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Does your WordPress website load in under 3 seconds?

Google favors websites that load in under 3 seconds, because that is a benchmark for a better user experience and website performance. It shouldn’t be hard to make your website load this fast, but many websites fail to meet this benchmark.

We recently started working with a nonprofit whose WordPress website looks pretty good, but was loading in over 10 seconds! The website performance score in GTMetrix was an F. We conducted an audit and made a list of recommendations to improve the performance, messaging and user experience. As part of this audit, we were given access to take some immediate steps to enhance the website performance.

F Grade in GTMetrix

So far, we have only done ONE THING to improve the website’s performance and speed and we saw an immediate and positive result! We are still making more fixes, but with these basic steps, the website now loads in under 3 seconds and has a grade of B in GTMetrix.

B Grade in GT Metrix

Remove unused and redundant plugins to improve WordPress website performance

This website uses the Elementor Page Builder, but the theme included another page builder called WP Bakery. This was active but not being used. We checked to make sure no pages were built with this page builder plugin and then deactivated and deleted it.

Similarly, the website had 3 different slider plugins, only one of which was in use. It also had four different caching plugins. We kept LiteSpeed Cache installed and deactivated the others. We may switch to WPRocket to see if this improveswebsite performance even more. LiteSpeed includes image optimization, so there was no need to perform optimization on the photos.

Other Website Performance Enhancements

There are other things to do to improve this website. We will look at the hosting specifications and some other technical elements to improve website performance.

Overall, we noticed some extraneous animation which can make the user experience confusing and distracting. We also recommended some changes in the navigation for a better user experience.

Some improvements can be made in the messaging to more clearly state the mission of the organization.

Once we finish, this website will have an “A” and will be more effective as a marketing and communication tool for this organization.

Need help evaluating and improving your school or nonprofit website performance? Sign up for a thorough website performance review today!

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