Fast loading is one feature that you can’t afford to ignore in this competitive online environment. Sometimes it becomes the deciding factor in your ranking on search engines like Google.
In a WordPress website theme becomes a crucial factor in making your website load faster or slower. There are 100s of 1000s of themes available for WordPress in the market. Some of them are fast, and some are ultra slow. A slow and heavy theme can take a big toll on your website. Here I will discuss some themes which can make your site very fast.
Benefits of a Fast Loading WordPress Theme and, in turn, a WordPress Website :
1. Better Rank On Search Engines
Believe it or not, your website’s loading speed greatly affects your ranking. It is related to the user experience, and every search engine, mainly Google, is very concerned about providing the best user experience to its visitors. They want to suggest fast-loading sites that are easy to navigate and have good content.
If your sites take too much time to load, they might not be the best choice for search engines, irrespective of the quality of your content. People will close your website before reading anything on it.
You should also keep track of the page loading speed while creating content. If you are using a WordPress website, the theme will become a very important factor in deciding the Speed of your website. If you are using a slow-loading theme or heavy theme, it will destroy your website’s ranking despite you keeping great content on it.
2. Better User Experience
User Experience is the most important thing you should care about while creating any website. If the users are getting a great experience on your website, they will come back again and again. If the user comes, search engines will surely follow. Your website’s Speed plays a crucial role in the user’s experience. If your website is slow and lulling, users will get irritated and will close your website and will never come back again.
On the other hand, if your website opens fast, they will feel better and come back to your website even if you have slightly weaker content. You should check the performance of your website on Desktop as well as on Mobile devices before going live if it should perform well on mobile also. As Mobile devices have a smaller screen size, you may opt to compromise some sections of your website which may not be that relevant on the mobile phone (I believe you know about Media Queries).
3. More People Will Read Your Content And See Your Graphics
I can say that this is the reason why you are writing good content and creating eye-catching images. If your website runs slow, people will move out of your site even before looking at your content. It defeats your very purpose of creating this high-quality content. If your website loads faster, people will stay longer and easily navigate your content. They will thus read/watch your content and appreciate it.
4. Site Can Handle More Traffic
What if many visitors come to your website at once? If you have already taken care of the speed factor of your website, your visitors will not feel any trouble. But if your website is already slow loading, a large amount of traffic will create a disaster. The moment which would have to bring a celebration will bring tears for you. Keep your site ready for significant traffic. If you are creating high-quality content, it will eventually come, and it should be a happy day for you.
5. Less Load On Server Resources
If your site is fast loading, it will keep the server resources busy for a lesser time. In turn, your server will perform well and will be able to handle more traffic and operations. Also, if you use a pay-as-use service, you will have to pay less for your server.
Major Factors affecting Speed of your WordPress website:
- Server Resources – Server resources are one thing that is the foremost requirement for your website’s good performance. If you are using a low-class server, it is going to take a toll on your website’s Speed. You should check the following server parameters before deciding on purchasing it :
- Utilizable Web Space
- Bandwidth
- CPU specifications
- RAM capacity
- Whether you are getting minimum guaranteed resources for your website or not.
- Use of Heavy Images – Though I understand that you want to keep high-quality images on your website, non-web-optimized photos can make your website difficult to load. It would help if you are optimized or minimized your pictures before loading them on your website. There are tools available that can help you reduce the size of your image on your WordPress website without losing quality.
- Use of Slow Theme – A slow theme can impact the Speed of your website beyond your expectations. You shouldn’t only look for the beauty of the theme while getting the website done but should also look for its performance parameters. We will discuss it in the sections below in more detail.
- Excessive use of Plugins – The use of plugins should be kept limited. Don’t install any plugin you find interesting. It slows down your website drastically. Install only the plugins from authenticated authors, which are getting updated regularly. An obsolete plugin can create multiple issues in your website, along with slowing it down.
Tools to Check Your WordPress Website Loading Speed :
You can use some free tools to check the loading speed of your WordPress Website. Here are a few tools which you can use to check the Speed of your WordPress Website –
Google Page Speed Insight
It is the most popular and reliable one as it comes directly from Google. This provides valuable insight into your web page’s performance on various parameters. Using this data, you can plan to improve your website’s Speed. It provides you with information separately about the performance of your website on mobile devices, which also helps you enhance your mobile site’s Speed.
Pingdom Tools Full Page Test
After Google, it is the most reliable page speed test tool. It also provides great insight into your website’s performance which helps you improve its Speed.
Google Analytics
It was a last-minute addition to this list. However, it is not very popular to test the Speed of your website’s pages. But once you integrate your website with it, it keeps analyzing your website’s speed performance for you, and you can get this data to use. You can learn how to integrate Google Analytics into your WordPress Website.
GTMetrix
Very few people might know about it, but it is a very sophisticated tool to analyze the performance of your website. It gives you helpful insight into your website’s Speed and other performance parameters.
I suggest you use multiple tools before concluding about the Speed of your website. Take an average of 2 tools and plan accordingly.
Top 10 Fastest loading WordPress themes :
1. OceanWP
It is one of the most popular WordPress themes. Its best part is that it is lightweight and doesn’t carry any unnecessary burden. It is very simple yet very powerful. You can customize every part of it just from the customizer panel, font, color, or page layout. Elementor is its favorite plugin. You can create any website with this theme easily.
2. Jevelin
Jevelin has also become very popular among WordPress themes. A group of well-skilled WordPress developers creates it. Its biggest strength is its abundance of layouts for different pages. With this abundance also, it is very light and fast loading. It is also well suited for any website.
3. Gillion
The Gillion theme is suited for News and Magazine websites. It is loaded with 7 prebuilt demos with several customizations. It has Visual Composer as a page builder.
4. Scalia
This theme comes with a Visual Composer and a Video slider, but still, it performs well on the loading front.
5. Top SEO
Digital agencies and advertisers mainly use it to improve their SEO. This theme doesn’t use any plugin and has its page builder. However, it may take some time to load if fully equipped, but it will give better results with limited content.
6. Structure
It looks good mainly for the construction business and carries several demos, but it can be used for any business. It is also quite light and fast loading.
7. MegPlus
MegPlus is another WordPress theme suitable for News and Magazine sites and has an excellent performance.
8. Avada
Avada is one of the best-selling themes on Theme marketplaces like ThemeForest. It is famous for its good looks as well as its fast performance.
9. Schema
Schema is a high-performance theme especially suitable for news, magazine, or blog sites.
10. The Core
It is a high-class theme suitable for small business websites. Its performance is breathtaking.
