All the websites I create receive a FREE base WordPress performance audit including tweaks to improve the site, often using free plugins. The real world result is a website that loads quickly while looking professional to your visitors.
In the last year though, the roll out of Google’s Core Web Vitals (website performance reporting for website speed + user experience) means the landscape for what is required to optimise your site for these aspects has changed a lot. The performance bar is also set a lot higher, where Google ideally want your website to perform well in likely limited situations (e.g. users with dated tech and throttled or limited internet connectivity).
You can test your own website via Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
FREE WordPress optimisation audit
I will happily run a quick audit on your website to give an idea of what can be done to improve your overall website performance, while giving a realistic estimate of what gains could be made.
Advanced WordPress optimisation service
Optimisation work is charged at £35 an hour. On average many improvements can be made within 2-3 hours effort but can vary depending on website complexity and size.
Typical actions that will be made:
- A recommendation to use a paid for WordPress optimisation plugin, such as WP Rocket*.
- Improving or removing outdated features which may cause a big hit for performance (e.g. Sliders).
- Reduce the performance hit of calling certain 3rd party services.
- Code asset management site wide to reduce calls where needed.
- Reducing bloat and optimising media library assets if required.
- Whether your site can benefit from using a CDN (Content Delivery Network).
- Whether your site needs to use next generation image formats (WebP or AVIF).
*WP Rocket is one of the better featured performance plugins which I heavily recommend.
Is a website redesign recommended?
Sometimes there’s a limit to how much of an improvement you will see with optimisation work. Many sites strike a balance between performance and functionality, such as wanting to offer a user-friendly content manager to a client, aware this will add some unnecessary bloat. Many theme frameworks are not lightweight as they need to cater for so many purposes and businesses.
I’ve recently helped redesign a client’s website where performance improvements were a high priority. We switched to a new framework which gave both amazing performance improvements along with the now mature and impressive WordPress Block editor.
GTMextrix Performance Report example:
The results shown in a GTMetrix report above give a good indicator of the performance improvements. Google PageSpeed Insight scores improved also from Desktop: 77 > 100 and Mobile: 51 > 99. These scores can vary at the time of the testing and depending on the actual page tested but are commonly in the high 90s since the site was redesigned.
I’ll link to a new blog post detailing the results of this redesign in the near future.
Is a website redesign overkill to improve the performance of your website? It will likely depend on a few factors such as how poor your current performance scores are, if they can be adequately improved, while also considering how old your current website is and comparing the original outlay for this site vs the cost of a new website.
Need help with WordPress optimisation?
If you need assistance with optimising your WordPress website, feel free to get in touch.