Cookies Preferences
If you’re using a poorly developed theme, you’ll most likely have a longer server response time than a well developed one. If your theme is developed just for your site, you should expect to have a relatively low server response time. But if you’re using one of the many pre-built themes on the market, it’s best to go with something a little bit minimalist, as that will have less assets to load.
Another thing you can do is take note of page speed when trying out a WordPress theme, most themes will let you view before you buy.
When you manage a WordPress site it’s very tempting to install plugins that you think will benefit the site but with most plugins they usually increase the server response time slightly and load in more scripts for the plugin to see which will also add to the page load time.
Before installing a plugin, ask yourself “Is the feature I’m adding worth sacrificing a few milliseconds of my page load speed?”
There are quite a few decent caching plugins out there, you may have to try a few different ones to see which ones positively affect your page speed the most. The effective caching plugins are usually paid plugins but offer a free version with limited functionality, if you’re looking for a great plugin that proves to be most effective (in my experience), you should check out WP Fastest Cache.
The images on your site can sometimes be larger than they need to be, in many cases they’re over twice as big as they display on your page.
Luckily WordPress has a built- in tool that allows you to crop and resize images, you can edit images as soon as you upload them or you can go to your media library, select an image and then press “edit image” - it’s as easy as that. A great feature of the WordPress image editor is that it will resize in proportion with the original size when you add either a new height or width, this way your images won’t be distorted in any way.
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Chris has been at the forefront of eCommerce and a pioneer of online retailing since the early 00s. A 5-time Drapers Award winner, Chris has extensive experience in developing fashion brands online.
Chris founded Cake in 2016. Based in Birmingham, with offices nationwide, Cake specialises in helping fashion brands understand their market online and then helps to develop appropriate strategical direction to achieve their plan, all backed by his 20 years of operating in the retail market.
