WordPress Performance Optimization Services
As a modern digital-first enterprise, superior website performance is pivotal to your success. Your site speed has a significant direct and indirect impact on the amount of traffic, leads, and conversions you garner, as well as your overall brand visibility and bottom line.
Running on WordPress, your website already has a solid foundation for speed. But if you have a complex website with lots of pages, content, and/or features, it’s difficult to ensure optimal page load time for each page.
Whether you’re struggling with slow page load speeds or looking for pro recommendations to take your site speed to the next level, our WordPress speed optimization service includes WordPress specialists auditing your website for performance bottlenecks, optimizing the various aspects that affect speed, and helping you improve your Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS).
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Why Speed Up Your WordPress Website?
Invisible search engine rankings, poor conversion rates, and user frustration are just a few of the many ways a slow-loading website hurts your business.
When you flip the speed switch from slow to lightning-fast, here’s what happens.
Lower Bounce Rate
Your audience lacks the patience to wait for your website to load. If your site takes more than a couple of seconds to load, visitors won’t hesitate to bounce off to a competitor. A fast loading page directly reduces your bounce rate. 75% of all users will leave as page load time passes the 3-second mark.
Better UX & Rankings
A faster website helps create a seamless user experience (UX). And speed is a ranking factor for both mobile and desktop Google search. So the faster your site loads, the higher it ranks. And the higher it ranks, the more the organic traffic and leads you get. 46% of users don’t revisit poorly performing sites that take over four seconds to load.
Higher Conversion Rate
Speed sells. Together, a lower bounce rate and delightful user experience mean more people visit and stay on your site, consume your quality content, and hit those calls to action. 4.42% is the average conversion rate drop for each additional second of load time.
Key Factors That Determine Your WordPress Site’s Performance
There are hundreds of factors that determine your site’s speed. While we review and optimize each speed-related aspect of your website and leave no stone unturned in hitting top speeds, here are some of the key factors that affect your website’s performance.
Caching
WordPress caching is one of the most effective ways to improve WordPress speed. Caching is a technique to use fewer server resources and reduce response times by delivering cached copies of the requested content instead of rendering it repeatedly in response to every single user request that pings the server.
We configure and implement browser, page, database, object, and advanced server-side caching so your high-traffic website delivers content as quickly and efficiently as possible.
CDN Setup
An extension of cache optimization, a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can greatly reduce the load on your website by offloading the delivery of images, JavaScript, CSS, and other files.
CDNs consist of a network of servers hosting cached copies of your pages. Visitors requesting this information are directed to the nearest server within this network based on their geographic location. This leads to a direct and powerful performance boost. We help you set up and implement your CDN of choice for lightning-fast global load times.
Image Optimization
Images are one of the primary culprits for poor load speeds. Large, high-resolution images, in particular, take their sweet time to load. In fact, images make up on average 34% of a total webpage’s weight.
We strategically incorporate image optimization across your website which includes lossless compression, proper image format selection, choosing the right dimensions for different devices, lazy-loading wherever appropriate, and more.
Code Minification
You can reduce the amount of data the visitor’s browser has to download by minifying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript resources. Minification is the method of removing unnecessary characters like comments and whitespace from the source code.
Lightweight and compact code speed up downloading, parsing, and execution of pages to drastically reduce page load time. We perform minification of your website’s CSS, JavaScript, and HTML code so there’s reduced network latency, fewer HTML requests, and enhanced compression, ultimately boosting page speed and yielding higher scores on speed testing tools.
Database Cleanup
The WordPress CMS stores posts, comments, pages, plugins, themes, and other forms of textual and encrypted metadata within a single database. This database gets overly cluttered over time, not only with unnecessary content and post revisions but also with garbage data.
Database fine-tuning gets rid of garbage data and useless content from cluttered databases, shrinking them in size and making it easier for your hosting servers to fetch requested content efficiently. We analyze your database, identify data that is no longer needed, and optimize your database for faster queries.
Server Optimization
An unoptimized server running hundreds or even thousands of websites on a single server stack is far from ideal for your enterprise website. The generic configurations with standard shared hosting are fine for smaller websites, but not for bigger enterprise websites.
