You might remember the story about the tortoise and the hare. We all know that the tortoise won by being slow and steady. Well unfortunately that doesn’t apply when it comes to websites.
Who should use WP Rocket?
Anyone with a WordPress website should use WP Rocket! It works for sites large and small, no matter the type. From a simple blog to an online store, WP Rocket will accelerate the loading time! WP Rocket is easy enough for non-technical WordPress users, but extensible enough that seasoned developers can customize it to their liking.
Do I need to have coding skills to use WP Rocket?
Not at all! WP Rocket is the only cache plugin which integrates more than 80% of web performance best practices even without any options activated. This means that you only need to install it and activate it: WP Rocket will automatically start caching your pages, without any need to tweak the code!
Is WP Rocket GDPR compliant?
Yes WP Rocket is GDPR compliant. It doesn’t store, or access to any personal data. Also no cookies either are added by WP Rocket.
Here are our Top 8 Reasons for Slow Loading Websites.
Unoptimized Images.
If you have a large amount of images which are unoptimized on your site, you are asking for big trouble. Unoptimized images and media are one of the most popular reasons we see behind slow loading speeds. Images which are high resolution can consume a lot of bandwidth during the loading process.
Uploading large sized images and then thinking you can simply scale them down when they’re on your website can still increase the overall size of your webpage unnecessarily. Incorrect image formatting, the ideal format for images should be .JPG or .JPEG which are much smaller in size than .PNG images or GIF. Images can also be converted to WebP which again loads much faster. Ideally images should be in the format .jpg or .jpeg or WebP. Sized prior to upload, and optimised prior to upload using a tool such as tiny.jpg.
They should also be correctly sized for the place where they will sit. E.G You wouldn’t put an image of 3500px x 1250px in a space which could take an image of say 800px x 800px, perhaps one of your shop images.
Not using your CMS or page builder to its full capacity and relying on too many plugins to do the job/s add functionality for you on your website.
Each plugin contains an amount of javascript/jQuery which can cripple your website load speed especially if you are using too many of them. Each will load its own script when your site loads and this slows things down and delays your page load time considerably.
Too Many HTTP requests.
Everything your page contains, its styling CSS, its images, Javascript etc increases the amount of requests in the browser. Too many requests reduces the page load time.
No Caching on the website.
Caching is important and can improve the speed of your website a lot. Caching lets you store the most recent data in its memory. So, when the content is requested it gets served straight from the cached memory. Which overall speeds up the whole retrieval process on the server.
Unused and unclean code.
When your website is created the structure needs to be considered. Keeping the layout or structure simple. Too many sections or sections and elements within sections, unnecessary stylings, too many stylings, empty sections, just add to the style sheet of your website causing it to grow into a monster. By removing all the extra unnecessary sections, elements, and associated code you can significantly reduce the file size. Thus improving your overall load time.
Not Minifying things!
Use gZIP Compression. If you enable gZIP compression on your website you are instructing the server to wrap all the webpage objects (images, CSS, JavaScript files etc) into a single container before they are sent over to the requesting browser. Lowering the response time by reducing the size of data being transferred between your server and the visitors’ browser. If you haven’t enabled gZIP compression on your website, then it’s the first thing you should do.
Having too many third party Ads and Popups.
Whilst advertisements are a great way to monetize your website. That shouldn’t come at the cost of compromised performance or user experience. Another reason why your website is slow! If you have to load a popup ad, do so using a time delay.
Not Using a CDN service.
A CDN service is a distributed network of independent servers deployed in different geographic locations that can serve web content to visitors with high availability and high performance. Depending upon the geographic location of your visitor, the requested content gets served from the nearest available data center. Therefore serving the requested content in a much quicker time frame. Your hosting provider should factor in the cost or at least provide this as an option for you. Hostinger provides this option to all their clients for free.
Rubbish Hosting.
If you have tried correcting all the above-mentioned causes and yet your website seems to be responding slowly, then switching your hosting provider may just solve your problem. Choose a hosting provider that offers performance optimization services bundled in the price of the hosting.
We have tried lots of hosting companies, and work with quite a few. Out of all those which we have worked with to date. The one that stands out to us the most for great customer service regardless of the plan you are on is Hostinger. With great hosting plans which are very affordable whether you are a new website or a seasoned eCommerce guru. To see their latest promotional offers take a look HERE. It can be a difficult task to figure out what exactly is causing your website to slow down. No matter what the root cause might be, you should leave no stones unturned to get to the bottom of the issue because failure to do so can be the difference between a customer staying or leaving your website. If you think this is something you are confident to sort out yourself we recommend using WP Rocket which is a click and go solution for website speed and performance. Increasing the load times even on the dodgiest of websites. Don’t compromise on speed. See their latest promo deals HERE.
If you still prefer not to delve in too deeply yourself, we are more than happy to take a look at your website for you with very affordable rates, and a done for you solution. Contact us anytime and we will help you out .
