How I Improved My Mobile Page Speed x100%+. By Changing Some Plugins
If you're anything like me, you are not a fan of seeing so much red on your page speeds!
Here's something I've learnt about page speed:
If your page doesn't open relatively quickly people trying to read it can't be bothered! Therefore you miss out on potential readers, subscribers and helping someone out.
Therefore...
PAGE SPEED MATTERS!
A couple of months ago here is what my page speed looked like:
And here were the plug ins I was using at the time:
1. SumoMe (Social sharing plugin... apparently has loads of great features too but it turns out this was a big reason my site was so slow!)
2. EWWW Image optimiser
3. All in One SEO
4. Pretty links (make those links look pretty!... Kind've neccessary for affiliate links)
I'd heard having too many plugins slows your site down so I didn't try out any lazy loads or chache plugins even though I felt I needed these.
However, after learning more about the importance of page speeds (as you just read) I thought I needed to try and fix this a bit. I was worried about messing about with the plugins on my site but it was actually really simple to add and remove them.
So after a lot of trial and error I got my speeds to this:
The screenshot above is the same posts as the first screen shot to accurately compare the difference but other pages look like this now...
Now I know orange isn't green and it defo could do with improving still (if you have any tips please do let me know in the comments below!!)
But it is WAAAAAY better than what it was and I have more plugins that help me now.
THIS IS THE MAIN PART TO READ...
1. Social plugin: Social Warfare (way quicker than SumoMe and I prefer little features such as the "Click to Tweet"... I also tried out Social Media Feather, which was quick but the features suck and was not user firendly)
2. Image optimizer: Smush (better page speeds than EWWW... I also tried out Imagify and Shortpixel, which weren't as quick for the free versions)
3. Yoast SEO (no significant page speed, but Yoast is AMAZING!!!! I cannot live without it now, once you try it you'll understand)
4. Pretty links (I never actually removed this one so does anyone know if this affects your page speed much?)
5. Easy Table of Contents (adds contents to each blog post and didn't affect my mobile speed... Awesome!)
6. W3 Cache (massively helps speed... I also tried Cache Enabler & WP Rocket again free versions)
7. BJ Lazy Load (the free version was fastest for me compared with Lazy WP Rocket & Ajax Load More
Important notes:
I only tried free plug ins (for obvious reasons!)
I've heard it can be different for everyone depending on themes/ other plug ins etc.
The big lessons here was trying out a plugin.... test... try again (this is one of the many screenshots I took along the way)
Rinse and repeat this for different plugins don't just assume you need a plug in/ can't find a better one.
As you can see from my speed above I still have a lot to learn. I tried some of the Google suggestions, but I'm no techie (I am willing to learn though!) so I don't think that really helped!!
The biggest improvements I still need to make are:
1. Serve next gen formats i.e. JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP... apparently you can't do this with WA hosting currently (please correct me if I'm wrong)
2. Minimize thread work (absolutely no idea what this means or how to do it)
3. Ensure text remains visible during webfont load (I couldn't work this out for the life of me!)
If you have any suggestions/ plug ins of your own that you know can help improve the speed of your website then please let me know below...
And if you are/ know someone in WA who is a tech whizz kid please hook me up with them! I will promote them forever or do any favours they like ;)
Keep changing for the better,
Mike
P.S. Big thanks to Derek Marshall for his help with this. Let me know how your mobile speed is doing in the comments below
Recent Comments
28
try asset cleanup Mike - the best plugin to defer the java and cleanup the css i've found...
i suspect you stil lhave a load of code in your head section of your site that could wait til later to be loaded - therefore you get a quicker page loading speed.
i have sasy social hare pulgin on my site and appears even better than social arfare - i did use that until earlier this year - for some reason i changed - maybe they missed an update- can't remember - i do like the format where it sticks to the bottom or top of the page as you scroll.
the main things you want to reduce are file loads ( so number of images, number of plugins, number of css calls) there are a coupe of things you can control there - plugins and images
always ask yourself - do i really need that image - it might look pretty but.....
and search for plugins that will do multfunction jobs -ad inserter - will add code to the head, footer, add ads.txt, add code snippets or banners to every page or selected pages. so you can kick out headers and footers....
