We don't like waiting. Traffic jams, lines, ticketing queue, etc. We hate all those.

It's the same for a website. Users just want to make their way through a website without waiting. Here are 5 easy steps to fix it.

1. Remove WordPress Plugins

Yes, remove them.

This is one of the most common errors that WordPress users do. They browse through the plugins directory and start installing plugins because it's free.

However, free things comes with a price too.

Before we do that, have an idea what function we want for our site first.

The key here is to get only what we need. Not everything we can get our hands-on.

So:

• Look through the plugins directory and remove the ones not used.
• For the ones hardly been used, consider removing them too.
• For the ones that are used, research on these plugins and read reviews about them.
• Find alternatives that provide the same function if the current ones slow the site down.

2. Use A Good WordPress Theme

A WordPress theme can be the main cause of why a website can be so slow.

Themes that come with a lot of functions (that we don’t need in the first place) are bloated with a lot of scripts.

If a web designer/developer has installed it for us, we can check it under the WordPress dashboard under Appearance > Themes.

Here comes the tricky part. If we are comfortable using WordPress, go ahead and switch the theme.

However, if the website was built by someone else, be sure to make a backup first before switching themes because the whole website will look disfigured if it was not done correctly.

Here are 2 of the well-coded themes out there at the moment:

• GeneratePress
• Genesis

3. Resize Images

Imagine having 3 oversized guys in a car. Can a car go fast?

Or would 2 slim sexy ladies allow the car to go faster?

If a website is filled with oversized images, it needs a lot of time to load all those images to a website visitor.

How would the visitors feel? Slow and overwhelmed. A website will load faster if the images are of the right size.

There are a lot of free tools online to resize images. Here are a few:

• PicResize – User-friendly with additional customizations. Gets the job done.
• ResizePixel – Also user-friendly with the crop, flip, convert and resize options.
• LunaPic – this is a great free tool to edit and enhance images apart from resizing.

To work offline instead, can use these:

• GIMP – Free and open-source image editor. More than enough to cover basic needs.
• Inkspace – Another free flexible tool at disposal but learning to use it is required.

And if we want a more advanced image editor (need money to buy), these:

• Adobe Photoshop – By far one of the better image editing software out there.
• Skylum Luminar – A strong contender to Adobe Photoshop with a one-time flat fee.

4. Use A Cache Plugin

Let’s use McDonald’s as an example. We are at the counter. There are 10 people right in front of us. 8 of them ordered combo meals while 2 ordered ala carte meals.

For the combo meals, it has a pre-set number of items. This reduces the workload of the cashier to key in the items one by one and also the kitchen can prepare the meals quicker since the orders are in a set pattern.

Imagine. There are no combo meals available. These 10 people order by ala carte. The amount of time taken to take the order and for the kitchen to prepare them will increase.

So caching here essential does the same thing. Visitors visit the website, see the same things on the page or post all the time.

If a server picks all the items one by one (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, etc.), it will take a lot of time.

To speed things up, we cache (combo) them up. And that’s why caching is important to speed up a WordPress website!

The popular WordPress cache plugins are:

• WP Rocket
• Swift Performance
• W3 Total Cache
• WP Fastest Cache
• LiteSpeed Cache

5. Install An SSL

This is by far the easiest to implement. There are quite many benefits to having an SSL installed into our websites but one of them is to have HTTP/2 enabled.

SSL is that little lock sign in our browser.

What is HTTP/2?

Imagine this. 100 cars going through a 1-lane tunnel. Then another 100 cars going through an 8-lane tunnel simultaneously.

Which is faster? That’s HTTP/2. It allows more connections, so more things are loaded at the same time, speeding up the load process for a user.

Speak with the web hosting provider and get them to install it.

In Summary

These 5 steps the easiest to implement.

Which steps did you take to make your site go faster?