Today’s Internet users are impatient. Even minor delays can have an enormous impact on the user experience. A cache plugin will help for a fast-load website. This is especially true for eCommerce sites, where an estimated 40% of customers abandon their orders after a delay of three seconds.
Another way to put it: A slow website can kill your bottom line. People don’t like waiting and will leave your website in a matter of seconds. You have hundreds of websites within a click or mouse click, so you need to grab their attention. Waiting for your website load is a way to get them off the fence. A responsive Site is essential for success in today’s online marketplace.
If website Load speed is something you’ve struggled with, there are several free plugins that you could use to speed things up – Pingdom is an excellent tool for testing your current load time to get a baseline. When it comes to website speed, plugins are only one piece of the puzzle. You can also improve your website’s performance by having a better host, content delivery network, and a simpler theme. WP plugin’s store is a great place to start. Here are six free plugins that each perform a different function.
W3 Total Cache
A caching plugin falls under the quick wins category. “W3 Total Cache,” as we know it’s one of the most highly rated caching plugins. Webmasters should have a caching plugin. A plugin like W3 Total Cache can greatly improve your load time. The developers claim that the plugin will improve site performance by at least 10x. This is quite bold!
Caching plugins store a static copy of your website on the server. Images, CSS, and JavaScript are resource-intensive to load. It makes no sense to load them all from scratch every time you visit a website. The caching plugin allows you to display a static version of your website every time you get a visitor. This means that the bulk of the work is done once. This can save you a lot of time and speed up your website.
WP Super Cache is the main competitor to W3. Some users prefer it because it is a bit more user-friendly. We also have a guide for WP Super Cache if you are more interested in this plugin.
Smush
Smush is another plugin worth considering. WPMU DEV developed this plugin. It makes it easy to optimize images in many different ways, all with one click. You can also apply optimization retroactively. Image lazy loading, resizing, and compression are just a few of the features. You can expect lossless compression and a bulk-smush option to compress up to 50 images at once. There is also an incorrect image size notification to identify images that are too large so that you can resize them or compress them to speed up your site.
The Smush plugin removes all metadata from JPEGs and also removes unused colors from indexed photos. This results in smaller file size and a faster loading time. There is no loss in image quality.
WP-Optimize – Cache Plugin
WordPress database stores every post, page, comment, and revision. Every time a user wishes to access one post, it must be retrieved from the database. It is obvious that the more junk in your database, the slower your website will load. Optimizing your database can make a significant speed improvement by reducing the number of revisions and auto-saves that take up space.
WP-Optimize is my favorite plugin. The plugin can help you declutter your database in many ways. The plugin allows you to quickly remove duplicate post revisions that you don’t use anymore. If you have many revisions per blog post, this plugin can help you save lots of space. You can also quickly delete any spam comments that have been queued up. Doing it manually obviously will take a long time. It simplifies the process of deleting unwanted content rather than simply storing it as trash. It can show you how efficient this plugin is and how much space you can save.
Lazy Load
Lazy Load is another plugin worth considering. Displaying images only when the user scrolls to that section of the page, as its name suggests. The initial view of a website will load quickly. This can improve page speed, user experience, SEO, and speed up overall page speed. This plugin can be used to display thumbnails, images in pages, and posts. You can also use it on YouTube iFrames.
WP Socializer
Next, the WP Socializer plugin adds social media icons to your WordPress site. This plugin is extremely lightweight and won’t slow down your website like other social sharing plugins. The setup is simple, and the output is also flexible. It also works with the majority of the most popular social media platforms.
Plugin Organizer
The Plugin Organizer is another plugin worth considering. It makes it easy to organize your plugins. It allows you to control which plugins are loaded first. This level of control can greatly improve page speed. You can also choose to disable specific plugins when a particular post type or URL is loaded. This plugin should not be used without caution as it could cause serious damage to your site. Before you use it, make sure to backup your website!
Hummingbird
An all-inclusive plugin may be a good option to improve page speed. Hummingbird makes your WordPress website more responsive by automatically optimizing and adjusting its performance. You also have manual control over file and image compression, CSS/JavaScript minification, lazy loading, and site caching.
Asset CleanUp
We use “Asset CleanUp” plugin to manage code minification at an outstanding level. The plugin works by combining CSS and JavaScript files and trimming any unnecessary assets. This plugin can be used to make sure that only the relevant plugins get loaded for any page or post you have. This plugin goes beyond code minification and debugging and streamlines how plugin code assets are used throughout your site.
Flying Scripts
Similar to the Flying Scripts plugin. This delays the execution of JavaScript until a site visitor has stopped performing actions on your site. You can also add JavaScripts that you would like to delay by keyword. This is an easy one. However, if you are really thinking about optimizing your site’s performance, it is another way.
Flying Analytics
The Flying Analytics plugin is last on our list. Flying Scripts also make it. The plugin allows you to host Google Analytics locally by using a JavaScript file. This plugin is simple but can speed up your site’s performance. It is beneficial if you are not happy with the Google Analytics performance in WordPress.
These plugins can significantly improve the speed of your website. Your website will load faster for users. It’s as simple as that. Happy users are more likely to surf and spend more time on your site and enjoy your content. This can increase your conversions, subscriptions, and social shares. It is only a fraction of a second that matters!
