Speed matters! No one has time to wait for your slow website to load, right?

Our talented coder, Alex wrote to us a few months ago and said:

I’ve noticed something about your website: it’s not optimised for fast loading. As a web agency, having a fast-loading website is crucial. Your website score should be A or B. I recently worked on a project where I improved a WordPress WooCommerce website’s GTmetrix score from ‘F’ to ‘B’.  If you’re interested in optimizing your website, please let me know. Also this is something we can propose to your clients.

Now people write this stuff to us all the time, and say other things which just aren’t true. But those people are doing “cold outreach” and Alex is one of our coders!

We decided to say yes to the experiment, though luckily we didn’t have an F score!

Since then, Alex has been hard at work optimising the speed of our TLD site.

After all, we know all the rules, tricks and reasons and the plugins that make a difference.

In this article, we’ll delve into the details of his efforts and the impressive results achieved.

The Challenge: Home Page Speed

While other pages on the Top Left Design site were performing well, the home page posed a challenge. Slow loading times were affecting user experience, especially on mobile devices.

Alex’s Solutions

1. Delaying the start of the main video
   • Alex identified that the main video on our home page was causing delays. By strategically delaying its start, he significantly improved the overall loading speed.
   • The result? A GTmetrix score of B/86 for our home page.
2. Image optimisation and cache plugins
   • Alex experimented with various tools to enhance performance.
   • He tried a free image optimizer to reduce image file sizes and adjusted our current cache plugin settings.
   • Additionally, he tested another cache plugin (also the free version) to find the optimal configuration.
3. Mobile speed boost
   • Despite his efforts, the mobile version still needed improvement.
   • Before Alex’s intervention, our mobile page speed was a mere 59. Now, it stands at a more respectable 73.
4. Desktop performance
   • Reassuringly, our desktop performance remains strong. We boast an impressive 97 score on PageSpeed Insights.

GT Metrix Grades Over Time

Let’s take a closer look at our progress:

• 9th Jan 2024:
  • GT Metrix Grade: C
  • Performance Score: 71%
  • Structure Score: 71%

•  30th Jan 2024:
  • GT Metrix Grade: B
  • Performance Score: 86%
  • Structure Score: 79%

Alex’s Recommendations for mobile optimisation

There’s more to be done to lift those scores and reduce page loading time. Am writing this now because I wanted to stop and congratulate ourselves for our work so far. Now, time to invest.

For further mobile enhancements, Alex suggests considering the following tools:

1. WP Rocket (€59/year for one site)
   • A powerful caching plugin that can significantly boost speed and performance.
2. Imagify (Free plan available)
   • An image optimisation tool to further reduce file sizes and improve loading times.

Thanks to Alex’s expertise, our website is now faster and more efficient. As we continue to fine-tune our performance, we’re committed to delivering an exceptional user experience.