How to speed up your WordPress site

If your customers can’t navigate your shop and immediately find what they are looking for, they will shop elsewhere.
That’s why we bring you a super guide to understand how to improve your ecommerce performance!

Now we offer you 4 tools that will help you understand if your site performs at its best.

• Google Analytics: one of the most complete free tools, the section you may be interested in here is Time Reports.
• Search Console: one of the products in the Google suite that monitors, among other things, the performance of a website, analyzing performance, speed, ranking and other parameters.
• Screaming Frog: in addition to measuring website speed, it works just like a spider, extracting relevant details such as broken links, missing title tags, 404 errors, 301 redirects and more.
• PageSpeed Insights: this tool processes performance data directly from Google, showing both Desktop and Mobile overviews and pointing out tips to improve your ecommerce performance.

Choose quality hosting
The hosting service is the space that will host your website and that is why it is essential to choose one that is powerful and reliable, especially in terms of performance. So check that it observes these technical requirements:

• Applications and tools updated to the latest stable versions;
• High-performance SSD drives;
• Server-side caching;
• Sufficient RAM, CPU and bandwidth resources for the needs of the site.

Choose a fast and reliable theme
The more complex a theme is, the more code it will have to use at the risk of slower performance. Many also allow you to turn off features you don’t use, which is a great way to balance site needs with speed issues.

HappyTips: try running its demo pages through the speed tools we mentioned earlier, or read customer reviews to see what real users have to say.

Limit Plugins
Plugins are one of the biggest pluses of WordPress because they allow infinite flexibility. However, it is good to keep only the ones you are using active, there is no right or wrong number, but check that they work properly, that they are compatible with your version of WordPress.
So, choose plugins that perform multiple functions, check reviews for speed information, make sure they are regularly updated, and install options from reliable sources.

Keep Wordpress and plugins up to date
Updates to WordPress core, themes, and plugins are often not limited to new features or security patches. In many cases, they improve site speed through code optimization.
Be sure to run updates whenever they are available!

Compress images
Images are among the heaviest and most difficult files for the server to handle, so it is good to keep them as small as possible. However, it is also important to balance image quality with size. After all, you don’t want blurry images of products!

Here are some good tips to adopt:

• Choose the correct size. Unless the image has a transparent background, it is usually best to upload JPEG files, which are smaller. Or try the new webP format.
• Check and use the correct size, i.e., do not insert images larger than necessary because this affects their weight.
• Optimize the image with an image compression tool like this one.

Take advantage of a CDN
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of servers distributed around the world. It downloads images, videos and other resources from your site using its own network, thus taking the load off the server.
It is a very useful tool especially if you sell in international contexts and also protects your project from external attacks.

Don’t forget to spend some time on security and protection of sensitive data as well. Only then will you gain the trust of your audience. If you want to learn more about this topic, read our article!