How quickly your website loads is one of the most critical factors in developing user friendly websites that rank well on search engine ranking pages (SERP’s). Your average user won’t wait eight seconds for a page to load, in fact Google recommend you get your site load speed down to two seconds or under. Failing to improve your load speed results in a huge bounce rate for potential customers and poor SEO performance.
WordPress has countless plugins that can help make your life easier and improve your site’s speed. But for every fantastic plugin that does exactly what it says on the tin, there are another thousand that don’t manage to do their job properly. Here are 2 of the best WordPress plugins to improve load speed that live up to the hype.
1: W3 Total Cache
One of the best ways to improve your sites load speed is through caching. The W3 Total Cache plugin makes it simple to setup browser, database and page caching, compress pages for quicker downloads and much more. If you aren’t already using W3 Total Cache, then it’s definitely worth trying. The installation is fairly straight forward and it’s a plugin that can make a huge impact on site performance.
2: WP Smush Image Optimizer
Large images that haven’t been optimised for the web are one of the biggest culprits out there for slowing down websites. While images are a great way to grab a user’s attention and to get your message across properly, that shouldn’t happen at the detriment of site speed. The WP Smush Image Optimizer plugin balances the need for high quality images on your site and the need for your site to load quickly perfectly. This plugin manages to compress the file size of all of the images on your website so that they take up less space without compromising their appearance in the slightest. It sounds like cheating, but this clever little plugin actually delivers incredible results.
Start increasing your website speed and performance today. These plugins are simple to set up and can make a huge difference for users on your site, leading to them staying longer, browsing more pages and potentially turning into customers.