With SQL server tuning, compression, caching, log file analysis, and other techniques, we configure your server to handle the load more efficiently and minimize the server response time. If needed, we may employ multiple dedicated servers or suggest a suitable WordPress server infrastructure to better handle your traffic without any server outages.
Mobile Experience Optimization
Over half of your visitors are likely from mobile devices. And 53% of mobile visitors leave a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Besides, mobile-first indexing means that Google now uses the mobile version of your WordPress website to determine your rankings.
When it comes to optimizing your site for mobile-first, speed is one of the most important factors to focus on as it affects everything from usability and bounce rates to conversions and customer retention. We take care of complete WordPress mobile experience optimization, which includes not just boosting the page load speed but also improving navigation and design.
Inline Critical CSS
Optimizing the delivery of CSS resources is crucial to achieving better page load speeds. This involves figuring out how to make your CSS resources non-render blocking, so the browser can parse the CSS simultaneously with the HTML and make it interactive quicker.
We identify the styles that are required to render above-the-fold content and deliver those styles inline with the HTML. By including the critical CSS inline, we drastically reduce the perceived load time.
TTFB
Time to First Byte (TTFB) measures the amount of time taken for the first little bit of website data sent to the user’s browser. TTFB is a significant UX factor and studies suggest Google gives a website with low TTFB timing a higher ranking as TTFB is one of Google’s Core Web Vitals.
Besides caching and CDN optimization, we use various other techniques to improve your network latency and aim to bring your TTFB down to under 100 ms for the best possible UX and rankings.
Ads/Third-Party Scripts Optimization
If a website has third-party tags and analytics, these can keep the network busy and negatively impact the interaction latency. At times, such third-party scripts can pre-empt first-party ones in terms of priority and bandwidth on the main thread, thus increasing the time it takes for a page to be interaction-ready.
We use techniques to prioritize loading the content that offers the greatest value to your visitors first. This includes incorporating on-demand loading of third-party ads, so below-the-fold ads load only when they’re scrolled closer to the viewport.
Our WordPress Performance Optimization Process
We have a well-defined process to ensure successful WordPress performance optimization, no matter the size and complexity of your website.
Consulting
Our team of experts will understand and assess your performance goals. We’ll help you make better sense of the why and how behind WordPress speed optimization.
Audit
Once we understand your optimization requirements, we will conduct a detailed inspection of your website which includes the following audits:
- Current site performance
- Code and Theme
- Plugins
- UI & UX
- Cross Browser & Device Testing
- SEO
- Security
- Ads Implementation
- Server Set-Up & CDN
We then prepare a plan that considers your site’s existing features, content, objectives, budget, and timeline.
Initiation
We will work with you to perfect the plan of action. Once you’re happy with the plan, we will do a complete backup of your data before starting with the performance optimization process.
Delivery
We pride ourselves as WordPress experts and with rigorous testing, we ensure your optimized WordPress website meets or exceeds all your expectations.
Support
Successful WordPress website speed optimization doesn’t end our partnership. We will take responsibility for your website’s maintenance and offer advanced recommendations to ensure your site continues to achieve performance benchmarks and runs smoothly in the future.
Why Choose Multidots as Your WordPress Performance Optimization Partner?
We’ve been in the WordPress development space for well over a decade. Hundreds of global enterprise brands, agencies, and associations like Accenture and Storyful trust us with complex and large-scale WordPress implementations.
Our technical prowess in WordPress optimization is coupled with a strong focus on users’ needs. So give yourself peace of mind by letting our experts take care of your website speed as your WordPress performance optimization partner.
01.
Focus on User-Centric Performance Metrics (Core Web Vitals)
Traditional performance metrics like load time or DOMContentLoaded focus on technical details that are easy to measure, but don’t necessarily translate well to what the users care about. So if you optimize WordPress solely for fast loading time, you can end up with a website that still has a poor UX.
We conduct holistic performance optimization with a focus on improving user-centric metrics, aka Core Web Vitals:
- First Input Delay (FID) measures responsiveness and quantifies the experience users feel when trying to first interact with the page.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability and quantifies the amount of unexpected layout shift of visible page content.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures perceived load speed and marks the point in the page load timeline when the page’s main content has likely loaded.