try reducin the number of images on your posts and you may see those mobile speeds go green...
have fun
phil
Hi feigner. Aren´t we always told that images make our posts look better instead of a whole load of text?
it is always a balance between picking out the main points and adding images that boost these or adding images for every point and losing that advantage.....
so use white space and images - maybe even quotes to reduce the size and emphasise points...
here's one i caught earlier
it breaks up the content and can reinforce points you are making done properly
and doesn't take as long to load as an image....
ahhhh normal quotes lol. Ok!! Got it, thanks :D
Re the plugin you mentioned earlier, asset cleanup. What are the settings we should use please? It´s quite complicated and I don´t want to tick/untick the wrong boxes.
Thanks again.
Thanks Phil, I use WP Rocket now and it’s sick!! Loads went from 4.5 seconds to 1.58 seconds (All green on WA now)
I literally just spent the last 4 days fiddling with this and it’s made a huge difference... plus I use Thrive so it can’t be as bad as some people claim!
Hey Mike,
1. when you use WP Rocket do you have WA SiteSpeed OFF? If not, what settings do you use there? I am having all sorts of speed issues currently.
2. Also are you still using "Smush (better page speeds than EWWW)"?
3. Why don't you use the Kraken Pro that WA provides?
Thank you
Lets wait for coach Mike, he has achieved the holy grail of SiteSpeed even with Thrive Themes.
I've just asked the community for help Who has great mobile speed scores with elementor+wa hosting?
Sorry just aren’t this
I was already using Smush and I’ve found it to be better than other free alternatives... to be honest I haven’t tried Kraken!
I left everything turned on still with WA and uploaded the WP Rocket plugin
Hi Mike,
good post and helpful!. I improved my speed but its still not good enough!
were you able to figure out how to minimize the thread or the Webfont visual issue yet?
to be honest no! I know 80ish isn't ideal but at least its much better and I've been spending all my time recently on creating content.
I had some great help from https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/smartketeer though
Even just look at his trainings they were helpful too
Oh my goodness I will miss my sumo me but I like speed better.
I am GREEN across the board!!!!
Took out ewww uploaded smush and deactivated sumo for a bit
WOW!
Thanks for the tip
No way!! I want to be GRRREEEEENNN!! Glad it helped, what theme do you use out of interest? I wonder if that's what's killing me
I finally switched themes to Merlin as it was cleaner than the Graphene I had to begin with.
I do like sumo though but deactivating it did bring me all the way to green except two posts are in the yellow still.
I do believe I like green so sumo might be declassified will have to find something better LOL
I genuinely prefer social warfare but I know I wasn't using a LOT of features that Sumo offers.
Thanks for sharing the theme are they both free versions? All about saving those pennies when you can ;)
Yes both themes are free...they do both have pro versions but ...im broke so ya know. Lol
I was using the other features with sumo particularly the email capture so i am going to breakdown and add a regular autoresponder i think
Tried it before but was still in its infancy so maybe time to revisit it
Haha, yeah Sumo does have some great features.
I started with MailChimp but it's really annoying for a Make Money Online niche so I finally bit the bullet and went with ConvertKit, it is super easy to use and really helpful
Hi Mike, this is great stuff. Thank you for sharing. My mobile speeds certainly are not where I want them to be. I have you bookmarked and I'll be back to use your information. Like Alenka mentions smartketeer, I know he uses Yoast and yes he is pretty darn good.
All the best,
Michael
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Thanks for this informational post. I looked up my website's speed in google and it showed 69. Is that reasonable? I have optimized all of my images and resized them, so I don't know what else I can do to make my site faster. Also if I have too many plugins doesn't that slow my website?
That's not bad at all Ladia! You can see the speed on gtmetrix.com too. Anything under 2 seconds is amazing. I'd say under 5 seconds is decent
Some plugins can really help your speed, but yes as a general rule you want to limit your plugins. The best one I found was a paid one, you can read my review here https://maketimeonline.com/wp-rocket-plugin-review
is there a difference between computers and mobile devices or is the speed shown the same on both?
A BIG difference!
And mobile speed it much harder to improve... but most people use mobiles now so this is prob more important!