Reasons and Solutions for Slow Loading (Speed Up Website)

With a website, visitors not only expect rich content but also demand swift and seamless access to information. Improving website speed not only enhances overall performance but also positively impacts user retention, SEO rankings, and conversion rates. As a result, optimizing website speed has become a top priority for businesses and web developers alike.

Below are some common reasons that lead to slow website loading (sorted by descending level of impact as I think):

• Non-optimized database: A poorly maintained or cluttered database can increase the time it takes to retrieve and display content.
• Poor/ Overselling hosting: This can affect the data transfer speed from the server to the visitor.
• Too many plugins or extensions: Overloading a website with unnecessary and heavy plugins, especially on platforms like WordPress, can slow down performance.
• Unoptimized images: There are too many images or heavy can significantly slow down the loading times if not optimized properly.
• Suboptimal settings: Configuration of WordPress and plugins may be the reason for decreased performance.
• Unoptimized Code: Low-quality source code of platforms, themes, and plugins can cause slower page rendering.

In this article, we’ll go through each of them in detail, as well as how to identify the issues you’re facing, and several solutions to solve them.

Non-Optimized Database

Why?

A database that contains redundant, unnecessary or improper-structured data and records can significantly impact page loading speeds. The system must sift through a larger volume of data to retrieve relevant records, leading to longer query times. This inefficiency is exacerbated when queries need to process and filter out extraneous data, causing additional delays. As a result, the overall performance of the website suffers, with slower response times and reduced user experience.

Another factor is the lack of indexes in the database. Anywhen you need to retrieve something, especially complex SQL queries, the system has to scan through many rows to find the required data, which increases query execution time.

Solutions

To solve the issue of the database, you should regularly clean up and optimize the database by removing redundant entries. Maintaining a streamlined structure is essential to ensure faster and more efficient data retrieval as well.

For a large data of custom fields, we highly recommend using the custom tables to store data. If you’re using Meta Box on your website, it provides a powerful tool to convert data to custom tables with a smart structure.

Poor/ Overselling Hosting

Why?

The speed of the hosting server affects how quickly it can process and respond to requests. A slow server will result in longer page load times, as it takes more time to deliver content to users.

Hosting plans with limited resources, such as CPU, RAM, or bandwidth, can lead to slower performance, especially if the server is overloaded or if many sites are sharing the same resources.

Some hosting plans include CDN services. But, if it is configured poorly, or does not include, the delivery of content to users who are geographically distant from the server can be slowed down.

Solutions

The table below is about the loading speed of some popular hosting based on my experience and knowledge, you can refer to it:

Note: ● Less -> 5● More

Besides the website speed, you should also consider several other factors when choosing a hosting provider such as hardware, bandwidth, server distance, additional services, pricing, etc. We have a detailed analysis of some free hosting for developers that you may want to take a look at.

Also, downtime is an issue you need to pay attention to when choosing the hosting. Downtime is the period when a website, server, or system is not operational or accessible. During downtime, users cannot access the website or use the system's services, which can lead to disruptions in service, loss of business, and a negative impact on user experience and trust.

Too Many Plugins or Themes Available

Why?

Using too many things can make your website become heavy and diminish its speed. Not only that, using plugins that haven’t been optimized is a reason to make your website slower.

Solutions

You should keep the number of plugins on your website to a minimum.

Deleting unused themes and plugins helps reduce website size and avoid the risk of security vulnerabilities from not updating themes/ plugins.

For basic websites or blogs, we think that you don’t need to install complicated plugins and functionality. For complex websites, only keep the plugins that are truly necessary. Then, disable the remaining plugins.

These are some essential plugins we’re recommend for some sectors:

For functionalities that play an important role in a website, such as SEO, backup, security, custom field management, page builders, you also should consider their effect on the website speed.

This is a review of the top 5 plugins for each functional group I mentioned above on how heavily they affect your website, you can refer to it and make your own choice.

Note: ● Less -> 5● More heavy

As well, be careful when choosing plugins that include tons of features. They may cause the slow. But, choosing a plugin that does not contain enough features lets you install another one, so it brings the same issue. Thus, consider carefully what you need, and make the right choice. However, remember that there are still some plugins that can bring multiple features but not affect the loading much, such as our Meta Box. It provides Meta Box AIO for all basic and advanced features for managing the content on your site. Also, you can deactivate any feature of it to save the loading. It solves the problem and frees your mind already.

After removing unnecessary plugins or themes, we highly recommend you use WP-Optimize or Advanced Database Cleaner to delete all of the remaining data in the database. Then install cache plugins to speed up the website such as WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, W3 Total Cache, etc.

Unoptimized Images

Why?

Large or heavy images or an excessive number of images can be a cause of your website's slow performance.

For unoptimized images, I want to mention four factors: quality, dimensions, size, and format. Any one of them not being optimized can affect page load times. We have conducted some A/B testing to verify their impact.

In terms of image quality, you should optimize the number of images not only on the post/page but also in the gallery of the backend.

Solutions

The only way to reduce the number of images is to remove unnecessary ones and reduce them as much as possible based on the needs of each post. Additionally, don’t forget to delete any images you are not using in the gallery.

To optimize the dimensions, capacity, and format, you can do it manually in the editing step (means off-page), or use tools for resizing and compressing. This review can bring you more details on which tool you should use to optimize the images.

Another solution is using the lazy load method. By implementing lazy loading, the image and other heavy assets are only loaded when visitors come into view or when the user scrolls down the page. This technique reduces initial page load time and decreases the amount of data that needs to be fetched upfront, which can also help reduce server load and save bandwidth.

Additionally, you should also check information of other media files such as gifs, videos, PDF files, and so on to enhance page loading speed.

Unoptimized Code

Why?

Low-quality source code of even WordPress, themes, and plugins can cause slower page rendering. For example, using WordPress in the old version has some bugs which prevent seamless loading.

Inefficient code, such as large, redundant, or poorly structured scripts, can lead to longer loading times as the browser takes more time to process and execute the code. It also can result in excessive server resource consumption.

Unnecessary HTTP requests, and uncompressed files (JavaScript, CSS) may lead to the status of the page not responsive. It’s unexpected.

Solutions

You should update the latest version of WordPress and plugins to fix the issues and optimizer.

To optimize the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript source code, you need to remove unnecessary characters (excess whitespace, unnecessary comments, unused elements and code snippets, etc.) and files. Furthermore, in the case that you have too many CSS files, you should merge them to reduce HTTP requests.

Besides, do you usually use HTML 5 to build the site? They are tags like <header>, <footer>, <section> to have a clearer structure instead of div.

You can optimize the source code manually or use the Autoptimize plugin. It helps compress, merge, and optimize all the files. Thanks to that, the speed can be up with less effort.