Wordpress Speed - WP Crank

Speeding up WordPress

It’s very simple. If your site is loading slowly, then you are losing visitors and revenue. Even a few seconds of waiting will cause people to leave your site. Search engines also consider your site’s page-load speed when considering where to place you in the search rankings. A slow-loading site will be penalized and will never rise to the top of the search results.

Visitors will wait – for about 3 seconds.

If your site is running slowly, you are undoubtedly losing customers and sales. So how slow is slow? Nearly half of all people will leave a site that takes longer than three seconds to load. The geniuses at Google have done extensive testing and found that traffic decreased by more than 20% for every one-half second it took a page to load. Visitors have a very short attention span, and there is no shortage of other websites they could visit instead.

But that’s not all. Search engines like Google can actually penalize slow-loading websites! So not only are you losing visitors with slow page-load speeds, now you’re losing website traffic because Google decided your site is too slow. This one-two punch can essentially render your site useless.

Mobile users are especially susceptible to slow-loading websites. Download times are much longer over cellular networks, and smartphones lack the processing power of a desktop computer. Since Internet use on mobile devices surpassed desktop computers in 2014, it’s critical that your website load quickly. If your site takes an eternity to load, your customer is going to click away from your site and likely never come back.

Visitors will wait – for about 3 seconds.

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What can cause my site to load slowly?

Cheap hosting. Cheap hosting is the number one cause of slow load times. Their focus is generally on providing the least expensive environment and maximizing their profits, not on having the fastest possible websites. They also often massively oversell server space, which can directly – and sometimes severely – affect your site speed.

Poorly optimized images. Images that are not web-optimized can substantially impact load times. Images with unnecessarily large dimensions should be scaled down to the actual size needed, and all images should be compressed to reduce their file size. These steps can dramatically speed up your site without any loss of quality.

Poorly written code. The code that makes up the theme and plugins you use on your WordPress site are usually very well written and fast – except when they’re not. Plugin conflicts or sloppy coding could be slowing down your site. Even popular plugins have the potential to kill your page speed. Beware.

Not using speed tools. There are many tools and plugins that can significantly enhance your page-load times. If you’re not using these tools, you are missing a huge opportunity to improve your site speed and overall search results.

Missing assets. Your website likely connects to other sites for scripts, code, and files that are used to create your website. If these resources are not retrieved properly or have moved, the web browser will just sit, with the spinning wheel cursor trying desperately to load the page and driving load times through the roof.

We'll get you Cranking!

Great news! Your site doesn’t have to be slow. We’ll max out your speed and get your website loading lickety-split with highly optimized hosting, smart speed tools, image optimizations, and expert tweaks. The best part? Your visitors won’t leave, and your search engine rankings won’t tank!

Ways we speed up WordPress...

Lightning-Fast Hosting

We've built lightning-fast servers and optimized the heck out of them specifically for WordPress and speed. And since they're our own servers, we can dig in deep to get your site running as fast as possible. Many other hosts don't care much about your website speed – but we aren't a hosting company. We're a WordPress performance company.

Image Optimization

Unoptimized images can slow down your website significantly. We offer complete image optimization, including resizing your images to appropriate dimensions, compressing all of your existing images to reduce file sizes, and implementing the tools to automated image optimization going forward. All without any loss of quality.

Page/Browser Caching

An average web page involves hundreds of thousands of lines of code and 100 or more database calls – all of which add to page-load times. Caching pre-builds and saves the HTML instead of running all the processes to build it each time someone wants to see it. Serving a pre-generated page can make a big difference in page-load times.

Speed Profiling

Many things happen when a visitor views your website. Many pieces are brought together to produce the final page. Some elements need to be downloaded before the visitor can see them, and some require the server to process a script. We profile your entire website and processes to identify and correct any bottlenecks that could be slowing your site down.

Code Minification

Your website includes many CSS and JavaScript files, each of which must load individually for your website to look and operate properly. We combine all these files into one single file and remove all the unnecessary comments and whitespace in the code to produce the lowest possible file size – and the fastest-loading websites.

GZIP Compression

GZIP works just like a ZIP file, only for your web pages. This system compresses your website code before it is sent to the site visitor, and then it is uncompressed once it reaches their computer. Compressing files greatly reduces the size of the data that gets transferred and helps pages load much faster.

Defer JS Loading

JavaScript files are often included at the top of a page's code. This delays content and imagery from loading and increases the time until the visitor can start viewing the site. We can minimize this effect by relocating your JavaScript files to the end of the page, so everything starts showing up much more quickly for your visitor.

Content Delivery Network

Your site lives on a server that could be located anywhere geographically. When someone visits your site, the information may have to travel thousands of miles, which can have a noticeable effect on page-load times. A content delivery network is a network of servers located around the world, ensuring a server is in the near vicinity of every site visitor.

PageSpeed Module

Google's server module provides a high level of speed optimization for your site. The module adds additional layers of caching, minification, compression, as well as other optimizations. We use this module in each of our hosting plans to help ensure your site is loading as quickly as possible.

Get Cranking fast!

Stop losing revenue and visitors because of a slow website! Our WordPress speed experts will get your website loading quickly! Plus, we take care of your security, maintenance, and backups – and we’ll be there with a helping hand whenever you need!

Get Started!Full Coverage starts at just $99.95/month
We’ll get your site Cranking fast and keep it that way! All plans include highly optimized hosting and speed optimization options.