A slow-loading website can frustrate visitors, increase bounce rates, and negatively impact your search engine rankings. Improving your site's loading speed is crucial for providing a better user experience and boosting your site's performance.
In this article, we will guide you through the process of diagnosing and fixing issues that cause slow loading times.
The first thing you should do when you notice slow loading on your site is to scan your page with a Speed Test tool. Some of the most used tools are:
The two main things you'll want to focus on after scanning the page are the page Load Time and the Page Size:
A normal page load time is 4 seconds for a page of 3 MB in size, though that may not be the case, depending on the page's nature.
For page sizes greater than 3 MB, it is recommended to try to reduce the page size. The most common cause for this is the extensive use of images, and you can verify that by scrolling down:
The total image sizes should be less than 3 MB. If the overall Image size is above 3MB, try to reduce that size as much as possible. You can do that by:
Ensure that Divi's Performance Options are enabled
Go to WordPress Dashboard → Divi →Theme Options → General Tab → Performance Tab
Ensure that all Performance Options are configured as shown below
Ensure that Divi's Static CSS File Generation option is enabled
Go to WordPress Dashboard → Divi →Theme Options → Builder → Advanced Tab
Enable the Static CSS File Generation option
Reducing the image number on the page
If you have the Blog module on the page, try to reduce the number of posts the Blog module will show per a single page to 7-9 posts.
If you use the Slider module, reduce the number of slides. The same applies to projects or any similar content.
Optimize the images
Ensure that all of the images uploaded to your WordPress are optimized for optimal loading time.
You can do this manually using third-party apps such as TinyPNG or by using our recommended Image Optimization Plugin, Smush Pro, or the free version, which is compatible with Divi.
Use caching, CDN, CSS/JS minify
Our recommended Caching Plugin is WP Rocket. Divi and WP Rocket are fully compatible, so you can rest assured there will be no issues getting set up.
Check out our Divi Speed Optimization: the Ultimate Guide article for more information.
Slow-loading pages may also come from other content, such as videos, PDFs, any media file, third-party scripts, fonts, iframes, etc.
Consider switching to Divi Hosting
We partnered with our favorite WordPress hosts to create the best hosting solution for Divi. Fast networks, modern hosting infrastructures, and the latest server software power Divi Hosting.
And it all comes with automatic caching and a free CDN. Plus, Divi Hosting comes with Divi pre-installed and activated automatically.