How to Fix Slow Website Performance
Your website is loading slower than a sloth on sedatives, and now you're frustrated. Visitors are bouncing, your Google rankings are tanking, and you’re wondering if you should just throw money at the problem or switch hosting providers.
Slow websites are a business killer. But don’t worry—I’ve got you covered. Let’s figure out why your site is crawling and how to speed things up.
Step 1: Check If Your Website Is Actually Slow (Or If It’s Just You)
Before you start tweaking things, let's make sure your site is actually slow and it's not just your internet connection acting up.
How to Test Your Website Speed:
✅ Use a speed test tool:
✅ Try loading your site on different devices (your phone, tablet, or another computer).
✅ Switch to mobile data or another WiFi network—your ISP might be slow.
✅ Use incognito mode to rule out browser extensions or cache issues.
What This Means:
- If your site is slow everywhere, it’s a real issue—keep reading.
- If it’s only slow for you, your internet connection, browser, or device is the issue. Restart your router, clear your cache, and stop blaming your web host.
Step 2: Reduce Image Sizes (Because Huge Images Are Slowing You Down)
Images are the #1 cause of slow-loading websites. If you’ve been uploading huge, uncompressed images, your site is dragging extra weight for no reason.
How to Fix It:
✅ If You’re on Our Managed WordPress Hosting:
- Good news! We include Imagify for free (unlimited usage) on all Managed WordPress Hosting plans.
- Imagify automatically shrinks your images without reducing quality—you don’t need to do anything.
✅ If You’re on Our Basic Shared Hosting (or another platform):
- Use TinyPNG, ShortPixel, or Imagify (paid version) to compress images before uploading.
- Resize images before uploading:
- Hero images & backgrounds: Keep under 2000px wide.
- General images: Keep under 1000px wide.
- Thumbnails: No bigger than 300px.
✅ Use the right format:
- JPEG for photos
- PNG for graphics with transparency
- WebP for modern compression
What This Means:
- Smaller images = faster site load times.
- If you’re on our Managed WordPress Hosting, Imagify does this automatically.
Step 3: Optimize Your Website’s Code (Because Bloated Code is Slowing You Down)
If your site has a ton of unnecessary code, it takes longer to load.
How to Fix It:
✅ Use caching & optimization plugins (for WordPress users):
- WP Rocket (included free on our Managed WordPress Hosting)
- Autoptimize
- Perfmatters
✅ Minify CSS & JavaScript:
✅ Reduce unnecessary plugins:
- If you have a bunch of random plugins, some are killing your speed.
- Deactivate and delete anything you don’t actually need.
What This Means:
- Less junk code = faster performance.
- Too many plugins? They’re dragging your site down—trim the fat.
Step 4: Enable Caching (So Your Site Doesn’t Have to Rebuild Itself Every Time Someone Visits)
Caching stores preloaded versions of your site, so visitors don’t have to re-download everything every time they visit.
How to Fix It:
✅ If You’re on Our Managed WordPress Hosting:
- We already enable caching for you—no setup required.
✅ If You’re on Basic Shared Hosting or Another Platform:
- Install WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache and enable caching.
✅ Use browser caching:
- This tells your visitor’s browser to store certain files so they don’t have to re-download them every time.
What This Means:
- With caching enabled, your site loads WAY faster because visitors don’t have to fetch everything from scratch every time.
Step 5: Upgrade Your Hosting Plan (If You’ve Outgrown Your Current One)
If your hosting plan is too basic for your growing website, your site will be slow no matter how much you optimize it.
How to Fix It:
✅ If You’re on Our Basic Shared Hosting and Your Site is Growing:
- Consider upgrading to a higher-tier plan or moving to Managed WordPress Hosting for better performance.
✅ If You’re on Our Managed WordPress Hosting and Your Site is Sluggish:
- Upgrade your performance level.
- All Managed WordPress Hosting plans come with three performance tiers (Levels 1–3).
- By default, all plans start at Level 1, but if your site is growing, you might need Level 2 or Level 3 for extra resources.
✅ Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN):
- A CDN stores your site’s data in multiple locations, so visitors load from the closest server.
- If your audience is global, a CDN massively reduces load times.
What This Means:
- If your WordPress site is sluggish, upgrading your performance level can make a huge difference.
- If you’ve outgrown shared hosting, it’s time to move up to a better plan.
Step 6: Get a Full Website Performance Overhaul
If you’ve tried everything and your site still feels slow, you might need serious optimization work.
Our sister company, Media Giant Design, specializes in:
✔ Website speed optimization
✔ Page design improvements
✔ Custom-built, high-performance sites
If you want your site to load lightning-fast, contact Media Giant Design for a full performance overhaul.
Final Thoughts: Speed = More Traffic, Higher Conversions, and Better SEO
A slow website isn’t just annoying—it’s bad for business. If your site takes forever to load, visitors leave, your rankings drop, and you lose money.
Need help? We’ve got your back:
Chat with our support team in the Media Giant Hosting Client Portal.
Send a support request.
And if you need expert-level performance optimization, reach out to our team at Media Giant Design. We’ll make your site run like a dream.