Category: wp help

Performance Testing

In order to know where your site is slowing down, you need to test it objectively with tools that give you sizes and load times. If you are using a modern browser like Chrome or Firefox, these tools are sitting right in front of you. While in either browser click on the Help item in the menu and type in Developer. You will see options that open a new window which show all the information about the page you are on. The Network tab allows you to see how long the page takes to load and the size of various files involved.

Website Structure

The code that builds your website is based on html, css, images/videos, javascript, and php/mysql, in WordPress’ case. Using best practices here requires as little of each language to create a speedy experience. The benefit of using a tool like WordPress is that most of the architecture is taken care of for you. The downside is that you can all-to-easily build something that is too big, cumbersome, and distracting for your user. Let’s explore some of the ways we can avoid creating a bad structure. We’ll start where the biggest issue facing the majority of current websites lies: images.

Impact of Images on your Website

In the last eight years, the overall size of an average website has grown over 300%. In the same timeframe, bandwidth has not kept up. This has resulted in sites that look nice, but users never get to see them since they take too long to load. The average user gives a site three seconds to load before hitting the back button and going somewhere else. While many website testing tools give you a lot of information about other technical issues, the overall image size remains the number one way to improve user experience.

Image Optimization

The best way to optimize images is by reducing the size. After adjusting image size accordingly, take a hard look at each page and it’s use of images. Do you need all of the images that are there? Do you need multiple, or any, for that matter, full-size images? Can text convey what your image conveys? Anything you can remove means an immediate reduction in load time. Although the image type is important, the method you use to deliver those images is just as big of a deal.

CDN, Caching, and Lazy Loading

The three main methods for optimising images involve a Content Delivery Network(CDN), caching, and plugins/code.