Why Is WordPress So Slow? And Why It Really Matters

Do you have a WordPress site that seems to get slower and slower by the day? Are your logo and header taking too long to load, are your buttons or images shifting, or are your interactive elements all lagging when you try to use them?

Here’s a tough truth you may not want to hear: Your slow WordPress website is costing you money. Maybe a lot of it.

Here are the facts: If your site doesn’t load within three seconds, one-third of visitors leave. Within five seconds, a staggering 90% are gone.

As you can see, page load time really, really matters. With that in mind, let’s talk about why your WordPress site is so slow and how you can fix it.

How Do I Know If My Site Is Slow?

You may think that your website is slow (hint: you’re noticing lags in pages or images loading), but what is actually considered slow in the world of the www? A slow website’s load time can significantly increase bounce rates and reduce user engagement, as visitors are less likely to stay on a site that takes too long to load. Let’s take a peek at the industry benchmarks.

Expected Performance Benchmarks: What Should Your Site Speed Be?

When it comes to site speed, there is a standard beyond “hmm, this is taking a while.” The official standard that measures user experience and speed is Google’s Core Web Vitals (or CWV). This standard influences Search Optimization (SEO), or how and where you show up in search results. And when you have customers searching for you or a business like yours, it becomes apparent why it’s a very important measurement.

The stats are this: To meet the “good” threshold (and have a positive influence on your SEO ranking), a WordPress site page should fully load in under 1.5 seconds. Regularly testing and optimizing your WordPress site speed—including evaluating load times, server proximity, page size, and HTTP requests—is essential to consistently meet these benchmarks and improve your SEO. If your site’s not up to snuff, you may not only lose impatient users, but your Google ranking could suffer.

How to Measure Your Site Speed

Now that you know what your website load time needs to be, your next stop should be finding a tool to conduct a speed test on your site. Don’t rely on simply using the timer on your phone and timing the load yourself; these specialized tools are essential because they provide the objective data, detailed breakdown, and actionable diagnostics that reveal why your site is slow. These tools help you assess your website’s loading speed and identify specific areas for improvement.

Some of the most popular speed test tools to try:

• Page Speed Insights: This is Google’s website speed tool that provides you with a score out of 100. Higher scores (90-100) tell you your site has good performance, mid-range scores (50-89) mean there’s room for improvement, and lower scores (0-49) suggest that significant WordPress performance optimizations are required.
• GTmetrix: This tool provides an in-depth analysis of your site speed, along with improvement recommendations for your load time.
• WebPageTest: This tool offers detailed metrics and evaluations, giving you the full picture of your website’s speed and usability.

To use these tools, you just need to enter your site’s URL into the search bar. The tool does the rest by visiting your website, gathering analytics, and providing recommendations.

Here’s Why Your WordPress Site Is Slow

So you ran the diagnostics, and it’s official: you have a slow WordPress site. What’s going on? There are several factors that could be slowing down your site, such as excessive pop-ups, inefficient plugins, theme bloat, or too many HTTP requests.

Let’s go through the options.

Your Website Hosting Performance

If you have poor-quality or shared hosting, it could be affecting your website speed. The web server processes all requests to your site, and if it’s not optimized, it can slow down performance. This is because server resources are being shared across hundreds of sites, resulting in the dreaded slow load of your WordPress website.

Think of your hosting server as the engine of your WordPress site. Choosing a reliable hosting provider or web host that offers high-quality web hosting is crucial for optimal performance. If the engine is weak or overloaded, there’s no amount of optimization that will make your site truly fast. While a shared hosting plan can be suitable for small sites, larger sites with more traffic may require more advanced solutions. Web hosting issues, such as outdated server software or insufficient resources, can also contribute to slow site performance. Some web hosts provide features like automatic updates and caching to help improve speed.

Your Images Aren’t Optimized

Large, uncompressed images are consistently one of the biggest and easiest performance killers for any website, and especially for WordPress sites that rely on visual content. That’s because when a user visits your site, their browser has to download every single file on the page: CSS, JavaScript, and of course, images. And if those images aren’t optimized, this dramatically slows your load time. By compressing images, you can significantly reduce file size for faster load times without sacrificing quality.

Your WordPress Plugins Are Slowing the Site

WordPress plugins are often the reason your site is struggling with its speed. Using multiple plugins or too many plugins, especially if they are poorly coded, can significantly increase your site’s loading time. Active plugins add extra files (like images and code) and make your database put in extra work each time someone lands on the webpage, which bogs down your speed and delays page interactivity. Managing your active plugins and regularly removing outdated plugins is essential for maintaining optimal performance. Choosing a well-coded WordPress plugin can help reduce the need for multiple plugins and improve site speed.

Your WordPress Theme Has A Lot Going On

If the theme of your WordPress site comes with a lot of bells and whistles (think built-in page builders, complex animation libraries, custom icon sets, or integrated sliders), it may be using extra code across your website, even on pages that don’t use the features. All this extra code can significantly slow your website’s performance. This can cause a major slowdown on all of your pages.

What Can You Do to Fix a Slow WordPress Website?

Now that we know the “why,” let’s take a look at some WordPress performance optimizations you can implement to speed things up, including improvements to caching, CDNs, and image optimization. These optimizations lead to improved website performance and measurable speed improvements, which are essential for both user experience and search engine rankings. Regularly monitoring your site’s performance is key to maintaining fast website performance and identifying areas for further enhancement. Ongoing speed improvements can enhance user experience and SEO, making your site’s performance a critical factor in your website’s success.

Some Fixes You Can Try On Your Own

You don’t have to know how to build a website from the ground up (consult an expert for that) to try some quick fixes to increase your site speed.

These solutions can help you address some of the common causes of website slowdown:

• Optimize Your Hosting Environment: If you’re using an overcrowded host, try moving to a Managed WordPress Host, a Virtual Private Server (VPS), or Cloud Hosting.
• Start Using a Caching Strategy: Enable WordPress cache to store pre-generated HTML pages and reduce server load. Use a caching plugin such as WP Super Cache, WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, or LiteSpeed Cache to generate static HTML versions of your pages, improving load times and handling traffic surges more efficiently. For further speed gains, consider implementing object caching to store frequently accessed data in memory. You can also implement a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare or Bunny.net to cache your static files (images, CSS, JS) on servers worldwide, delivering them faster to users based on their geographic location.
• Do a Data Clean-Up: Optimize your WordPress database by removing unnecessary data, such as old revisions, spam comments, and transient options, to boost performance and improve website speed.
• Optimize your images with a plugin that automatically compresses your images, reducing their file size.
• Audit your plugins. Deactivate and delete any unnecessary or poorly coded plugins, then run speed tests after removing each to isolate the culprits.
• Update your software. Keep your WordPress software, theme, and plugins updated to the latest versions to maintain security, performance, and compatibility. Also, ensure your programming language, such as PHP, is up to date—updating your programming language version can improve compatibility and speed. Avoid running outdated WordPress, as it can create security vulnerabilities and performance issues.
• Enable lazy loading. This delays the loading of images and videos until the user scrolls near them, which dramatically speeds up the initial page load.

Get Expert Help With Your WordPress

Unless you’re an expert yourself, some parts of website builds and optimizations should really be done by the pros.

At Big Red Jelly, we can build a website for your business that is mobile-ready, fast, and does the heavy lifting for your business. Our expertise can help you achieve a fast WordPress site that meets your business goals. From WordPress builds to hosting and even digital strategy, we can give you the research-backed builds that we know will move your business toward the goal: making more revenue and growing your company.

Reach out to our team of website experts today for a free quote and take your website to the next (fast) level.