Five simple ways to speed up your website

A fast website keeps visitors happy, sells more and can help your search rankings. The good news is that many of the biggest improvements are quick to make.

1. Shrink your images

Large images are the most common reason pages load slowly. Resize photos to the size they're actually shown at and compress them before you upload them. Modern formats like WebP are much smaller than JPEG or PNG at the same quality, and most website builders and WordPress plugins can convert them for you.

2. Turn on caching

Caching saves a ready-made copy of your pages so the server doesn't have to build each one from scratch for every visitor. If you use WordPress, a caching plugin is one of the most effective changes you can make.

3. Clear out plugins and scripts you don't use

Every plugin, tracking script and chat widget adds weight to your pages. Go through them and remove anything you no longer need.

4. Keep your software up to date

Newer versions of PHP, WordPress and your plugins are often noticeably faster than older ones, as well as being more secure. Take a backup, then update.

5. Use a content delivery network

A content delivery network (CDN) keeps copies of your images, stylesheets and scripts on servers around the world, so visitors download them from somewhere close by. This helps most if you have visitors outside the UK.

How do you know it worked?

Test your site before and after with a free tool such as Google PageSpeed Insights. It will show your score and point out what's slowing your pages down.

If your site is still slow after all this, it may be time for more resources: see our post on when to upgrade from website hosting to a VPS.