Speed up your Wordpress site.
The speed of a website in 2024 is one of the performance factors to look at when trying to understand how your Wordpress site ranks in search engines. If your pages can load quicker, this could have a positive effect on your Google search rank, which in turn improves the user experience - nobody likes waiting for a web page to load.
Our WP speed optimisation service will improve the speed of your Wordpress site so that it loads fast and lives up to your user's (and Google's) expectations.
Improve user experience.
If your Wordpress site loads fast, visitors will be more likely to trust and enjoy using your website, and engage with your site in a positive way.
Reduce bounce rate.
A slow website can drive potential customers away increasing your bounce rate. By speeding up your Wordpress site, you will reduce your bounce rate.
Improve search rankings.
Google uses page loading times to rate the quality of a website. A faster website has a better quality score which gets better search rankings.
Reduce server resources.
By optimising the pages and assets of your Wordpress website, you can reduce server resource requirements, saving you more money in the long run.
Why Speed Really Matters.
Yes, your customers will appreciate a fast loading site. But a fast website will also lead to improved rankings in search engines, help you to attract and keep more customers, and actually save money!
Search Engine Rank.
Google evaluates sites and ranks them based on several metrics - speed being one of them. Search engines consider fast loading sites to be of more value to visitors, and can rank them higher than slower sites.
If you want your website to perform well in search engines, you need to have a fast loading site.
Ranking higher in search engines can lead to more engaged visitors and more potential customers.
Pay Per Click Score.
When running any pay-per-click campaign (in either Google or Facebook), the landing page is reviewed and given a score (this is known as the quality score).
If it's content is relevant to the advert, it scores higher. If the page loads fast, it scores higher. The lower the score, the more the PPC campaign will cost to run.
An improved high quality score can save over 50% on your on-going PPC budget!
Return On Investment.
Once you've invested time and effort on improving your search engine rank, and you've spent time and money on optimising your pay-per-click ad campaigns to drive all this new traffic to your website, it makes sense to present the best possible website to your new visitors.
A fast website will leave customers with a good impression of your business. Fast websites increase trust, make it easier for the visitor to become a customer and improve the potential return on investment.
Investing in improving your Wordpress site speed, isn't just about having a quick site for bragging rights. It effects all aspects of your SEO, marketing and online conversion optimisation efforts. Wordpress speed optimisation is the one single improvement to your website, that can have a long-lasting value for your business.
Find out more. Get In Touch
WP Speed Optimisation Package.
Get in touch and tell us about your existing Wordpress website(s). We will perform a quick review and run some tests to determine if we can help you with any speed issues on your site.
Our Process
Once we review your website, we will provide an estimate and send you an invoice for a deposit. We will then need to gain Admin access to your Wordpress site (and possibly hosting access). Depending on the budget you've outlined and tasks mentioned in our estimate, we will make the speed optimisation improvements to your Wordpress site.
At the end, we will run the same speed tests, to demonstrate the improvement comparing the before and after results. We can also provide any other possible actionable advice for further improvement.
6 Months after the speed optimisation service, we will perform a complimentary speed review and alert you of any new issues.
$150/Hour +GST
Speed Package: typically allow 2-5 hours.*
Turbo Package: typically allow 5-10 hours.*
Why not a fixed price?
Each website is unique. Each site is built differently, hosted differently and may have different issues. Your website might be in better condition than someone else, and not need as much work to fix up the issues. So you shouldn't have to pay for services you don't need.
What if more time is needed?
We give estimates based on the initial review, however it could be that we find more that needs fixing than originally thought. If this is the case, we will stop and inform you of your options. Options could include sticking to the bare minimum, or doing the work to achieve the "best bang for your buck", or doing everything to get the absolute best possible outcome. Again we will keep you informed of any/all options as we go.
How fast will my site be?
Each site is different, but we aim for a sub 3 second load time for most typical Wordpress sites. Often we can achieve a sub 2 second load time. There are many factors that can vary an outcome. We may suggest removing a widget (because it makes a lot of server calls) but you insist you need it - this can effect the speed. See speed examples below.
What if something breaks?
We take a backup of your site first. Any serious problems or potential breakages will be discussed with you before we start.
What is the Speed Package?
Our Speed Package optimisation service is where we go through the basics - the things that should be done.
What is the Turbo Package?
This is where we go all out and obsess about every detail. Each site is different, but we leave no stone unturned in an attempt to make the most of every opportunity to optimise your website's page load speed. We will run each opportunity by you (there may be reasons from your end that we can't make certain changes) with the aim of making your Wordpres site a lightning fast website.
Can I start with the Speed Package and add Turbo later?
