Being an entrepreneur, you know that it takes a lot of hard work and sleepless nights to build a website. But did you know that even the slightest delay in the loading time of your website can kill it before it even has a chance?
You will be surprised to know that according to a recent study, a mere one second delay in the page load time can cause you a potential loss of 7% in conversions. This is why it is important to know that the speed of your website is crucial for its success. After all, visitors will only wait for a few seconds before deciding to visit a competitor’s website.
What’s more, even Google counts the loading time of your website as a ranking factor. A slow website can lead to poor search engine rankings.
But, for all those who use WordPress, take a collective sigh of relief as there are many great plugins out there that can help you improve your website’s loading time to offer an improved user experience. Here are 5 of our favorite WordPress plugins that are a life saver when it comes to improve the loading speed of your website:
If your website has a lot of static images, CSS and JavaScript that rarely change, then browser side caching can help your site load even faster.
Caching means to store a few parts of your site so the next time a user visits, it will only need to load a few things. Caching is very helpful for return visitors and for those who visit several pages of your website.
W3 Total Cache is one of the most reliable and popular caching plugins for WordPress. Even if you own a small personal blog, it can come in handy. With many advance options like browser, page, object, and database caching and minify and content delivery network support- W3 Total Cache is the perfect caching plugin.
2. Hammy
Heavy images are a killer for your website’s loading time. Images usually take ages to load if they aren’t compressed properly.
This is when the Hammy plugin acts as a blessing in disguise. It was created by Noel Tock to speed up your website by resizing and compressing images according to your content area.
It takes your content images and regenerates them in a smaller size so that visitors can view them without any issues. This technique helps the website load faster, especially for mobile users.
Hammy even supports Retina, so that’s an added plus point.
3. jsDelivr WordPress CDN Plugin
If you have already gone through the process of compressing images, minified CSS and JavaScript, setting up a caching plugin, then it’s time to think about signing up to a CDN or a content delivery network.
A CDN stores the static resources of your website on its network of fast loading servers, thus, making your website load super-fast!
JsDeliver is a free CDN plugin which allows JavaScript developers to host their files for free. It speeds up your website instantly by offering loading scripts that are already a part of WordPress and other common scripts that might be a part of your website. It is also compatible with W3 Total Cache, so you don’t have to worry about its compatibility with popular plugins.
4. Salesmate
Installing an efficient WordPress CRM plugin can do wonders for your business website in terms of speed and increasing sales. A CRM (customer relationship management tool) gives you a platform to manage the customer information in a single location. It also gives you valuable insight about your business history of your customer.
Integrate Salesmate right into your WordPress site and watch your leads convert into customers. It’s simple and user-friendly platform can be used by everyone on the team. So, manage your pipeline efficaciously and increase productivity. On top of that, Salesmate also automates parts of the workflow, so the sales team doesn’t have to manage the data manually.
With the help of an intelligent WordPress CRM plugin like Salesmate, you can enhance the user experience of your website resulting in returning clients and improved customer engagement.
5. BJ Lazy Load
Whenever a visitor enters your website, all your content starts loading automatically, irrespective of the amount of content it has. A large page with many images can take ages to load and that is when the visitor starts getting impatient.
BJ Lazy Load has the solution to this problem. Once this plugin is installed, your page will not load all at once. Do not worry. This is not a bad thing at all. Instead of loading all the content at once, BJ Lazy Load only loads a part of the content that the viewer can access.
For example, a long page with lots of written and visual content will be loaded bit by bit as the viewer scrolls down, rather than all at once. The visitor does not notice this and will experience a much better website loading time.
Conclusion
These are just some of the few WordPress plugins that can help you to speed up your page and provide your visitor with a better online experience.
But remember, less is more when it comes to installing WordPress plugins. Instead of going ahead and installing all of these together, you should identify your website’s needs and requirements beforehand. A lot of plugins can also become a reason for a slow loading website.
Apart from these plugins, optimizing your website can also make a huge difference in its overall load time. Plus, it also encourages your visitors to stick around and engage with your website’s content. There are many other ways to speed up your WordPress website, read more about them here.
These plugins take a few minutes to install and you will get a lot of happy customers in exchange for the monetary and physical effort you put in.
Which WordPress plugins do you use to speed up your site? Tell us in the comments below.
Erica Silva is a blogger who loves to discover and explore the world around her. She writes on everything from marketing to technology, science and brain health. She enjoys sharing her discoveries and experiences with readers and believes her blogs can make the world a better place.
Find her on Twitter: @ericadsilva1