Does it seem as if your website is moving slower than molasses? If you find yourself constantly refreshing your site in the hopes that it loads faster, then chances are you aren’t the only one abandoning the page due to poor website speed.
A recent Google report found that up to 53 percent of visits are abandoned when the mobile site takes more than three seconds to load. Before you lose another client to a slow website speed, make sure that your site is up-to-date.
5 Steps To Optimize Your Website On WordPress
- Check SSL Certificates. — A secure website is necessary if you want to retain a high search engine ranking, while also attracting site visitors. However, it is also important that you check your SSL certificates to ensure that they are properly updated and not compromising the performance of your site.
- Complete All Add-ons And Software Updates. — Did you know that outdated add-ons, such as plugins, and software can greatly hinder the performance of your site? Not only will your website speed decrease, but failing to complete updates can greatly reduce the security of your site.
- Optimize All Images. — All images should be saved as either .PNG or .JPG files. Additionally, images should be sized to maximize their visual effectiveness without slowing down the website. While resizing and quality checks can be manually completed, it’s easier (and typically more effective) to use a plugin. It will find the perfect balance between quality, size, and image load speed.
- Check Your Yslow Speed Score. — As its name suggests, Yslow grades each page on your site via a predefined ruleset. Next, it provides recommendations for improving the page’s performance. Finally, it summarizes both the page’s components and vital statistics. This allows you to more effectively monitor your site’s performance over time.
- Update The Website Core. — Updating and optimizing a website is made easier with the help of WP-Optimize and WP-DB Manager. Both are designed to optimize databases by reducing the overhead of tables, post revisions, spam, drafts, and other critical site components. Through WP-DB Manager, database optimization dates can be automatically schedule.
The Bottom Line: Update Your Website To Improve Performance
Through the above five steps you can ensure that your website is up-to-date. You can also make sure that your website is secure and performing at top speeds. In fact, an up-to-date website is often the key to attracting more site visitors and future customers.