"My WordPress is fast." Are you sure?
Most website managers test their WordPress under optimal conditions, usually from their office with fiber or from their latest-generation smartphone on 4G or 5G.
In reality, your prospects usually view your site while on the move, from a smartphone that is more than 5 years old.
However, while loading a page containing many images can take 2 to 3 seconds on a computer, the load time can rise to 20 or 30 seconds on an old phone in an area with weaker network coverage.
Did you know? In 2019, eBay measured that 100 milliseconds less page load time generated +0.5% more items added to cart by its visitors.
Although there are many tips for improving your WordPress site's loading speed, choosing your web host remains essential.
Indeed, some hosts provide services aimed at improving the speed of WordPress sites. Discover their main levers of action in this article.
Adopt ultra-fast WordPress hosting from just €1 excl. VAT/month with IONOS
SSD storage
This is one of the most important criteria to consider for a fast site. 100% SSD web hosting offers many advantages:
- Increased website page speed: On average, 100% SSD web hosting, such as that offered by IONOS, makes a website's content load 10 times faster.
- A more efficient, higher-performing site: The SSD is a storage device capable of handling multiple requests at the same time.
- A constantly improving technology: At first, SSDs did not offer large storage capacity. Now, thanks to innovations and technological progress, SSDs far exceed the storage levels of traditional hard drives.
Today, for many sites (high-traffic sites, e-commerce sites, etc.), SSD web hosting has become essential to successfully carry out their projects.
Don't miss: Deploy your web projects via GitHub with Deploy Now
Caching
On each visit or click on your site, WordPress looks up several pieces of code in its database to assemble them into the final HTML page it sends to the server. The server then transfers that information to the browser to display the content expected by the user (blog post, image, live video, etc.).
Depending on the time of day and the server hosting your site, these exchanges can take several seconds…
Caching's role is to store certain data so it can be accessed more quickly later. It helps improve a website's speed and significantly reduces system load.
There are many effective caching plugins to speed up a WordPress site or a WooCommerce store. However, a caching solution pre-integrated by your host can save you the cost of those plugins (on average €50–100 per year).
That's what IONOS offers with its new complete WordPress caching solution. IONOS users were able to observe FCPs (First Contentful Paints) up to 3x faster, allowing them to achieve Google performance scores of +99*!
*Google considers a site fast starting from a performance score above 90. The IONOS figures come from Lighthouse 8 tests performed in August 2022, compared with their latest-generation portfolio.
Regular updates
Failing to update your WordPress plugins — or even WordPress itself — can seriously harm your site's performance and security. It's therefore essential to regularly update all components of your WordPress… even if that means checking your admin interface several times a week!
Fortunately, dedicated WordPress hosting solutions like IONOS can offer automatic updates. Select the option and voilà! You no longer need to worry about updates; they are applied automatically with each new release.
Security: a criterion never to forget
A website can be protected in several ways:
Protection against DoS and DDoS attacks
Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks consist of overwhelming a website's resources in order to put it out of service.
Some web hosts for WordPress or WooCommerce offer protection against these attacks, which can have severe consequences for targeted websites.
Protection against malware
Malware is intrusive and hostile and can take many forms. Some malware, for example, steals or deletes data, while others spy on a visitor's activity on the compromised site.
High-quality, 100% secure web hosting is therefore essential to protect yourself from these threats.
Backup and restore
Despite all your precautions, your site is never completely safe from a malicious attack or a handling error… To allow you to quickly restore your WordPress without losing content, it’s important to schedule regular automatic backups of your data.
The safest solution is at the server level: thanks to the automatic backups offered by your host, you can recover all your information in case of data loss or deletion.
With the Jetpack plugin included in the IONOS hosting package, you can keep your content safe with daily backups and restore your WordPress site with one click if needed.
All IONOS WordPress packages include 12 months of free backup access with Jetpack Daily (no hidden fees, the offer ends automatically).
Geo-redundancy
Physical damage to the server can also cause data loss. We all remember the fire that devastated OVH’s Strasbourg data center in March 2021, cutting access to many sites for several days.
So check that your data is hosted in separate data centers, as is the case with IONOS WordPress hosting. This precaution will allow you to recover your data easily and quickly if needed… and avoid unpleasant surprises!
Key takeaways to improve your WordPress speed
Today, every website must differentiate itself by striving to offer the best possible user experience.
All the criteria mentioned in this article are essential to improve the speed of a WordPress site. The user experience will be improved, consequently reducing the bounce rate. Ultimately, high-performance WordPress hosting like IONOS can improve the site's organic ranking and its sales.
Take advantage of IONOS ultra-fast WordPress hosting starting at just €1 excl. VAT/month.
By reducing its LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) load time by 31%, Vodafone recorded an 8% increase in sales.
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