A one-second delay in page load time costs 7% in conversions. For an e-commerce site making $10,000 monthly, that is $700 lost to slow pages. Speed matters more than most business owners realize, and I have seen this play out repeatedly. Here is what actually moves the needle.
Test Your Current Speed
Run your site through PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. Both provide specific recommendations. Do not chase perfect scores – I have seen people obsess over getting a 100 when their 75 was perfectly fine for users. Focus on the metrics that affect user experience: Largest Contentful Paint and First Input Delay.
Image Compression
Images cause 80% of page weight on most sites. This is almost always the first thing I fix for clients. Convert to WebP format for 30% smaller files. Use tools like Squoosh or ShortPixel to compress without visible quality loss. Lazy load images below the fold. You would be amazed how much faster sites load after basic image optimization.
Hosting Upgrades
Cheap shared hosting puts your site on servers with hundreds of other sites. When their traffic spikes, your speed drops. Managed WordPress hosting from Cloudways or Kinsta costs more but delivers consistent performance. If you are serious about your website, hosting is not where you should cut corners.
Caching
Caching stores pre-built versions of your pages so servers do not rebuild them for every visitor. Most managed hosts include this. For others, WP Rocket or LiteSpeed Cache plugins handle it well. Setting this up properly can cut load times in half.
Reduce Plugins
Each WordPress plugin adds weight. Audit yours monthly. That slider plugin nobody uses anymore? Delete it. Consolidate functionality where possible – one good SEO plugin beats three mediocre ones. I regularly see sites with 40+ plugins when they only need 15.
CDN Usage
Content Delivery Networks store copies of your site in data centers worldwide. Visitors load pages from the nearest location instead of your single server. Cloudflare offers this free and takes about 10 minutes to set up. There is really no reason not to use one.
