10 Ways to Speed Up your WordPress Site’s Performance
For a website to be effective, it needs good performance. This means that the site’s loading speed will impact how users perceive your business and whether they come back for more purchases from you in the coming months! Your website’s performance is strongly influenced by how well it performs in the search engines. A slow-loading site will disappoint visitors and damage its ranking, which means less traffic for you! Fortunately, there are many ways to help increase page speed and make it faster than ever before without sacrificing quality or functionality.
Why taking care of WordPress Site Speed is Important?
Search Engine Optimisation is about getting traffic to your website. A fast-loading, user-friendly site will get you more views (and therefore more revenue) than a slow one. According to Google, fast website load times are essential for mobile search rankings. Your website will load faster, and as a consequence, it has got a better chance of ranking high in search results.
Website speed affects user experience, which is another reason to pay attention. When visitors land on your website, and it takes too long to load, they’re likely to leave before it finishes loading. And if they leave before your site has had a chance to show them what you’re all about, you’ve lost a potential customer.
Additionally, slow websites can lead to higher abandonment rates and reduced conversions. So, improving your website speed helps with SEO and impacts your business.
Test Your WordPress Site Speed
Before you start making changes to your website performance, you will need a baseline of your website’s current performance, status and efficiency. You may believe your website is loading fast because you are spending too much time working on it, which results in cached files. It will provide a quicker loading experience for you since they won’t have to wait for the cached files to load.
To get an accurate reading, you can use a tool like GTMetrix, which tests your website against 22 checkpoints and provides a grade. You’ll also see specific recommendations on how to improve your website’s performance.
If you’re not satisfied with the performance of your WordPress site, there are several things you can do to improve it.
Here are 10 Ways to Make Your WordPress Site Faster, More User-Friendly, and More Secure.
1. Choose an Appropriate Quality Hosting
Investing in a high-quality hosting provider is critical for you to witness your WordPress site’s most manageable growth and development. When selecting a host, inquire about the server hardware, backup procedures, and customer service. Hosting with a managed server architecture offers the best performance, but you may notice increased loading times during peak traffic hours. This is because shared hosts can’t regulate simultaneous visitors, and their systems are slower on average than those running only additional services.
In contrast, dedicated cloud servers offer quicker response time. The biggest drawback to this system is that the installation and operation can be tricky, for which you need to hire experts.
2. Keep Core, Themes, Plugins Updated
The cores, plugins and themes require regular updates. However, it may introduce new features, bugs, and security vulnerabilities. Make sure to manage and fix them immediately. You cannot skip updating as it will negatively affect the website’s performance. Regular updates reduce the risk of malware and hacking attacks by ensuring improved security.
3. Select a Quality WordPress Theme
Not every theme is equally significant. Some help you perform better, while some are nothing but a bloating mess. Thus, what theme you choose is essential and will considerably impact your website performance.
Choose a theme that has the features you require, is lightweight, isn’t extravagant, and employs a solid foundation like Foundation or Bootstrap. Remember, you can add features later using plugins.
4. Remove Unnecessary Plugins
Plugins are essential. However, getting overboard with them can be damaging by slowing down your website. This is because each plugin takes some time to load. The more plugins you have, the longer your website will take for processing and loading on a user’s computer or mobile device! In addition, the chance of plugin conflict grows. There are lighter alternatives to heavier plugins, in case you didn’t know.
5. Optimise Your WordPress Database
Working on the WordPress database can make sites slow over time. Expect outdated postings, plugins, and other elements to linger. It can take up disk space, and your database queries may take longer to execute.
To keep things fresh and the database clean, use tools that help simplify the process. You can use popular plugins such as WP-optimise WP-DBManager and Advanced database cleaner to optimise and clean your database.
6. Optimise Your Images
Optimising the site’s images is a brilliant idea to save much space and improve the site speed. Try to reduce the size of the photos without compromising the quality. For this, use tools such as TinyPNG. They help reduce the size of the image significantly before uploading. Moreover, a plugin such as WP Smush is also excellent; it automatically compresses images when you upload them to your site.
7. Use a CDN
How fast your site loads depend on the site’s server location. So, if you are working in England and your server is somewhere in the USA, then expect a slow speed. However, there is always a means to overcome it. For example, you can use CDN or a content delivery network.
