Top 10 Causes of Slow WordPress Website Loading

The speed with which your website loads has a direct impact on whether or not visitors become new customers or fans. When your site is provided quickly to visitors, everyone has the opportunity to engage with your content. Furthermore, Google considers page loading speed and server response time when ranking your website. 

So if you also think, why is my WordPress site so slow? Then you need to first conduct a website health check and then fulfill all the Page speed Optimization criteria to help load your site faster. However, if you don’t minimize the server response time and it takes two or more seconds to load (including your dashboard), you’ll be giving your visitors a subpar experience, and many will abandon your site before it even starts loading.

People not only anticipate quickness, but they also make decisions at breakneck speed. Did you know that a person’s decision to like or dislike your website takes less than 3 seconds? So, if you want visitors to stay and buy your service, don’t waste those three valuable seconds on a WordPress slow loading website.

In fact, 40% of those polled said they immediately leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Slow loading speeds and a high bounce rate from disgruntled customers cause search engines like Google to punish your site, limiting your traffic even further.

All of this is to imply that the speed at which your website loads can make or break its success. Isn’t it past time you started working on it? Here’s how to determine why WordPress is so slow, as well as some potential issues that may be the main reasons behind the issue of WordPress site slow.

Is your site moving as fast as it could?

• How to check your site’s speed

It’s critical to keep track of your website’s performance so you are able to continue to improve the consumer experience. You can supervise even a slow WordPress site for free using a variety of sites and software. Following are a few example:

• GTMetrix — This tool not only checks your site’s speed, but it also provides you with a detailed analysis and report on its performance.

• WebPageTest – Enter the URL of your page and choose a browser to determine the performance of your site. You can also look into other choices like “Visual Comparison” and “Advanced Testing” at your convenience.

• Pingdom – Pingdom allows you to check the speed of your website from anywhere across the globe.

Why is my WordPress site so slow?

You might be asking why your site isn’t loading as quickly as it should be and what you can do about it. That’s why we’ve developed a list of possible reasons that could be slowing down your loading time.

1. Cheap hosting plan

Your website’s host is the location where it lives and where it gets the resources it needs to handle traffic. Your site will be slow if you have a low-cost hosting plan or on a shared hosting server. The pace at which your data moves and is sent to your visitors is determined by your host. Not a single described below will improve your website’s speed if you’re dealing with server limits. That’s one reason why choosing a suitable hosting plan is critical to the success of your website.

2. “Caching” data

Caching is a feature that saves a version of your website to display if the same user visits several times. Your website will utilize fewer resources as a result of not needing to extract files straight from the hosting provider. However, this implies you’ll have to clear your cache frequently to make sure your visitors aren’t seeing an old version of your website. But the good news is — you can eliminate this tiny issue by combining  VArnish with a WordPress’s cache tool plugin.

3. Using Huge Image Files

While high-quality photographs enhance the appearance of your website, they also drastically slow it down. You clearly can’t remove all photographs from website, and changing the size of the image without hurting quality using traditional editing applications is typically tough. That is why we suggest programmes like ImageOptim and Optimole, which have already demonstrated their effectiveness.

4. No CDN (Content Delivery Network) 

Is your target audience from outside the USA? If you answered yes, you must consider adopting a content delivery network (CDN), which allows you to reach your target market without sacrificing site speed.

5. Minify HTML, CSS, & JS

When computers don’t have to interpret long, difficult codes, they perform faster. You may reduce the time it takes for your site to load by minifying all JS files, HTML, and CSS. Minify and Autoptimize are two plugins that might assist you in this endeavor.

6. Cluttered WordPress database

To maintain your WordPress website working at its fastest, you must frequently clean up all of the extraneous data from your DB. Every other day, eliminate spam comments, unneeded content and data. Plugins can help you quickly without wasting hours of your time.

7. Outdated plugins, themes, & WordPress

Now is the moment to update your system and plugins if you’ve been ignoring them. Your servers are burdened by obsolete themes, which make them vulnerable to threats.

8. Low quality or bulky themes & framework

Using complicated or low-quality themes and frameworks slows down your site in the same way that huge images and files do. To increase the efficiency of your site, you don’t need to employ fewer plugins; instead, invest in their quality.

9. Unwanted themes & plugins

You should remove all deactivated themes you don’t use anymore whenever you upgrade your website. As a result, your server will be less stressed and your speed will improve.

Conclusion

You must optimize what you have to offer if you want your visitors and consumers to be interested on your site and return for more. It’s important to take the time to find a web hosting company that understands your demands and provides high-quality products, service, and support. The speed with which your server responds is critical. Install only the plugins you require and delete those that are no longer in use, and remember to optimize and compress any images you use on your WordPress site.

It’s obvious that caching saves time and money for everyone, so it’s critical to speed up your site. Then, if you apply the necessary updates, everything will continue to function normally. Because every website is different, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for performance. 
Because one (or more) of these issues could be slowing down your site, it’s critical to do a complete examination before attempting to resolve any issues. Rather than doing everything yourself, you can entrust your website’s performance reports to a reputable WordPress speed optimization service for optimization.