We also ensure other user-centric metrics like First Contentful Paint (FCP), Time to First Byte (TTFB), etc. are optimized for the lowest possible times, so users can instantly start interacting with your page’s content, translating to a stronger UX and better rankings.
02.
Seasoned Specialists
Our team is seasoned in WordPress speed optimization services, so you can rest assured your WordPress website is on track to achieve the best possible performance.
03.
Data Security
Your data security is our top priority. Through our strict security protocols, we ensure all your content and data are secure during the optimization process.
04.
Hybrid Approach
Fully automating things almost always leads to data loss or unexpected issues. We are manual optimization enthusiasts and use the most advanced techniques (manual audits + automated tools) to ensure your optimization is a success. Our focus is on data integrity and perfection.
05.
Advanced Speed Boost Suggestions
Once your website is doing well in terms of speed, we kick things up a notch with pro-level recommendations like third-party script (ads, analytics, etc.) optimization, creating a light 404 page, increasing PHP workers, enabling hotlink protection, disabling WP-Cron, and so on.
FAQs
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You can get a comprehensive overview of your website performance with the help of a performance audit. While many companies prefer to conduct it themselves, it is always a good idea to have a team of specialists do it, so that you can get helpful insights and suggestions.
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Core Web Vitals (CWV) show how a specific URL is performing based on the perceived experience of the users. Together, the Core Web Vitals indicate how a web page fares in terms of aspects such as visual stability, interactivity, and load time.
These parameters are measured with the help of three metrics — Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
You can get a detailed report on your CWV performance when you get an audit done by us, along with insights on other crucial areas of your website.
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While the Page Experience update that introduced Core Web Vitals definitely impacts the way search engines rank your website, it is not a standalone ranking factor. In some cases, having an average score for Core Web Vitals might still be okay.
But if your website relies heavily on user experience, consider having a good CWV score that will help you impress your users and the search engines.
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As your business grows and you continue to make changes or additions to your website, it is natural to overlook the technical aspects that get impacted in the process. While this might not have an immediate impact, it is detrimental to your website performance going forward.
To ensure that your website is always up and running smoothly regardless of how much you evolve or scale, conducting regular website performance audits is a must. Doing so will help you identify the primary areas of imprert any issues or threats that may affect your website.
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If you have a WordPress website that has been around for a while and is planning to scale up, this would be a good time to opt for our WordPress audit services. Even if you are a growing company and expect to make significant changes or additions to your website, conducting a performance audit will help you understand the status quo and plan your way forward.
More importantly, if you are facing persistent issues or performance issues in your website, and want to identify the root cause, a performance audit will help you do so effortlessly.
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When you get your Website Performance audit done by us, you can expect a detailed analysis and performance overview of your website. This would include a comprehensive review of the front-end, backend, and hosting sides of your website. We will also assess your adherence to best practices, and offer actionable suggestions to improve your website performance.
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Illogical as it may sound, a perfect score on any testing tool is not the goal you should aim for. The PageSpeed Insights score, for example, is not fixed. It varies on each test.
So, your focus should instead be on Google Core Web Vitals metrics which are the individual timings Google now uses in its algorithm.
While our goal is always to achieve page load times of under 1 second, we never make any empty promises about the final output we achieve. Anyone promising you a certain score or time is simply trying to sell you on their services.
That being said, the majority of the websites we manage load in under or around 2 seconds, which is the recommended page load time to hit as per Google.
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This depends on the size of your WordPress website — the amount of data, content, and the functional complexities of your current website.
The more complex your website and the more pages to optimize, the more time it will take to hit top speeds and scores on performance benchmarking tools.
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Your website’s SEO will remain intact and your current search engine rankings won’t be affected during your migration to WordPress.
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We don’t showcase fixed upfront costs as various factors like size, complexity, content, modules, etc. come into play. So the cost of a WordPress page speed optimization service can be determined once we assess your website and requirements.
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Here’s a list of Google tools we recommend to check your website’s performance:
- Search Console
- PageSpeed Insights
- web-vitals JS
- Chrome User Experience Report
And here’s a list of third-party tools you can use to further evaluate your website’s overall performance:- Cloudflare
- New Relic
- Akamai
- Calibre
- WebPageTest
- Blue Triangle
- Sentry
- SpeedCurve
Results Achieved for Happy Clients
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