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How to Speed Up WordPress Site and Increase Conversion Rate

How to Speed Up WordPress Site and Increase Conversion Rate

How to speed up wordpress site

Every second counts in your online business. Literally.

Did you know that a second-long delay reduces conversion rates by 7%? That means, if your site suffers from a 5-second delay, your blog will lose 35% of its initial visitors.

Imagine your site or blog losing 35 visitors out of a 100 because it doesn’t load fast enough!

If your blog or site is loading immensely slow, don’t fret just yet. You can still salvage your site from loading time purgatory.

In this post, You will learn how to speed up WordPress site so you can convert visitors into clients effectively.

Without further ado, let’s do this!

Use hosting platforms for videos

If you have loads of video content on your site, then I’ve got some bad news for you:

Those videos take up a lot of space. Too much space on your web host can slow down your site and turn off your visitors.

However, take this as an opportunity to rise to the occasion. Instead of hosting your video content on your web host, use an external hosting platform.

Doing so will lift your web server from the massive video files. This way, you can increase conversion rates once the loading speed picks up.

So check out video hosting platforms like Vimeo and Wistia.

vimeo

Instead of uploading videos directly to your site, let these hosting platforms handle the hosting for you. You can still embed them on your site using the code provided for each.

Switch to a better DNS provider

The length of time a Domain Name System lookup does its job affects page load time.

Think of a DNS lookup the same way as looking for someone’s contact info in an address book.

To get your hands on specific contact info, you have to dig through the other contacts in an address book.

Now, if you’re a slowpoke, it will take longer to get the information you need.

So if you’re using a slow DNS provider, it will also take longer for a server to get a specific DNS record, which it translates into an IP address.

And ultimately, your visitors will need to wait for your DNS provider to finish before they can drop by your site.

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How to Speed Up WordPress Site and Increase Conversion Rate by Canva Presentations

Go for the right hosting option

You shouldn’t just choose the cheapest web hosting solution.

Instead, choose the right one for your needs.

If you own a blog that attracts around a hundred visitors a day, an affordable option like shared hosting ought to do the trick.

But if your site generates at least a thousand visitors every day, cheap hosting will no longer suffice!

A lesser web host can’t manage high traffic surges. As a result, your site will experience lots of downtimes and ultimately drive visitors away.

Therefore, choose a reliable hosting option for your needs – costs be damned!

Investing in the right web host provider might cost you more. But it will be cost-effective in the long run.

You can look at what Kinsta has for you.

Just make sure you do your research first. There are so many hosting providers out there, so to find the best WordPress hosting for your needs, compare costs, reviews, refund policies, load time, uptime, customer support and other important factors.

Compress files

If you can’t avoid using large data, this is your solution.

Compressing file sizes is an easy way on how to speed up a WordPress site.

Use a program like GNU Gzip.

GNU

It’s a data compression tool that finds codes in your text files. Then it replaces them with smaller versions.

Read this post to learn how you can enable GZIP compression on your site to optimize its speed. You can set it up manually by editing your .htaccess file, or you can tweak your caching plugin to activate this option.

Use a CDN

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network.

Using it lets you load copies of your site to that network’s servers. And when a visitor accesses your site, the server closest to his location will take care of loading it for him.

The result? Your site’s speed increases!

This is particularly useful when your visitors are located far from you because the farther they are, the longer it takes for information to get through.

But if they’re close to a server, they can get the information — and access your site — fast!

Among CDNs in the market, MaxCDN is one of the most preferred ones in the market. Aside from being affordable, the platform delivers faster loading site to your visitors.

Minimize all those HTTP requests

Did you know downloading on-page components consumes 80% of a page’s load time?

Well, now you know!

See Also
Information Gain

Each time you want to load an on-page element, you need to make an HTTP request.

The more HTTP requests you make, the longer it takes for your page to render.

So minimize HTTP requests.

Start by figuring out how many HTTP requests your site currently makes.

You can do that by going to a page, right-click anywhere, and choose Inspect.

Next, click Network.

There, you will see three columns:

  • Name
  • Size
  • Time

On the bottom, you will see the total number of HTTP requests.

Minimize TTFB

TTFB stands for “Time to first byte.”

It refers to the time a browser has to wait until it gets the first byte from the server.

You can confuse it with a website’s speed, but TTFB is different and is more about a website’s responsiveness.

According to Google, your TTFB should be no more than 200ms.

A page with a higher TTFB is less responsive.

And therefore, it loads slowly and will see a decrease in conversion rates.

So get cracking on your site’s responsiveness!

But first, measure its TTFB first with a page performance test tool from KeyCDN.

It lets you measure TTFB from up to 14 different locations!

Conclusion

All of the methods above work. But you should prioritize the ones that can significantly impact your site.

To do this, you need to evaluate your site and determine which factors are profoundly affecting your site’s page load times.

Related posts:

Why the Speed of Your Site Should Be a Priority

5 Ways You Can Speed Up Your Website

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