In our article about how a few seconds can ruin your site’s search ranking, we talked about how page speed is a vital aspect of SEO – so we thought we’d show an example of how to speed up slow Divi sites.
At X(US) Hosting, all our clients use Divi for its customizability and ease of use, however, Divi is a HUGE theme and takes up a lot of space. This means we work extra hard to make sure our clients’ sites are running at maximum efficiency.
Here’s how we improved some of our clients’ sites with a few useful plugins, tips, and tricks.
So here’s where we started with the Construction Allies in Action site. This site is giant – with an online directory of DBE/MBE/WBE contractors in Michigan, tons of pages, and eCommerce capabilities, this was no easy task. GTmetrix rated the site a D before we started working on it. Yikes.
So how did we do it?
Use a Caching Plugin
Using a caching plugin to speed up slow Divi sites is highly recommended. You can go simple and free with something like Hummingbird, or pay for a plugin like WP Rocket. You’ll get what you pay for when it comes to caching plugins, but you don’t have to break the bank to get a fast site. Talk with your website designer or do some research on the best option for your business.
Reduce Image Sizes
Again, you can use a plugin to do this or compress images before uploading them to your site, whatever is easiest. We’ve had great luck with the free version of Smush, the lazy loading and image compressing plugin. You can even use their Bulk Smush option to Smush all your images at once, and set the plugin to continue compressing images as you upload them to your site.
Remove Unused Content
It happens to the best of us. You create a great graphic for your site only to notice a typo in the first line and now you have to re-upload it with changes. Happens all the time. Just make sure you remove the old image from your Media center to avoid duplicates and reduce the number of items in your Media center.
This applies to plugins and themes too. Remove anything unnecessary to your site and you’ll see that GTmetrix score improve significantly.
Use Great Hosting
Where you host your site matters – and not all hosting providers are equal. Do some research before choosing a hosting provider to determine what’s the best fit for your budget. Search for services that offer the fastest speeds and best service.
X(US) recommends and uses DreamHost for most clients. But we have experience with quite a few other hosting providers and would be happy to help find something that suits your needs.
Keep Plugins & Themes Updated
Developers of plugins and themes for WordPress are constantly updating them, whether that’s adding new features or fixing bugs. As a website developer that offers managed services, it’s our responsibility to keep these updated for our clients, and it definitely impacts the speed, and therefore user experience, of the site.
So we followed our own advice on the Construction Allies in Action site. We spent time reducing image sizes, invested in a caching plugin, and removed unused content, and here are the results:
Need help speeding up a slow Divi site? Contact us to get started.
