Mobile Site Speed - how to fix it? Please help

blog cover image
23
3.3K followers
Updated

Hi All,

I'm experiencing slow mobile site speed. It happened recently that the scores for mobile dropped from 80-90 to 30-40. I added GoogleADs recently, maybe it's related.

I know we are not supposed to use cache plugins with WA sites, but I tried WP Fastest Cache. Looks like it improves the scores to 40-50. Not sure if it's worth it.


I deleted the cache. I'm not sure should I leave this plugin activated or deactivate.

When looking in Google Page Speed analyzer, I see several issues, but I have no clue what all this means.

Here is the shot:


Tried to go through several speed related trainings here, but it's complicated for me. Some of the training is outdated I guess (before SiteSpeed for sure).

How we go about it?

Login
Create Your Free Wealthy Affiliate Account Today!
icon
4-Steps to Success Class
icon
One Profit Ready Website
icon
Market Research & Analysis Tools
icon
Millionaire Mentorship
icon
Core “Business Start Up” Training

Recent Comments

17

Hopefully the following helps: my problem was Shareaholic. Five seconds after disinstaling it, my mobile speed caught up with my desktop one.
Now looking for another social media plugin.

I don't have this plugin, but I have installed the one that Kyle recommended. Maybe will try to deactivate it and see if it helps

Hello Mary,

Waiting for better times, I have made the decision to use Fastest Share Buttons.
It is the only one that does not significantly slow down my mobile speed and is absolutely straightforward to configure.
Well, it is pretty basic honestly, but I prefer having the main social sharing buttons rather than 100+ buttons and annoyingly slow mobile speed.
Any other plugin I have been trying these days has been a big let-down and an even bigger waste of time.
Not going to name them anyway, as I really do not want to engage in any keyboard battles with members who are happy with such plugins.

If you give it a go, please let me know if you are happy.

I'm in a similar spot! Pinterest is my most reliable traffic source and people from pinterest are almost entirely mobile...I wanted to see if improving my mobile site speed would help my bounce rate.

I emailed my theme support and they recommended some cache plug in...don't remember exactly which one, but it's one of the highest rated ones (w3 total cache or something?)

Anyway, I filled in the settings by following a training here, and once I activated it, it totally shut down my site on mobile.

I deleted the plugin, and like you I'm not technical enough to feel like I want to play around with it because if it breaks...I won't know where to begin to fix it.

However, when I go to my site on my own phone, the speed seems totally normal to me, and a heck of a lot faster than many of the most popular sites on pinterest (especially many cooking blogs I try to go to--the slowness while I try to find the recipe is excruciating, but yet they still seem to be doing okay!)

All that to say...I'm with ya! And I have to wonder if my site is honestly as slow on mobile as page speed insights indicates, and I have to wonder how much more time I should devote to figuring this out (I've already given it a lot of mental energy).

Exactly same hear!
I'm on the edge of leaving it as is to its mobile destiny..
Did you try asking WA support team?
I wonder if they help with this type of issues.

I did ask them and they said I needed to contact my theme support and/or plug in support teams.

Bad.. No help.

Hi Mary - a lot of members are complaining of the sme thing - recent drop in mobiule speed for no apparent reason.

I do think the Ads may be having an affect as they pull in different ads each time the page loads. Can you remove the ads and checka gain?

One thing - run the speed tests every few minutes and I'll bet you get different results. Run then on other speed test sites and you 'll also get different results.

My speeds have dropped over the last few months in similar ratio to yours. In real word tests - accessing my site on my phone - it loads faster than it does on my laptop!

No solutions but I'm trying to to worry about it too much :-)

Do a lot of research before you try AMP. It's difficult to get rid of once installed and it removes stuff you probably want mobile users to see such as forms.

Ian

Hi Ian,
Same here - when I try to load the website on my phone it loads fast. I installed WPtouch plugin that Loes recommends but looks like it removes many things like the stuff from the sidebar.
On the other hand, this stuff anyway was on the bottom, after the post, so not many people had the patience to get there.
Hard to decide if it's better with or without.
I'm scared of AMP and other things like it. Especially when Kyle says we don't need it.

How about other issues that Google brings in the analysis? Did you have these as well?

Part of this is to please G, the rest is to please visitors. In the real world, my mobile site is fast and pleases visitors! :-)

Removing sidebars may be ok, but I don't want my opt-in forms etc. being removed (which I think AMP does). I want my movbile site to have all the functionality of my desktop site. One of the things that really bugs me about FB for example, is that the mobile site is not half as complete or responsive as the desktop version - a massive FAIL for this user!

Yes, I get all the incomprehensible bumf G throwws at you, too - so does everyone else. The main thing we tend to concentrate on is image optimisation and I think that's coz it has the biggest impact on loading speed. The other stuff - heck - 0.0001% of site owners will not have a clue what that's about! And no one seems to be able totell me how much all that techno babble actually affects site speed!

'They' say G takes mobile site speed into account - and I'm sure it does - but I now really want to see some sort of factual proof and and be told just by how much mobile speed plays a part in ranking and to what degree a slower speed might influence that

I'm not saying it's smoke and mirrors coz it probably ain't but no one seems to be able to come up with a set of workable and practical solutions to actually optimise your mobile speed.

I've spent days on this but the varying results I get - with absolutely no changes to the site - suggest that it is, at best, a variable feats. I try not to worry about it too much...

Ian

Hi Mary have you tried to use the AMP plugin it is mainly designed for mobile speeds.

Smartketeer, among others, has written about this and can introduce you to plugins that will help, I believe.

Yes, I saw some of his training, but it was also too technical for me... I'm scared to do something that I don't understand and wouldn't know how to fix if it breaks the site.
I'm reading stuff about speed every day, but still no real clue.

Do we have experts here?

Mary,
There are so many pieces of training available here - find one that works for you to correct this problem you are having and ask some
of the more experienced members - Israel17 - Loes - Marion -
the list is huge.
Susan

Same spot here. SiteSupport told me to ignore my website mobile speed, but beside my main website, I have got another one where both desktop and mobile speed are 100 or so.
Yeah, I am not happy.

See more comments

Login
Create Your Free Wealthy Affiliate Account Today!
icon
4-Steps to Success Class
icon
One Profit Ready Website
icon
Market Research & Analysis Tools
icon
Millionaire Mentorship
icon
Core “Business Start Up” Training