Yes! You can advise us to start with our Speed Package optimisation service first, then we can review what improvement that has made to the speed of your Wordpress site. We can then discuss other speed opportunities (and likely outcomes), and decide to extend the job and do more or not.
Why would I need a 6 month review?
In theory, you shouldn't. The improvements we make should stick, however clients sometimes have a way of causing speed issues without realising it. A free 6 month review is just our way of making sure everything is still working as intended, and that you're still getting the long-term benefit of our speed optimisation service.
* The typical time mentioned is based on average time spent working on previous speed optimisation projects, and is to be used as a guide only. We will undertake to review your website and provide an estimate based on the specific speed issues with your Wordpress site. Please note that an estimate is not a fixed price quote, as there can be many factors that can effect the time it takes to achieve a high quality outcome (which is our aim for each client). We use time tracking software to track time spent on the job and this information is provided to you for complete transparency. All of our work is done by our web developers in our Sydney office (we don't outsource/off-shore any of the work), so your website/data is kept locally and secure.
What do we actually do?
We start by reviewing your Wordpress site's speed as well as other external factors (such as DNS hosting, website hosting etc). You would then engage us to provide a speed optimisation service for your website that may include some (or all, depending on the need and your budget) of the following improvements.
Initial Speed Tests.
We have several go-to speed tests that give us an indication of the current state of your website's health. We use these tests as a benchmark to cmompare the improvements to at the end.
Hosting Review.
We review your web hosting setup and may suggest changing hosting. Is it cheap and slow? Is it in the right location for your audience? Is it set up correctly? Does it run with the correct resources for your website?
Server Optimisation.
If your hosting provider is a good solution - To get the best possible results from your WordPress site we will make updates, tweaks and improvements to your server setup if required.
WP Plugin Review.
We review your Wordpress plugins and make recommendations to reduce the number of plugins (especially known plugins that slow down your website).
Plugin + Core Updates.
We run the plugin and WP core updates - if your plugins are seriously out of date, this can be a cause of slow sites (as well as being a security risk).
Optimise Images.
Without reducing quality, we use lossless compression to optimise the images on your Wordpress site. We also auto-compress any images you upload in the future.
Minify/Combine JS and CSS.
We minify and compress all scripts and styles, add expiring headers to local assets and move styles to the head and scripts to the footer.
Render-Blocking Resources.
We move the JS/CSS files, icon fonts and Google fonts code (with pre-load) where they won't slow down the loading time of visual elements of the page.
Enable GZIP Compression.
We enable Gzip compression on your server which leads to using less resources, reducing loading times and an overall faster website.
Lazy Load Images.
We can set up lazy loading images across your site (so they only load when you need them), which reduces load time and bandwidth costs.
WP Cache Setup.
Your cache plugin (along with the hosting) is one of the main factors when it comes to improving your site speed. We will install and setup the Rocket Cache plugin.
Cloud Flare/CDN Setup.
A Content Delivery Network like Cloud Flare serves your website from alternate servers around the world closer to visitors geographical location. *Service costs apply.
We have a few other tricks up our sleeve (we've been doing this a while!), but we don't want your competitors to know what we did to make your site so fast! Once we get started, we'll be able to see what speed improvements best suit the unique needs of your Wordpress site.
Lightning Fast Hosting.
We offer seriously fast website hosting for Wordpress sites, right here in Australia.
Australian Wordpress Hosting.
Our servers are located in Sydney, so it's really fast for Australian websites wanting to reach an Australian audience.
The biggest mistake many businesses make is choosing to serve your website from a cheap off-shore host. Overseas web hosting can add as much as 300-500 milliseconds to a page loading in Australia.
Modern Wordpress Hosting.
We keep our servers regularly upgraded with the latest tech (with things like dual SSDs, PHP7.x etc) to make sure that websites are served as quickly as possible.
Many websites run old versions of Wordpress and PHP, while we encourage our clients to upgrade to the latest versions on our server for the added speed and security benefits.
Managed Wordpress Hosting.
Our web hosting is a managed hosting service.
We take care of the technical parts of your web hosting like server maintenance, server security updates, account setup, plugin updates, daily backups and awesome support. If something does go wrong with the host, you can feel reassured that you can easily get in touch with us, and that we're there to quickly take care of it.
Our managed Wordpress hosting is the perfect solution for anyone wanting the power and simplicity of WordPress, with the performance of being hosted locally - right here in Australia.
Find out more. Fast Hosting
Examples.
Below are a few real world examples of websites that we have designed, developed, speed optimised and hosted with our managed hosting service. While our general aim is to achieve a sub 3 second load time, some sites are under 2 and 1 second (it's typically the image heavy websites that are harder to get under 2 seconds). Get in touch and find out how we can help you with your website.