People want results fast, and don’t have the time to sit around waiting for slow websites to load. If your WordPress site’s loading speed takes more than a few seconds, users will just find the information they’re looking for from a different, faster site.

With decreasing attention spans and more distractions and information available than ever, it’s vital that site owners improve site load speed so that they can decrease their bounce rates, increase their page views, keep visitors engaged, increase their eCommerce conversion rates, boost SEO and provide fluid user experiences.

As Google rolls out more metrics for website performance, including measuring server response time and time to first byte, slow-loading sites (especially homepages) are being increasingly penalized in search results. When it comes to ensuring you’re at the top of your SEO game, increasingly, every millisecond counts.

Two popular ways of improving site speed are employing Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to load your site files quickly from web servers close to your users and optimizing your website images. Using Jetpack’s built-in CDN for images, videos, and other files, along with Lazy Loading Images, can greatly decrease your loading times and ease the bandwidth your site demands from your hosting provider, but there are other ways to improve site speed and provide a better overall experience for your fans on desktops and mobile devices as well.

Today we’ll be exploring a few of these methods in more detail. Read on for more!