How your website performs is the key element to user experience and website success. Your design might be stunning, your copy memorable and your marketing plan first class, but if visitors reach your website and are greeted with poor performance, you can bet they won’t be coming back for a second visit. To help ensure your organisation never loses business because of website performance issues, today we’re sharing five ways to boost your WordPress website’s performance.
Singing from the Same Hymn Sheet
First up, before you decide on a WordPress design agency, take time to get to know how their design and development process will ensure your website always performs at its best. Make sure both the team handling your website creation and your hosting provider have been briefed about your current and future plans for your website; that way everybody involved can make sure your website can handle growing traffic as your business evolves.
Speed is Key
Website speed is the single most important factor when it comes to website performance. In the age of instant gratification, we’ve become impatient folk and a whopping 40% of us will click away from a website if it isn’t loaded in three seconds. Don’t look too shocked – you’re probably guilty of this too!
We recommend running regular speed checks to make sure your website loads quickly and seamlessly. If you notice things aren’t performing as well as you’d like then set aside some time to get to the root of the issue – are you slowing down your site with too many images, an abundance of plugins that aren’t crucial?
Consider a CDN
While a certain amount of your website’s performance is down to your design agency and your own day to day management of the site, if you run a website that attracts a global audience you’ll definitely want to consider using a CDN. A CDN (Content Delivery Network) uses international servers to boost website performance for visitors across the globe. WPMU DEV have a great write up about how to choose the best CDN for your business’ needs.
Cache is King
Caching is one of the easiest ways to boost your website’s performance and speed up loading times for your visitors. Cache plugins can help you out with this so it’s worth speaking to your WordPress agency to see if this is a feature they can build into your website for you, or if it’s something you’ll need to run independently. WP Daily Themes have an in-depth guide on their website that will help you get to grips with WordPress caching.
Mobile First
There’s a lot of talk about mobile-friendly design but mobile-first should be the phrase you’re paying attention to. More and more time is spent browsing from mobile devices, over 60% in fact, so every word of copy on your website should be able to be read and digested with ease, whether your visitors are using a desktop or a smartphone.
Pages that are heavy on text (such as blogs or product descriptions) are those you should be paying careful attention to, as these are the pages that can be hardest to consume on mobile devices. There are plenty of plugins and apps out there that will allow you to view your website as it will be seen on a variety of devices, so get checking and be prepared to make some formatting and content changes if things aren’t as mobile-friendly as you first thought.
