Here I am, I made a new WordPress site using Divi as the builder the theme. I checked the PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix performance scores. The SEO score is actually pretty good at 93 (I used the free Yoast plugin to control the site’s SEO Page Titles and Meta Descriptions).
Nevertheless, I will try to address a few low hanging fruit areas to try to improve the performance score. What I did:
- Install free WordPress Webp Plugin Performance Lab which automatically defaults to convert JPG images to Webp upon Upload.
- Re-upload your images on your pages as JPG, so they automatically convert to Webp or at the very least make sure you do it on the Homepage
- Install WP Fastest Cache for the Minify HTML, Combine Css, Gzip features
- Lastly, I wanted to address the “Avoid non-composited animations” message Google Pagespeed Insights found on it’s Mobile View. I followed Pee-Aye Creative’s Blog post at https://www.peeayecreative.com/how-to-disable-divi-animation-effects-on-mobile/ by adding CSS Divi>Theme Options>Custom CSS to stop animation on the Mobile device OR you can just flip a toggle to be Enabled if you have the Divi Responsive Helper plugin purchased from Pee-Aye Creative. Now keep in mind this disables animation on mobile, do you want form vs function. Animation can be visually fun to observe. Choose this or don’t choose this, it’s up to you!
Here is the PageSpeed Insights score after:
Here is the GTmextrix score after (it was a B before but I forgot to take the screen shot!)
Now I know using Pagespeed Insights, GTmextrix and addressing all Performance issues listed is a huge rabbit hole. There is even more I can do to increase the Performance Score of the site. However I have to balance many considerations into how much effort goes into this:
- Am I being paid for this additional time/effort? Nope.
- Do I have developer expertise with the type of technical experience to implement further enhancements to on a code level? Nope.
- How critical is it for this site to get even more of a performance score improvement…. is this a thousands or million+ dollar volume website that needs every edge it can get? There is more too.. but I will stop here and say this is an excellent improvement for an hour’s worth of effort so I’ll take it. In this case, its not necessary to go further. If it were, this organization would seek an experienced technical development agency and for the necessary robust development.
PS: I originally had these images in a Word Document before I saved them for this blog post. As a result, the images are too small/fuzzy. But you get the gist!
How do you feel about your website? If you feel it could use some design, conversion, performance or Organic SEO optimization – Contact me today.