A CDN allows multiple servers to host the file for a website simultaneously. So, if a user enters your site from a particular region, they will get connected from the nearest server to their physical location. The two most popular CDNS are Cloudflare and MaxCDN.
8. Use a Caching Plugin
Using a caching plugin could help you drastically improve speed in WordPress. Caching plugins can make database calls less frequent. When entering your website, users get a static HTML version of the page.
Some hosting plans include it. But those who don’t get it from their hosting provider can use caching plugins such as W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache.
9. Use File Minification
Like images, it is also a good idea to minify the files. It will make reading the file in the browser a lot easier. Plus, larger files take longer to read, resulting in your site performing at a slow speed. The process allows the reduction of the total number of working files and cleans up the site’s code within, which is more efficient.
Instead of doing it yourself to the Javascript and CSS files which requires time and techniques, you can use Autoptimize or caching plugins W3 Total Cache.
10. Have Regular Site Monitoring
To get an idea of your site’s performance or better understand why it may be slowing down, it is wise to regularly monitor your site’s performance.
With managed WordPress host, you will get this automatically as they actively monitor your site for slowdowns and try to fix them immediately.
However, it would help if you took things into your hand with better hosting and used plugins such as WordFence. It regularly monitors and scans website performance and capacity. You can also use Pingdom’s web tool, which sends you email updates when the site’s performance is slow.
In Conclusion:
Maintaining your website by yourself might be a tedious task. But not anymore! We can help speed up your WordPress site’s performance for you. Our team of experts are well-versed in website design and coding, so we can take care of everything for you while you continue to focus on what you’re best at – running your business. Contact us today for a free consultation, and let us show you how we can improve your website’s performance without breaking the bank.
Ways to Increase Landing Page Conversion Rate
It could be frustrating if you get tons of traffic but fail to turn them into conversion. There’s nothing more distressing than a low landing page conversion rate. With landing pages, you can convert users to subscribers, customers, and leads.
The low conversion could be because of several reasons. Marketers need to analyse the possibilities. However, you may not always find the exact reason. So why not figure out tactics that can help you increase landing page conversion rate. If you are looking for some ideas, we have compiled some effective ways to increase the landing page conversion rate.
What is considered a Good Conversion Rate for Landing Page?
The definite number of reasonable conversion rates varies. It depends on various factors such as landing page design, products, and call-to-action. Nevertheless, a more typical value would be 5 to 15% for an email opt-in landing page. Again, companies with successful rates seem to have around 20-25% conversion rates. It could also reach up to 30% or higher for companies achieving outstanding results. The conversion rate depends on the strategies that you follow. There are proven ways you can get to a significant number as well. Continue reading to know more about the techniques that help increase landing page conversion rate.
Aesthetic is essential in website design but knowing where to input what or the correct quantity of elements is also crucial. Without having vast design knowledge, you may not know how to present a landing page for higher conversion. However, even without the help of an expert designer, you can use the plugin name SeedProd to design a well-optimised landing page for conversions and sales effortlessly.
You can follow a straightforward process, install the plugin, and start working immediately. Either choose between a blank template or a pre-made landing page optimised for conversion.
Though there are still several other factors to include, this is one of the crucial ways you can improve landing page conversion rate.
Improve Your Page Loading Speed
Website loading page makes a significant difference in driving traffic, decreasing bounce rate, user experience, conversion rate, and ranking factor. Data shows that even a 1-second delay in page loading can negatively affect the conversion rate by 7%.
Some factors responsible for the slow loading of your landing pages are unoptimized oversized images, too many ads, excessive flash content, avoiding caching techniques, unclean code, JavaScript issues, and more. An experiment on 18,639 landing pages shows that optimised small-sized images led to an average conversion rate of 11.4%, while pages with large photos get only 9.8%.
Keep Call-to-Action (CTA) to Minimum
While call-to-action is essential for a landing page, you do not want too many of them. It distracts and confuses the viewers, which may even compel them to leave without acting.
You must set one or two at most courses of action for users. Set them according to your purpose or objective. For example, if you want more email leads to your website, you can introduce activities related to capturing emails.
Research on landing pages with a single call-to-action shows an average conversion rate of 13.5%, while two to four call-to-action shows an 11.9%. With five or more, the percentage decreases to 10.5%.
Pay Attention to Designing
It only takes a few seconds to minutes for users to decide on whether they will stay on your page or not. To make the landing page visually appealing proper design and techniques are necessary.
