The importance of WordPress website optimisation with Justin Frydman

Build it. Theme it. Watch it fail. Or not. If you know how to optimize.

Few things are as frustrating as a website slower than molasses going uphill.  Even fewer people stick around to see whether the website was worth waiting for in the first place. There are plenty of other websites in the great online sea and if yours is slow visitors will just go somewhere else.

Website optimisation is the key to online success. It really is. So, to pin it down and get clarity around the issues that influence it, I spoke to Justin Frydman. Justin is a full stack web developer, systems administrator and (in his words) ‘passionate problem solver’ and since I joined Codeable he’s become one of my go to guys with regards to website optimisation. Justin and I had a chat about the how, the why and the what of website optimisation…

JB: Why is website optimisation so important?

JF: The short answer is that people hate slow websites. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling a product, trying to increase reader conversion or gain leads that result in sales. A slow website is going to impact your goals significantly.

There are a lot of studies that prove this point but one of the most popular is how Google found that a .5 second loading variable cost them a 20% dip in traffic. While your business may not match the sales of a giant like Google, removing roadblocks to potential sales makes sense. Right?

Considering how many people use their mobile devices to shop online it is even more important to focus on web optimisation now than ever before. Any slowness on your site is magnified on mobile. These devices have slower hardware and connectivity and will load far more slowly than the desktop.

JB: What are the top three worst and best WordPress themes in terms of performance (themes or plugins that affect site performance)?

JF: It’s the themes that try to ‘have it all’ that tend to suffer from performance degradation. The more that a theme does in each page load, the harder the server has to work to serve up your page. There are ways you can hide these shortcomings from your visitors such as using caching methods or other techniques but you did ask for a list. Here it is…

The worst three themes:

1. Avada
2. Divi
3. Flatsome

The best three themes:

1. Custom built and tailored to your needs. This way you don’t have more or less than YOU need.
2. Many of the themes built on the Genesis Framework
3. The Beaver Builder theme for a visual builder

JB: What are the factors that influence website optimisation?

JF: There are numerous factors that can affect your website’s performance. It’s about ensuring that each of them is as good as possible so they add up to having a truly fast loading website.

01: Host

You must have a good host with a good stack (server software) that is properly configured to serve WordPress as fast as possible. A great host doesn’t have to cost a fortune but if you’re spending less than a cup of coffee a month on your host, well, you’re probably getting what you pay for. It’s also important to ensure your server is as close as possible to your target market. The closer it is to your visitors, the faster your website will be.

02: Plugins

Every plugin you add to your website has the potential to slow it down. Not all WordPress plugins are created equal. Many are developed without performance in mind. So, a single plugin could perform a taxing database query that adds seconds to your page loading.

If you have too many plugins it will complicate the technical debt and debugging of your site. This will make it harder to track down any problem plugins. Some can add bloat to your database as time goes by so the slowing down of your site won’t show until your database queries take seconds instead of milliseconds. Ensure you have a staging website and thoroughly test and vet every new plugin before you use it.

03: Themes

Themes that include a lot of JavaScript can visually slow things down on the front-end of your website. Some CPU intensive JavaScript can really slow older computers to a crawl. Depending on when that JavaScript is loaded, it can even render block your website.

Themes that make heavy use of animations can look slow to the visitor even if they aren’t. It’s also worth noting that the heavier themes need a lot more time to process a page before it can even be rendered. The longer it takes to process a page, the longer things are loading before the website is visually drawn in the browser.

04: Images

Using images that haven’t been optimised (and using many of them) increases loading times. Images can be compressed, saving up to 80% in file size without compromising on quality. The less the browser has to download, the faster your website. Sliders with 10 images or large background images can increase page size significantly. So, to optimise your website, consider each image’s purpose on the page and ensure the dimension and file sizes are appropriate.

05: Videos

Fully loading videos will destroy your website metrics and often cause a laggy experience. Use videos sparingly and make decisions based on the data you collect. If a video really is converting sales, then it is probably worth keeping.

06: Adverts

While ads are often needed to help you make a living, they can really slow things down. Even once they are fully loaded they can slow scrolling and the functionality of the website, especially on slower devices.

07: CDN

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can help in serving your static assets (images, JavaScript and CSS) to your visitors at speed. Often this lightens the load on your server as well.

JB: How can you test your website’s performance?

JF: There are a number of online tools to help you with website optimisation and performance. That said, the grades don’t always align with a faster website. If you are shooting for straight As that doesn’t actually mean you will end up with a visually faster loading website.

The Page Load Time Google Chrome Extension is an interesting tool but it tracks fully loaded time, including JavaScript that is running after your website has rendered. In my opinion, the goal is to show your visitor your website as quickly as possible. If things are going on in the background that aren’t affecting user experiences then they are not a priority.

Here are some steps you can take to website optimisation:

Step 01: Your browser

Really use your website, logged in and logged out. Does it feel fast? Is the initial load pretty fast? What about clicking on additional pages? How about the WordPress dashboard?

Human testing goes a long way towards website optimisation as it is humans who use your site.

Step 02: Pingdom 

Not all items in the Performance Grade can or should be fixed. It’s important to understand this report in detail but what should matter to you the most are: Load Time, Page Size and Requests. The ultimate goal is to get these as low as possible. Increasing the grades is a bonus and only IF they don’t affect the ultimate metric – Load Time – negatively.

I’ve seen websites taken from a C to an A but at the cost of 400ms. It’s just not worth adding that extra loading time to increase a score.

Step 03: Gtmetrix

The recommendations here must be properly analysed by an expert GTmetrix tracks Fully Loaded Time. This considers the background scripts running – if they are running after the page is visually drawn in the browser that’s not a big deal, however, if your page is waiting for them to load before it shows your site then you have a problem. Ideally, you want to get Fully Loaded Time, Total Page Size and Requests as low as possible. This may involve removing items you don’t need on your site.

Step 04: Google PageSpeed Tools Insights

Until recently, this test didn’t even show your actual website speed and still doesn’t for many websites. What this does is make suggestions around how you can improve your speed. Keep in mind that these are suggestions and may not result in lowering the key speed metrics mentioned earlier. Some of these suggestions can be complex and expensive to solve and the payoff may not be worth the effort. Google has a FAQ that explains a lot of these elements in more detail.

Want to get your hands on Justin? Need a bit more website optimisation expertise?

Click here, hire Justin, and fix your problems…