Why Is My Website Slow?
A slow-loading website frustrates visitors and hurts your search engine rankings. Google considers page speed a ranking factor, so optimising load times is important for both user experience and SEO. There are many potential causes, and the fix usually involves addressing several of them together.
Common Causes
- Unoptimised images – Large image files are the number one cause of slow websites. A single uncompressed photo can be several megabytes.
- Too many HTTP requests – Each CSS file, JavaScript file, image, and font requires a separate request to the server.
- No caching – Without browser caching, returning visitors must re-download every resource on each visit.
- Heavy plugins or scripts – Poorly coded plugins, excessive tracking scripts, and large JavaScript bundles slow down rendering.
- Server response time – A slow server response (TTFB) can be caused by overloaded shared hosting, unoptimised databases, or missing PHP opcode caching.
How to Speed Up Your Site
- Optimise images – Compress images using tools like TinyPNG or ShortPixel. Use modern formats like WebP. Aim for images under 200KB each.
- Enable browser caching – Add cache headers in your
.htaccessfile or use a caching plugin like WP Super Cache or LiteSpeed Cache. - Minify CSS and JavaScript – Remove whitespace and comments from your code. Plugins like Autoptimize handle this automatically.
- Use a CDN – A Content Delivery Network like Cloudflare serves your static files from servers closer to your visitors, dramatically reducing load times.
- Reduce plugins – Deactivate and delete any plugins you are not actively using. Test your load time after removing each one.
- Optimise your database – In cPanel, open phpMyAdmin and run an optimise operation on your database tables to reclaim wasted space.
- Upgrade your hosting plan – If you have outgrown shared hosting, consider upgrading to a VPS or dedicated server for more resources.
Testing Your Speed
Use Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Pingdom to measure your site's performance and get specific recommendations.