My Checklist for Optimizing an Existing Website Performance

Optimizing an existing website for performance is a critical step in enhancing user experience and achieving better search engine rankings. Whether your site is experiencing slow load times or needs improvements in responsiveness, this is my checklist that I go through to optimize its performance effectively.

1. Performance Audit: Conduct a thorough performance audit using tools like PageSpeed Insights, Webpagetest, Pingdom or GTmetrix. Check the mobile and desktopperformance metrics and solve the issues one by one.
   
   
2. Create Backup of the website: Before anything, make a backup of the website. Either from the hosting or locally (or both).
   
   
3. Optimize Images and Media: Compress and optimize images and multimedia files to reduce their size without compromising quality. This can significantly improve load times. If you want to prevent this issue, just upload images in the right size and format. See my other blog post here: How to optimize images for fast website performance
   Following plugins can be used to optimise images: Smush, ShortPixel, Imagify
   
   
4. Minimize HTTP Requests: Reduce the number of HTTP requests by combining CSS and JavaScript files, and utilizing image sprites where applicable. Following plugins can be used: WP Rocket, Autooptimize
   
   
5. Update Website: Core WordPress, Themes and Plugins.
   
   
6. Revise Plugins: Remove plugins that is not needed. Many times I see plugins with the same functionalities dowloaded to websites.
   
   
7. Mobile Optimization: Ensure the website is responsive and optimized for mobile devices. Adjust layouts and content delivery to improve usability on smartphones and tablets.
   
   
8. Optimize Code and Scripts: Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to reduce their size. Clean up unnecessary code and ensure scripts load asynchronously to avoid blocking page rendering.
   
   
9. Use Caching plugin: Caching plugins work by generating and storing static HTML files of your website’s pages, which are served to visitors instead of dynamically generating pages from scratch each time someone visits your site. This significantly reduces server load and improves load times, enhancing overall user experience. Following plugins can be used: WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache
   
   
10. Server Optimization: Optimize server configurations and reduce server response times to improve overall website performance.
    
    
11. Implement Content Delivery Network (CDN): Consider integrating a CDN to deliver content faster to users across different geographical locations. This improves performance globally.
    

By following these steps, a slow loading website can be transformed into a high-performing asset that enhances user satisfaction and achieves better results in search engine rankings. Remember, optimizing website performance is an ongoing process that requires attention and regular maintenance.