How your WordPress hosting speed can affect your success

Does your WordPress hosting speed make that big a difference?

Most people know that WordPress hosting speed is important, but just how important is it?

Page load time has become increasingly important in recent years. Not only do users have short attention spans and expect lightning-fast load times, but search engines like Google use it as a ranking factor which can drastically affect your site’s visibility and overall success. Indeed, users are more likely to abandon websites that take a long time to load (An Amazon study discovered that every 0.1s added to load time resulted in a 1% reduction of sales to the user).

Your WordPress hosting speed should be able to pass Google’s PageSpeed Insight.

Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool used for testing website performance.  Your website should be able to score above 90 by focusing on implementing the platform’s recommendations.  One way to drastically increase your score is to ensure your WordPress site is hosted using a cloud-based, containerized platform specifically designed for hosting WordPress websites.

Do you need faster WordPress hosting?

Here are a few recommendations:

• Move to a dedicated hosting environment optimized for hosting WordPress websites
• Optimize the website templates to ensure pages load quickly and are accessible to all users
• Implement a global CDN and use caching to increase page speed for users worldwide
• Implement controls to ensure that new content uploaded to the website is compliant

Additional ways to improve your WordPress hosting load speed.

In addition to the technical recommendations listed above, consider the following on-page items to ensure your website is at optimal load time.

Pay close attention to the size of your images- Larger images, or numerous images, on a page can make your page load slower due to their size. While it’s important to have clear, un-pixellated photos on your site, you don’t want the images to be so large they end up affecting site performance.

Embed videos- Hosting a video directly on your site can cause a slow load time but embedding the video is a great alternative. If you embed the video from a site such as YouTube or Vimeo you can still include the video on your site without the burden of slowing your site speed.

Limit the number of redirects on your site- The more redirects there are on your site the longer it can take a server to find and load the correct pages.

Choose a host that fits your needs.

The reality of web hosting is that more often than not, you get what you pay for. While some hosting plans may cost less and seem like a great option, they often can’t handle as much traffic which can, in turn, slow your page speed. Additionally, security issues can become an issue on cheaper, shared hosting options.

Want to know more?