Site tuning (WordPress, 2023)
This article is about site tuning or performance tuning for WordPress sites. Rather than updating article Site tuning (WordPress, 2022), this is a new article. It's based on a series of workshops by K., a tuner I contracted on Upwork.
Introduction
Some ways to broady describe site tuning:
- Serving webpages to visitors as quickly as possible
- Having site visitors wait as little as possible
- Optimize site ergonomics concerning serving pages.
Why?
Why bother about site tuning? Below are two main reasons.
Additionally: By default your site might not be optimized for speed, so it might be smart to check for this anyway.
Ergonomics
The main reason for site tuning is ergonomics: Slow sites are annoying and ergonomically unpleasant.
A related but incorrect statement is that 'the competition is only a mouseclick away', so if you're site is too slow, your customer is gone. According to Steve Krug's Don't make me think, this isn't really the case. The actual reason why a fast site is critical: To make it possible to navigate without having to think too much: On a fast site, a wrong choice or mouseclick is easily corrected, but on a slow site, every interaction becomes more critical.
SEO
Google uses a lot of factors to score your site, and page speed is one of those factors. However, it is not a very important factor: I have the impression that the importance of site speed gets easily overrated. I understood that in recent years, Google emphasized that other factors are more important.
Google PageSpeed - Scores
Public sites
Here are the scores on Google PageSpeed for some large or otherwise relevant sites. All measurements were done in August 2023.
| Site (worldwide ranking where available) |
Scores (mobile-desktop) |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon.com (13) | 51-90 | |
| Amazon.pl | 48-91 | I expected better results than for Amazon.com, as I am testing from Poland |
| Bol.com | 57-94 | |
| Booking.com | 32-49 | |
| Coolblue.nl | 30-63 | |
| Couchsurfing.com | 62-87 |
|
| Duolingo.com | 25-38 | Probably an example of a different site for desktop and laptop: Some functionalities only exist on either of the platforms |
| Facebook (3) |
|
|
| Instagram (3) | ||
| LinkedIn (19) | 62-Error | I found LinkedIn a heavy side to load, and it often gives errors when there isn't a good internet connection. I'm not sure if I see that back here |
| pl.quora.com (48) | 44-83 |
|
| Reddit (21) | 50-72 | Failed for both kinds of devices |
| Tatoeba.org | 80-95 | In practice, this is a very slow site. I'm surprised about the good score |
| Twincities.com | 14-41 | This is just an arbitrary site that I came across. It felt slow, and the score confirmed that |
| Twitter (5) |
| |
| en.wikipedia.org (7) | 92-96 |
|
| YouTube (2) | 43-42 |
|
Note that these sites don't have perfect scores at all. This probably illustrates that pagespeed isn't the most important thing
Specific sites
| Site | Scores (mobile-desktop) |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
| nl_nl | 49-73 | 2023.08.22 server TransIP with 48GB memory, 50% tuned |
| nl_nl/shop | Render timeout after 2min | 2023.08.22 |
| de_de | 62-91 | 2023.08.22 |
| de_de/shop | 2023.08.22: Timeout | |
| fr_fr | 30-68 | |
| fr_fr/shop | Timeout | 2023.08.22 |
| eur_en | ||
| uk_en |