10 Reasons Why Your WordPress Website Is Slow

Website Is Slow

Is your website taking a long time to load? We understand how difficult it is to deal with a WordPress site that takes an eternity to load! Worse, it’s not just a case of inconvenient timing… A sluggish website may have a negative impact on the site’s overall results and have much more serious implications. Website speed has an effect on SEO (search engine optimization), which can be a major setback for all of the hard work you’ve put in to get your site to the top of the search results.

According to study, if a website takes longer than 4 seconds to load, 1 out of every 4 visitors will leave! Not only that… Almost 87 percent of shopping cart abandonment is caused by a 2-second purchase error!

Aside from losing users, a sluggish website has an influence on search engine rankings (such as Google and Yahoo). Since Google considers site speed to be a key factor in its search results, this is the case.

Now that we know how website loading speed affects your business, it’s time to stop moaning about your slow site and take action!

To find out how fast your website is, use the website speed test. There are numerous free speed testing tools available, including Pingdom website speed test, Google Pagespeed Insights, and others. If your website is taking too long to load, you know you need to focus on it.

But hang on… Before we attempt to resolve the problem, we must first comprehend the reasons for your website’s slowness.

10 Reasons Why Website Is Running Slow

Here are a few reasons why your WordPress site isn’t loading as quickly as it should!

You are running too many plugins

It’s quick to get addicted and catch plugin fever when there are thousands of plugins out there promising to do incredible things for your web. Plugins will soon be controlling every feature and function on your web, slowing it down even further.

This is due to the fact that the more plugins you have, the more work the website has to do when it is loading. Second, not all plugins are created equal – bad or obsolete plugins will slow down the website.

Instead of using multiple plugins to manage different aspects of a single function, use a single plugin to get the job done quickly. For example, if you’re looking for an all-in-one security plugin, MalCare could be a good choice. It protects your site from hackers, malware, and other malicious behavior that can cause havoc with it, like slowing it down.

It not only addresses all of your security concerns but also allows you to manage your WordPress account and update plugins without difficulty. Furthermore, MalCare does not use your site’s server resources (it has its own), and it is often preferable to use a plugin that runs on its own server so that your site is not burdened.

Your homepage is crammed

The homepage is the place where you can establish a relationship with your visitors. You may have gone overboard in attempting to show off all in order to make a good first impression.

The more widgets, beautiful high-resolution pictures, graphics, and content you have on your front page, however, the longer it takes for your site to load. Not only that but switching from one web page to another is a chore.

Keep in mind that a simple website design can be just as impressive and successful. As a consequence, stop stuffing your homepage with useless information.

You are running a poor-quality theme

If you use low-quality free themes, there’s a good chance they’ll come with a hefty price tag of spyware or viruses hidden within. As a result, your website takes a long time to load.

To avoid this, make sure you only install trustworthy themes from trusted sources. If you’re not sure where it came from, don’t take it. Also, keep your themes up to date, as obsolete themes can be a backdoor for malicious behavior.

MalCare, for example, is an automated security check plugin that can help you identify and handle anomalies in your themes. You can also change the core theme for several WordPress sites at once with ease.

Your host is the problem

To run your WordPress website, you’ll need a good web host. Dedicated hosting, managed hosting, cloud hosting, VPS hosting, shared hosting, and other options are open. When it comes to WordPress hosting services, there is a range of plans and options available at different price points and with various features. If you choose the cheapest option to save money without considering its functionality, you will get what you pay for. A bad web host will affect the speed at which your site loads, as well as other factors including security and scalability.

A web host that supports the HTTP2 protocol would make all the difference.

You are not caching

Have you looked at a WordPress page prototype file before? Depending on how much you’ve customized your site, they can be complex, with lines and lines of code.

The majority of hosting providers use LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) environments, which can make it difficult for the database to download files, fetch code, convert code to HTML, and finally view a page.

Choose page caching to store all static files, such as HTML documents and images, locally. Since the database does not have to retrieve each file every time a request is made, the user will be able to access a page easily.

Long CSS or JavaScript

CSS, or cascading style sheets, sets the tone for your site and tells the web browser what colors to load, font type and size, table code, header, footer, and menu, among other items.

Hundreds of lines of code can be found in these files, which can be thousands of pages long. They can also include extra spaces, line breaks, and other irrelevant material. As a result, your site can take a long time to load.

The following are some examples of CSS optimizations that can help your website load faster:

  1. Reduce HTTP requests by using image sprites to bundle your images into a single large.png file.
  2. CSS minifiers are used to compress your CSS file into a new one with the least amount of white space.
  3. Checking for redundant or unwanted code.
  4. To prevent duplication, organize the CSS code into hierarchical branches.

Unnecessary page & post redirects

Is your website new or has it been around for a while? Then there’s a good chance you’ve removed any pages or made other changes.

Other WordPress sites that are connected to yours, on the other hand, can still use your old URLs. This shifts the burden back to the web server, lengthening the load time. Your server’s efficiency suffers as a result. Using UTM tags to classify the ones that are used on a daily basis is one way to get rid of unnecessary redirects.

Not utilizing compression tactics

Other elements of WordPress, including long and complicated CSS or Javascript, need to be compressed for optimal performance. It could be your code, database, or photos.

Not updating WordPress

Although seeing WordPress ask for updates on a regular basis can be irritating, it is important to keep your CMS up to date in order for it to work at its best and not bog down your site. This is where MalCare and other automated plugins come in handy. Since it not only provides comprehensive security protection for your domain but also makes it easy to manage WordPress updates all in one place.

You have hidden malware

Hackers do not always make their presence known on your website. It is possible for malicious activity to use your server resources for covert purposes. For example, hackers might have guided files from another server to load alongside your page whenever a visitor requests it. This is the cause of the website’s slow loading speed.

Malware removal tools like MalCare, which are invisible to the naked eye, can come in handy to quickly identify this type of malicious activity. Such protection tools can also clean up your site without causing it to crash, allowing you to boost efficiency and response time. Finally, the website would be quicker.

Don’t be satisfied with a sluggish website. The last thing you want is for a tourist to abandon your site because it is slow to load. After all of your hard work, it’s important to ensure that your site’s output is effective and capable of attracting more visitors!