Website loading speed is one of the critical success factors for a good user experience and, as we learned last year, it has a direct impact on Google search rankings.
The recent launch of our “Page Speed Optimization Service” allows us to offer our customers with WordPress sites the latest products and tools designed to speed up and optimize WordPress sites.
Not wanting to prepare an ostensible list, here we list the main tools to achieve a truly fast website, with a better user experience and consequently, better results on Google and search engines.
Measure website speed
The first step to reducing your website's loading time is to have a very concrete idea of how long it takes to load each page.
Your speed experience may be very different from another user's experience with a different internet connection, browser or location.
To test different scenarios, we can use specialized tools, here are the three main tools you can use to measure your website's loading speed:
Pingdom
O Pingdom is a website that tests your page's loading time and explains how long each script, css file or other type of media takes to load. You can use the data to decide whether you should consolidate your CSS files or opt for a CDN to load images faster.
Additionally, the Pingdom allows you to test your DNS settings to diagnose possible issues, also testing your server's network connection.
GTMetrix
O GTmetrix is a renowned web performance analysis tool that empowers website owners and developers to identify and fix performance bottlenecks, ultimately improving user experience and boosting search engine rankings.
It uses a comprehensive range of metrics, including PageSpeed Insights and YSlow, to provide a detailed assessment of a website's speed, resource optimization, and overall performance across different devices.
The intuitive interface of GTmetrix presents the results of each analysis in a clear, actionable format, allowing users to identify specific points for improvement.
It provides breakdowns of page load times, image optimization, code minification, and other key performance indicators.
Additionally, it offers valuable recommendations for optimizing specific aspects of your website, such as compressing images, minimizing HTTP requests, and leveraging browser caching techniques.
Google Page Insights
A Google has recently been focusing on the issue of website speed, launching several products and announcing that the loading speed of a Web site would play an important role in the online search rankings.
Before releasing some speed-boosting tools, Google developed its own answer to Yahoo's YSlow, dubbing it PageSpeed.
This is not only available as a browser extension but also as a a website-based test.
It's quite similar to Yahoo's old YSlow, in that it points out several suggestions that, if resolved, will improve your site's speed.
The tool also orders these suggestions by priority, which is a good help in understanding what type of issues we can resolve first.
Improve website speed
Once you have an idea of what needs to be improved, you can immediately start implementing the best solution. Inevitably, some of the necessary changes will require some programming, but there are some tools that will help you.
Move your website to Cloudways
Investing in professional Cloud hosting that is fully optimized for WordPress will allow you to save several seconds when loading your website's pages, including in the administration area.
Google's mod_pagespeed and the Page Speed Service
In addition to its application to measuring speed, the Google provides some tools that can help you do something about your slow website. The first is mod_pagespeed, a module for Apache that rewrites the HTML, JavaScript, CSS and images on a page, distributing them to users in a more efficient way. Recently, the Google introduced us to Page Speed Service, which achieves the same results but, this time, through simple changes to the DNS. In the future, Google You may charge for this service, but for now, the beta version is free.
Install a CDN
One of the most effective ways to improve the speed of your website is to distribute static elements through a content delivery network (CDN). There are several services of this type, with very different prices.
Some of the best commercial CDNs include Akamai, MaxCDN, Limelight Networks e a BitGravity. A CloudFlare It is a product more aimed at website security but also has a CDN and improvements in loading speed. For our website, we use the Amazon CloudFront.
Reduce and prevent “Render Blocking” of website code
Another potential culprit that can increase a website's loading time is code that has not been consolidated, particularly CSS and JavaScript. Although you can manually remove white space and consolidate external files, there are some automations that make the task easier.
O MinifyJavaScript is a simple web-based tool for compressing your JavaScript directly from your browser. Similarly, this site will do the same for JavaScript and CSS using Yahoo's YUI Compressor.
Already the Minify is a PHP-based tool that programmers can use to automatically compress and consolidate external scripts. There is also a plugin on WordPress to do so.