How to Test Your WordPress Site Speed (And What to Do If It’s Slow)

If your site feels slow, it probably is.

And a slow site means:

• Visitors bounce before your page even loads
• Google ranks you lower
• You lose leads and sales for no good reason

The good news: you don’t need to be a developer to check your speed and fix the most common problems.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

1. How to test your WordPress site speed (free tools)
2. How to understand the results in simple language
3. What to do if your site is actually slow

No code. No geek-speak. Just practical stuff.

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1. What “Fast” Actually Means for a WordPress Site

You don’t need a perfect 100/100 score. Ignore that obsession.

Focus on this:

• Mobile load time: Under 3 seconds is a good target
• Core Web Vitals basics:
  • LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Main content shows up quickly
  • CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Page doesn’t jump around while loading

If users see your main content fast and the page doesn’t glitch around, you’re in a decent spot.

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2. Tools to Test Your WordPress Site Speed

You only need 2 tools to get a clear picture.

🔹 Tool 1: Google PageSpeed Insights

URL: Search “PageSpeed Insights” on Google.

How to use:

1. Open PageSpeed Insights
2. Paste your page URL (e.g. your homepage)
3. Click Analyze
4. Check both Mobile and Desktop tabs

It will show:

• A performance score
• Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, etc.)
• Suggestions like “Serve images in next-gen formats” or “Reduce unused JavaScript”

Don’t panic about every warning. You’re looking for patterns:

• Is LCP too high?
• Are images too large?
• Is JavaScript heavy?

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🔹 Tool 2: GTmetrix

URL: Search “GTmetrix” on Google.

How to use:

1. Open GTmetrix
2. Paste your URL
3. Click Test your site

It will show:

• Total load time
• Page size (MB)
• Number of requests
• A waterfall chart (don’t stress too much about this at first)

Rough rules:

• Page size: Aim for under 2 MB for a normal page
• Requests: Under ~80 is decent for small sites
• Load time: Under 3 seconds is ideal

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3. How to Read the Results (In Normal Language)

You’ll usually see these issues pop up:

🧩 Problem: “Images are too large”

• Page size is big (e.g. 4–8 MB)
• PageSpeed/GTmetrix complain about “properly size images” or “serve images in next-gen formats”

Meaning: You’re uploading heavy, uncompressed images straight from your phone or design tool.

👉 Fix:

• Resize images before upload (e.g. 1200px wide instead of 4000px)
• Use JPG/WEBP for photos, PNG/SVG for logos
• Use a lightweight image optimization plugin (like reSmush.it or similar)

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🧩 Problem: “Too much JavaScript / CSS”

You’ll see warnings like:

• “Reduce unused JavaScript”
• “Eliminate render-blocking resources”

Meaning: Your theme + plugins are loading too many scripts and styles, often for features you don’t even use.

👉 Fix:

• Remove unnecessary plugins (we’ll get to this below)
• Avoid super-heavy page builders + add-on packs if you don’t need them
• Use a caching/optimization plugin that can minify and combine assets

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🧩 Problem: “Slow server response time (TTFB)”

Meaning: Your hosting is slow. The server takes too long to start sending the page.

👉 Fix:

• Use caching (critical)
• If still slow after fixing basics, consider upgrading hosting or changing provider

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4. What to Do If Your WordPress Site Is Slow

Here’s the order of attack. Don’t jump to advanced stuff before fixing the basics.

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Step 1: Install a Caching Plugin

Caching turns your dynamic WordPress pages into static HTML versions so the server doesn’t recalculate everything for every visitor.

What to do:

1. Install a simple, lightweight caching plugin (e.g. Cache Enabler or similar)
2. Turn on:
   • Page cache
   • Basic minification (HTML / CSS / JS if offered)
3. Clear the cache and retest your site in PageSpeed / GTmetrix

You’ll often see a big improvement just from this.

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Step 2: Optimize Your Images

If your page size is huge, no amount of caching will magically fix it.

What to do:

1. Start with your main pages: Home, Services, key blog posts
2. Resize big images before upload:
   • Hero images: usually 1200–1920px wide is enough
3. Use a compression plugin (e.g. reSmush.it or similar) to bulk-compress existing media
4. Make it a rule: never upload 3–5 MB images again

Then retest.

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Step 3: Remove Plugin Bloat

Too many plugins = too much code = slower site + more risk.

What to do:

1. Go to Plugins → Installed Plugins
2. Ask honestly for each plugin:
   • Do I actually use this?
   • Does it directly help my site or business?
3. Deactivate and delete:
   • Old experiment plugins
   • “All-in-one” toolkits you barely use
   • Unnecessary feature plugins your theme already handles

Retest after cleaning up. Don’t just deactivate—delete the ones you won’t use.

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Step 4: Check Your Theme

Some themes are fast. Some are disasters.

Signs your theme is a problem:

• Even a blank page (with no content) feels heavy and slow
• It ships with dozens of built-in sliders, animations, and scripts you don’t use
• PageSpeed complains about a huge amount of CSS/JS from the theme

Options:

• Turn off unnecessary theme features in its settings
• If the theme is really bloated and you’re still early in your project, consider switching to a lightweight base theme (like a minimal, performance-focused one) and rebuilding key pages only

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Step 5: Consider Hosting Quality

If you’ve:

• Turned on caching
• Optimized images
• Reduced plugins
• Cleaned up your theme

…and your TTFB is still bad, the host is likely a bottleneck.

Signs you need better hosting:

• Site is slow even with caching
• Other sites on the same host also feel sluggish
• Your host has frequent downtime or support is useless

You don’t have to jump to the most expensive solution, but moving away from the bottom-of-the-barrel “ultra-cheap shared hosting” often makes a huge difference.

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Step 6: Optional – Use a CDN (If Your Audience Is Global)

If your visitors come from all over the world, a CDN (Content Delivery Network) can help.

In simple terms: a CDN stores copies of your site on servers around the world and delivers them from the one closest to the visitor.

For many small local sites, this is optional. For global traffic, it can speed up things nicely.

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5. Simple Speed Checklist You Can Reuse

Whenever you feel your site is slow, run through this:

• Test page with PageSpeed Insights (mobile + desktop)
• Test with GTmetrix (check load time + page size)
• Install/verify caching plugin is active
• Compress & resize images
• Delete plugins you don’t use
• Review theme settings / bloat
• Check hosting performance (TTFB, downtime)
• (Optional) Add CDN if you have global visitors

Do this once every 1–2 months, or when you make big design changes.

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Final Thoughts

You don’t need to chase a perfect 100/100 score or become a performance engineer.

But you do need to:

• Test your speed regularly
• Fix obvious problems (huge images, plugin bloat, no caching)
• Avoid lazy habits like uploading raw 5 MB photos or installing every shiny plugin

If you stay disciplined with these basics, your WordPress site will be faster than most of your competitors’ — and that’s what actually matters.