Here are some ideas that can attract visitors as well as help you increase conversion rate:
The addition of multimedia elements gives life to the landing page. Observe a conversion rate growth of 86% simply by including videos. However, please do not go overboard with it.
- Keep your design clean and simple. You do not want to distract users away with a cluttered landing page. Instead, use enough empty spaces, large fonts, and colour contrast to keep the page uncomplicated and appeal to users.
- Do not add excessive text on the landing pages. Fewer and to-the-point text can help you receive more conversion. For instance, a business landing page with fewer than 100 words can bring 50% more conversion than pages with 500 words.
- Use bright and contrasting colours. Plus, use this technique to distract users from less critical information.
Include Social Proof to Your Landing Page
Social proofs such as reviews can validate your page and attract new users to venture into your product or services. At present, people, when purchasing, tend to look for reviews or recommendations by others.
There are many ways you can initiate social proof to your landing page. One popular method is to add testimonials from the customers. To make it easier, use plugins such as SeedProd or TrustPulse, which allows built-in testimonials for your landing pages.
Optimise Landing Page for Mobile
With people spending more than double the time on mobile to access the internet, optimising a website for mobile devices is essential. Similarly, optimisation of landing pages is crucial as well. Research on landing pages shows that mobile-friendly pages get a conversion rate of 11.7% compared to desktop pages which get 10.7 per cent.
Not only do you need to make your landing page responsive, but you should also consider the interaction of the users on both your desktop and mobile sites. For instance, you should introduce shorter, multiple-choice sign-up forms for mobile pages, not something too complicated or extensive.
Include a Live Chat Option
There are a few potential benefits of using live chat on your landing page.
First, live chat can help you identify potential customers who have questions or concerns about your product. By addressing these concerns in real-time, you can prevent them from leaving your page without converting.
Second, live chat can help increase the speed of your customer service response. It can be beneficial if you run a sale or promotion and want to ensure that customers receive the fastest possible reply.
Third, live chat provides an opportunity for you to build customer loyalty. By providing superior customer service through live chat, you can create repeat customers who are more likely to convert in the future.
The most popular and user-friendly contact form plug – in for Word Press is WP Forms.
Test Your Landing Page
Testing is crucial to know whether the strategies you implemented work correctly for your page and have shown beneficial results. Even a tiny step can influence your landing pages, impacting your conversion rate.
Data shows that companies that perform 50 per cent more tests improved their conversion rates compared to those that conducted fewer tests.
Introduce Timely Prompts for Abandoning Visitors
What if you could grab the visitors’ attention just when they are about to leave? Yes, it is possible! A timely prompt message can help reduce the number of abandoning visitors by reminding them what their next steps are and providing them with easy access to the information or product they need. It can also be used to increase conversion rates by offering an incentive, like free shipping or discounted prices, to customers who complete their purchase.
One of the best ways to do that is to use a powerful tool like Optin Monster. With Optin Monster, you can create beautiful landing pages that are designed to convert. They make it easy to get started with their pre-made templates and drag-and-drop builder. They have a ton of features that will help you boost your conversion rates, including:
- A/B testing – so you can test different versions of your landing page to see what works best
- Exit intent – so you can capture leads who are about to leave your site
- Scroll trigger – so you can show a targeted offer or message only after a user has engaged with your content for a specific amount of time.
Optimize Your Landing Page for SEO
If you’re running a WordPress website, then you know how important it is to have solid SEO practices in place. One easy way to improve your WordPress site’s SEO is by using an All-in-One SEO plugin.
All-in-One SEO is a great plugin because it allows you to control all of your website’s meta data from a single location. This is important because meta data is one of the most important factors that search engines use to determine how to rank your website.
All-in-One SEO also makes it easy to add custom titles, descriptions, and keywords for each of your pages, which can help you improve your website’s ranking even further. And finally, the plugin also includes built-in support for Google Analytics, so you can track how well your website is performing over time.
Final Thoughts
Landing pages are an essential part of any online marketing strategy, but if they’re not designed and implemented correctly, you could be losing out on valuable leads and customers. By following the techniques we’ve outlined in this post, you can ensure that your landing pages are effective at converting browsers into buyers. If you need help putting these techniques into practice or would like assistance creating a high-converting landing page, our team at WP Pro Support is here to help.