WPO (Web Performance Optimization)

WPO is the acronym for Web Performance Optimization. It is the set of techniques and tools that aim to improve loading speed and rendering of web pages, so that users can access their content quickly.

Web performance optimization (WPO) allows webmasters to offer a better user experience for website visitors and also favors SEO ranking (as it has been publicly stated by Google).

1. How to improve the performance of a website?

WPO is, in essence, getting the website to load as quickly as possible, to improve the user experience. Therefore, it is logical to want to improve the loading speed, so we are going to show you the factors that you have to review for improving the performance of your website.

• Reducing the loading time of the first byte or TTFB as much as possible. The delays in the requests between browser and server can increase the response time and affect WPO.
• Controlling the size of the files added to the website. It is necessary to pay special attention to the total size of your website, trying to reduce the total size: images, videos, etc.
• Make sure the hosting provider is offering a good service The quality of the hosting service chosen to host the web, as well as the performance of the server are a point to take into account to achieve optimal performance of a website. Depending on the size of your website and the number of monthly visits, you should not work with shared hostings.
• Optimizing the code. Unnecessary elements must be removed and the code must be rewritten to reduce the size of the code files and make use of a unique language.
• Using file compression. It is very important to make use of GZIP compression methods to accelerate the loading speed of your website.
• Using CDN services. CDNs allow to speed up the requests and offer a better loading speed, as they distribute the files among servers located in different locations.
• Be careful with templates. If you use templates on your website or a theme in your WordPress installation, be very careful with their size and smooth operation (avoid those that abuse animations).
• Don’t install unnecessary plugins Unless they are essential for your website, avoid using plugins because they will inevitably slow down the loading speed. Delete all the ones you don’t use.
• Cache memory. Cache memory should be activated so that, when a user who has already visited our website returns, the browser won’t have to download all the files from the server again, which will decrease the time the page will take to load.
• Minimize redirects. The use of redirects slows down the loading speed, therefore it is very important to minimize the use of redirects.

2. How to analyze the WPO?

There are many tools that allow us to analyze and measure the performance of our website, here are some of the most popular ones:

• Dotcom Monitor. Very useful for monitoring the WPO of websites that receive users from all corners of the world and test the performance from different geographical locations.
• Google PageSpeed Insights. Free utility that offers tips to improve the loading speed and measure it.
• GTmetrix. One of the most used tools, offers Google Lighthouse metrics in a specific geographic location and very valuable metrics.
• Pagespeed Compare. It allows you to compare your WPO with respect to competitor websites.
• Pingdom Tools. It offers multiple information about the WPO of our website and provides us with recommendations to optimize performance in a few steps.
• Sitespeed.io. Very complete suite of open source tools to measure the performance of a website with detailed reports by categories.