In the old days, building a user-friendly website loaded with various features took work. As a person intending to develop a website, you had to hire the services of seasoned web developers. It became more problematic when you had to hire the services of front-end and back-end developers. The front-end developer is responsible for the website’s content and layout displayed on the screen of users. In contrast, the back-end developer has to program a website’s background work and features.
Making a website yourself requires you to learn various programming and scripting languages, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and others. However, the introduction of CMSs (Content Management Systems) was a groundbreaking innovation that allowed common people to build their websites without any need to learn programming languages. Although you will find many websites on the internet built from scratch, the trend of building a website through a CMS has become immensely popular.
The leading reasons behind this phenomenon are the ease of website development, content maintenance, and the addition of features and functionalities. As a result, WordPress is the most used CMS platform worldwide. Majority of live websites on the internet are built using WordPress, which reflects how popular this CMS is among website owners. However, one of the most common issues WordPress website owners face is their failure to deliver optimum user experience (UX). The problem mainly occurs because of the inability to optimize WordPress websites.
Here are highly effective strategies to optimize your WordPress website.
1. Ensure cache downloads on user’s side
A leading reason behind a website’s inability to offer faster loading speed and optimum UX is the requesting and loading process of files related to your website. Whenever a website is accessed for the first time by a user, files are requested and downloaded directly from the server. This process can take some time.
If you want your users to avoid experiencing this much loading time every time they visit your website, implementing caches is necessary. This practice will not only help you load your website faster on the display of users but also reduce the number of requests handled by your website. You can easily implement cache saving on your WordPress by adding a plugin.
2. Optimize images before uploading
Another reason that might limit your website from loading faster and offering optimum UX is the presence of images with large file sizes on your website. These images take significant time to load. Hence, the web page of your website may take a significantly longer to load properly. The best way to deal with this matter is to optimize images before uploading them on your WordPress website.
Generally, the images uploaded on the web come in JPEG format. This format can be significantly compressed without going below the quality threshold. The ideal image size for JPEG images is 50 KB, which will will make your web page load faster. Make sure you use an efficient image compressor to compress JPEG to 50 KB. You can also compress multiple images through batch compression.
3. Remove unnecessary plugins
WordPress and other CMSs allow you to install multiple plugins for various features and functionalities. You can consider individual plugins as individual software programs running on your website. Running multiple plugins at once will consume many of the website’s resources. You must prefer quality over quantity and keep only the quality plugins essential for properly working your website.
Some people may think that a plugin will only consume resources if it is being used. However, it is a false assumption, and chances are that this unused plugin also uses your website’s resources in the background. Hence, removing unnecessary WordPress plugins from your site is the best strategy to ensure a fast loading speed of your website and prevent unnecessary consumption of its resources.
4. A quality web hosting provider is a must
Many WordPress website owners need to offer an optimum UX to visitors and ensure faster loading speed because they overlook the importance of a quality web hosting provider. In addition to opting for a reliable hosting provider, you must select the right plan for your website. This plan should meet the requirements of your website properly.
The hosting plan you choose for your website should fit your website’s bandwidth and performance requirements. Unfortunately, some website owners go behind cheap hosting plans, such as shared hosting, and end up ruining the performance of their website. Hence, if you expect a larger chunk of traffic coming to your website, a dedicated hosting plan is good to ensure optimum UX.
Bottom line
WordPress is a popular CMS, and many websites have been built using it. However, some WordPress website owners need help to optimize their websites and offer optimum UX through them. The inability to provide optimum UX can lead to a significant dip in the traffic coming to a website. The above discussed strategies can help WordPress website owners ensure faster loading speed and optimum UX.
