Having a WordPress site is not enough these days. Besides having a website, there are several factors to look into, to increase the engagement of the website. One of the most important factors is its speed.
It has been reported that even a two-second delay can lead to 87% abandonment of sites.
Such stats make us feel the importance of having a site that is not only engaging but fast as well. Thanks to the presence of speed optimization of plugins and tools, creators no longer have to worry about boosting the speed of their pages.
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The three main reasons to choose speed optimization plugins and tools:
- To improve the user experience: If your site does not load in time, chances are your user will abandon the site.
- Conversion rate: Web speed is directly proportional to a good conversion rate. It refers to the percentage of users completing an action required.
- SEO ranks: Google gives better ranks to people who have a good speed.
There are various tools and plugins available that assist in speed optimization. Some of which include:
All-in-one Plugins
WP Rocket (Premium)
An all-in-one speed optimization tool. WP Rocket offers a stunning and user-friendly interface and provides different kinds of services such as Page caching, Image lazy loading, and several other features.
This premium plugin is billed at 49 dollars a year for access.
Hummingbird
Hummingbird is another all-in-one plugin that is developed by WordPress speed specialties and is easy to use. It is dedicated to boosting a site’s page and improving search rankings as well.
The tool also supports Image optimization and CDN.
WP-Optimize (Freemium)
WP-Optimize plugin is a complete package for speed optimization. It cleans your database, supports caching, and enables image compression.
It has a free as well as a premium variant.
Caching plugins
WP Super Cache
One of the widely used plugins, WP Super Cache has over 2 million active downloads. This plugin enables simplified caching. In layman’s terms, caching is temporary storage that saves files in the browser instead of downloading large files like PHP scripts.
W3 Total Cache
This one is a popular caching speed optimization plug-in. This plug-in provides various features ranging from the Connect network delivery support system to caching. It comes in both a free and a paid premium version.
LiteSpeed Cache
The LiteSpeed Cache plugin stores data on multiple servers. It is also compatible with other popular plugins as it supports multi-site, an option to create multiple WordPress sites.
Image Compression Plugins
WP Smush
WP Smush is one of the best plugins for image optimization. This plugin strips out unused colors from the pictures without causing any changes to the quality.
It has been observed that 22% lesser conversion takes place when a site takes time to load. Your site’s speed really matters!
Imagify
Imagify is another good image-loading plugin. It also helps in the easy loading of thumbnails and optimizes the large images that slow down a website. This plugin helps to avoid it.
TinyPNG
TinyPNG is another image compression tool, not a plugin. The process is very simple and can get the job done in no time.
Lazy Loading Plugins
Lazy Load
It is the process when the site loads based on the engagement of the audience. The suggested plugin helps you avoid the lazy loading process by targeting the HTTP request mechanism and avoiding the wastage of the bandwidth. It helps the page load when required.
a3 Lazy Load
Another popular lazy loading plug-in is a3 lazyload which is also available for free. This is an extremely user-friendly plugin. It is most mobile-oriented.
CDN services
This is a network that is distributed geographically in a uniform manner. The responsibility of this network is the delivery of internet content.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare is another CDN service that speeds up the website and protects it from security glitches.
Read More: How AI is Providing Much-Needed Acceleration to Mobile Application Technology
KeyCDN (Premium)
An effective CDN service, KeyCDN helps remove all the unnecessary content with a click. It helps the website to load faster and easily integrate with content management systems.
Other speed optimization plugins
Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket
This is a plugin that enables real-time conversation between the browser and the server. Here, autosave threats are reduced. This optimizes CPU utilization.
Perfmatters
Similar to the plugin mentioned above, Perfmatters also allows you to disable certain settings of WordPress, ones that are majorly slowing down your site.
ShortPixel
Shortpixel is another image-loading plugin. It is easy to use and compresses images and pdfs in a click without compromising the quality. Free download, as well as a premium option, is available.
WordPress can be the most user-friendly and comprehensive CMS for all types of websites. However, what makes the CMS such an all-rounder are the plugins. If you are wise enough to choose the best plugins available, you can make yourself a very optimized website for speed and search engine friendliness.
