Does your WordPress website seem a little clunky and slow? Here are four reasons that maybe stopping is performing super-quick;
1 You Have Too Many Plug-Ins
All those shiny plug-ins look great, don’t they? And you need them all… and then you see something else you must have.
Before you know it, you are running a zillion plug-ins, and that means your WordPress website is excruciatingly slow to load.
How to fix –audit your plug-ins and be ruthless, whittling zillions down to a few, essential plug-ins. Also, check for ones that are outdated or are poor in their performance.
2 Your Home Page is Stuffed to Overflowing
Your home page is important. It is the shop window that pique the curiosity of visitors, and this means we are tempted to cram it full of all kinds of stuff, from overflowing content to widget-mania.
How to fix – clean design is impressive. Put widgets where people will use them – like social media buttons on the bottom on posts where readers are more likely to use them. Limit the number of posts on your front page too.
3 Your Stunning Images are Too Big
We know images tell a story and 1,000 words etc. but those images may be stunning, but if they are too big, your website will be slow to crank into life. Visitors are not patient, waiting only a matter of seconds of a website to load before they navigate away.
How to fix – images need to be optimised and that there are various online programs and software that can do this for you. It ‘tidies up’ the image without depleting the quality, making them lighter when it comes to your WordPress site kicking into action. WordPress also have their own plug-in, Smush It, that can do this automatically too.
4 You Are Using a ‘Free’ Theme
Free is the best price, isn’t it? You have a lovely free template around which you have designed your WordPress site, and in the beginning, it was just perfect. But with more information and content added to your site, this ‘free’ template is beginning to struggle. This is for all kinds of reasons, including what may be a clunky ‘back end’.
How to fix – invest in a new theme. This means investing in your site and possibly also investing in the services of a web development agency or developer.
And if you don’t know what’s wrong?
If you’re struggling with page speed or any aspect of your WordPress website, then why not give us a call. With years of experience, there aren’t many problems with WordPress websites we can’t fix, and we can talk you through the problem to make sure it doesn’t happen again!
