Size of Your Images
WordPress sites are full of images. Sites need images for backgrounds, thumbnails, pictures within blogs, product photos, and so on.
After all, without these visuals, WordPress sites would be pretty boring. But there is a problem: WordPress needs to run a lot of code and scripts to load all of these images.
As you can imagine, this can slow down your site quite a lot, especially if your site is full of images. You might even have a bigger problem if the file sizes for many of your images are on the larger side. The larger an image is, the more effort WordPress will need to use to load those images.
As a result, the whole site can end up slowing down due to all those huge image files. The solution to this is not to delete all the images. This would render your website a skeleton of its former self and it would not be very interesting to your viewers.
Instead, you will want to shrink the photos so that their file sizes are smaller. Traditionally, you would need to dive into the code of the website to do this. However, thanks to a few different plugins, the process is easier than ever before.
There are also some websites that can help you resize image files in no time. While this might take some time to fix, it is worth it if you really want to make sure that your site is loading as fast as it possibly can. If you are having trouble resizing your image files with plugins and websites, you can always try changing the format of the images.
JPGs, for example, are smaller than PNG files. Switching the image format can make a big difference in your site’s speed.
Here are a few plugins you can try:
Easy Ways to Speed up a WordPress Site Answered
There are many easy ways to speed up a WordPress site even if you don’t know anything about coding. Having a slow site can be detrimental to your site’s success. Your viewers might even leave your site before it even loads and they won’t get the chance to see what your site has to offer.
To speed up your site, you will want to uninstall any excess plugins, resize images, and make sure your site is running the latest version of WordPress. That way, your site will run as fast as possible. To learn more, contact us here.
