How To Speed Up Your WordPress Mobile Site
The following is a guest post by Jason Daszkewicz from WordSuccor.
The speed of a website is the chief factor that can either drive traffic in or out. There is no way to keep your visitors on your website if your website is slow. Slow loading website tends to have higher bounce rate which is definitely not good for business.
There are many reasons for the slow-loading of a website, and you’ve probably read a plethora of articles about speeding up your website. So, I am not going to be a broken record and repeat the same thing. In this article, we’ll explore how to fix website speed problems for mobile users.
Image Source: Kissmetrics
As a voracious mobile user myself, I open same number of websites on my mobile device as I do on my laptop. The most common problem I encounter is slow loading and resolution issues. So, what I do? Just like a normal viewer, I cancel the window and move on.
Just like that, every mobile user abandons your website when it takes too long to load. You need your site to be better than this. Oh No!!! I am not saying this to a visitor, I am saying it to you, Mr. WordPress website owner. You need to correct your site and avoid these silly mistakes.
Related Reading: Speed Kills: How to Audit and Improve Your Website’s Speed and Performance
Allow me to explain some remedies to solve your WordPress site speed problem for mobile users. Let’s get started.
1. Monitor your website’s performance
Before jumping directly into the solutions, I recommend taking a performance test of your WordPress website to see the areas that need the real work. For this task, you need to know the current speed of your website and the page loading speed.
You can use the Think With Google tool to check your current site. This tool has a scan feature that will scan your website and evaluate your WordPress website loading time, total pages in your website, their sizes and many other factors. After this, it will give your website a score based on the speed and above mentioned factors.
After the score, it will show you where your WordPress website needs improvements to achieve a fast loading speed. Neat huh?
2. Choose a faster web hosting service provider
In my opinion, this is the factor you should consider even before going for the service provider. But I can understand if you get caught under the cheap tricks of market or advertising campaigns. The most common case I guess most of the non-technical personnel faces is of website hosting service provider.
In general, people don’t know about the detailed specifics of the benefits of the hosting plan. This creates a perfect environment of manipulation and results in such blunders.
I recommend using Bluehost or Siteground. These both are very secure, their plans are affordable, their services are extraordinary, and they are fast in comparison to others. For the most secure and affordable solution, stay tuned for a white label WordPress hosting service coming soon from Vendasta!
3. Compress your website images
Images are the hardest part when your website loads in a mobile browser. All the CSS and JS elements load quickly, but the images take their time and, as a result, increase the bounce rate of the website. Just like that, people leave your website left and right if you don’t correct this issue.
It is understandable that a 2.5Mb image will take more time to travel from one place to another than a 125Kb sized image. So, you need to compress your images to have a better loading time.
There are many plugins that can help you to compress all the images on your WordPress server. Some of those plugins are:
Give one of these a shot and watch with wonder at how quickly the speed of your mobile site improves.
4. Make use of a powerful caching plugin
Website caching is always beneficial when we talk about the speed of a WordPress website. These plugins create static pages of each of your website posts, which helps the browser load your website faster.
There are many plugins that are available for this exact function. Here in this section, I am going to provide you a small overview of two best caching plugins for WordPress websites.
WP Super Cache
This is one of the most powerful plugins when it comes to caching your WordPress website. It serves static pages of your WordPress website to your viewers. These static files are saved for those who:
- Are not logged in
- Have not left any comment on your blog
- Or have not viewed the password protected content
This is a very handy plugin and very easy to use as well. Try it and make your page loading speed higher than ever.
W3 Total Cache
This plugin is an SEO-enhanced cache plugin. It improves your website’s SEO rankings by speeding up your website’s page load speed. It also supports integration with Content Delivery Network (CDN) as well.
This plugin can increase your overall site performance up to 10X. It is very effective as it also supports AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), which is up next for discussion.
5. Make use of AMP for your WordPress website
AMP, or “Accelerated Mobile Pages,” is the project deployed by Google to improve mobile user experience. In AMP pages, there are no advertisements, no custom comment boxes, and no heavy CSS element work. It is a simple page application which minimizes the page elements and increases the loading time.
There are speculations that Google is also rewarding huge SEO ranking boost for using this technology. For using AMP, you must install the official AMP plugin from Automattic, the developer of the famous CMS WordPress.
Related reading: Is Google AMP Right For Marketing Your Business?
So, fellas, these are the actionable tips you’ll want to try with your WordPress site. You can actually increase the performance of your WordPress website for the mobile user! See the recommended WordPress SEO plugins here to do that. Let’s review the actionable steps you need to focus on:
- Test your WordPress website’s performance to see the areas that need the real work
- Choose a faster web hosting service provider like Siteground or Bluehost
- Compress your images to improve loading time
- Make use of a powerful caching plugin
- Make use of AMP for your WordPress website
You can get started building your own websites, or selling them to your business clients with Website Builder in Vendasta's wholesale Marketplace. Just follow these steps and make your websites fast and efficient for mobile users.
I hope you found this helpful in your search for a speedy site. Tried these tips out for yourself, or have more to share? Let me know in the comments below! Till then, have a good one.
