We know well how, nowadays, improving the performance of a website has become essential for the Seo, for marketing purposes, but in general but especially for the proper functioning of the CMS. The web is moving more and more on mobile every day, and having an almost immediate load becomes essential, to prevent users from leaving the site prematurely.

If we use WordPress as a cms we have the advantage of being able to enjoy a multitude of plugins ready to work on optimization, making the operations easier even for the less experienced.

The most recent statistics speak of a maximum loading time on mobile of three seconds: when a portal is slower, it is abandoned before the full loading. In this way, the portal does not sell, does not convert, does not get useful visitors.

SPEED AND PERFORMANCE, HOW TO MEASURE THEM

The tools for measuring the speed and performance of your website are as follows:

Pagespeed Insight: the official Google page that offers all the indications to obtain perfect, error-free, fast and performing pages.

Web.dev and “Inspect element” of Google Chrome: these are tools very similar to Pagespeed Insight, which collect useful data to program future optimizations. In order to use theses elements, you must use Chrome, right-click on the page, choose the item Inspect and, in the menu on the right, select Performance. In addition to speed, you can choose whether or not to perform a full audit.

GtMetrix:  It offers scores based on letters A to F and offers precise solutions to the problems reported.

Pingdoom Tools: Analyze websites differently from previous ones. It provides precise information on the loading times of each of the individual elements of a page, thanks to the so-called waterfall. In this way, slower elements can be easily identified (e.g. large non-optimized images) and improvements can be made.

Webpagetest.org: in some ways very similar to the previous one, offers relevant results.

THE ERRORS DETECTED: MEANING OF THE MOST COMMON ERRORS

Let’s give a brief description of the meaning of the most common errors detected with the above tools:

LEVERAGE BROWSER CACHING
Static page files can be saved by your browser to reduce subsequent uploads.

MINIMIZE REDIRECTS / AVOID LANDING PAGE REDIRECTS
Reduce page redirects is speed factor

MINIFY JAVASCRIPT / CSS / HTML
Compressing codes is essential

SCALED IMAGES SERVER
The images should be published without reductions, already sized according to the visualization defined by CSS or HTML.

DEFER PARSING OF JAVASCRIPT
In the code, move the Javascrip to the bottom, or activate asynchronous loading. Other resources load faster.

REMOVE UNUSED CSS
Developers tend to create multifunction templates with numerous scripts. Removing the parts of CSS that you don’t need can help, maybe with tools like UnusedCSS that help us check which CSS code you don’t need.

SEND BACK OFF-SCREEN IMAGES
Use images that are correctly sized for your PC, tablet and smartphone screen.

AVOIDS REDIRECTION BETWEEN PAGES
Too many redirects slow down? Definitely yes.

ELIMINATES DISPLAY BLOCKING RESOURCES
We must apply to javascript and CSS async or defer, giving preference to the contents of the page. Javascript on footer can certainly be of great help.

PROBLEMS WITH FONTS
Some templates make multiple calls to font libraries, such as Google Fonts. Chaos Webfont can solve the problem by downloading them locally and creating the style sheet.

CACHE, MINIFY JAVASCRIPT AND HTML, GZIP COMPRESSION: WORDPRESS PLUGINS

Wp Rocket

Wp Rocket is one of the best solutions for cache management, while being able to optimize every aspect of our portal. It can handle asynchronous uploads, minify and combine page scripts, and much more.

W3 Total Cache

Together with Wp Rocket is definitely one of the best proposals for cache management, if it is well configured, the speed of loading pages is significantly reduced. Unfortunately it is not always so easy to set up, it is necessary to know in depth the characteristics of the server used, or request them from your system administrator.

Autoptimze

is a wordpress plugin that simplifies the optimization process. It can act alone or in combination with other plugins to minimize, aggregate and cache scripts and codes. Also works well on sites with HTTP/2 protocol.

Hummingbirds

is another solution particularly appreciated by many users, for a WordPress speeding up system elementary enough to configure.

BEST PLUGINS TO OPTIMIZE IMAGES ON WORDPRESS

  • Webp Express
  • Optimal
  • EWWW Image Optimizer
  • Imagify
  • Cloudflare can optimize the distribution and uploading of images, as well as their transfer to CDN (Content Delivery Network). A Lazy Load system is also useful to reduce waiting times for uploading.