WordPress Website Performance Optimization Audit
A fast-loading website is essential to conversions because most users have short attention spans when browsing online. If your initial page content doesn’t load within a couple of seconds, you’ll likely lose some visitors before they even see your site. With our site performance optimization audit, we’ll review your site, perform some basic optimizations, and provide you with a report of remaining performance issues, as well as a quote for fixing the problems.
$1,300
The WordPress Website Performance Optimization Audit starts with determining what type of hosting plan you are currently using. Many well-known shared hosting providers are running outdated platforms that put your website at a disadvantage from the start. If your website is on one of these platforms, you will need to move to an optimized managed WordPress hosting platform before we can perform our audit. If you would like to host with us, we have a monthly Hosting & Maintenance plan, and we will take care of the site transfer as part of the Performance Optimization Audit service.
If you already have an optimized hosting platform, or after you move to one, we’ll complete a site performance audit. Site speed can vary largely from moment to moment, based on a variety of factors, so we run multiple tests across various platforms, at different times of the day, in order to calculate some average metrics and generate a list of consistent performance issues.
Once the audit is complete, we will perform a base optimization that involves many best practice optimization tasks that can be put into place on most WordPress websites, regardless of the individual site structure. These include tasks such as minifying and combining scripts and stylesheets, cleaning out unnecessary plugins, fully updating the site, and more. We will then run another set of tests to determine which performance issues were improved by these optimizations, and which issues still need to be addressed.
The remaining issues will likely be unique to your specific site build and will require a deeper dive into additional testing and fixes that are customized for the specific issues in your website code. We will provide you with a list of these issues, as well as a custom quote for the additional work necessary to fix them.
- Before starting this service, we will check your current hosting platform. If it is not a managed WordPress hosting platform that is optimized for website performance, we will recommend a migration to a better hosting option. We cannot perform this optimization service on a site that does not have optimized hosting. If you would like to host with us, we provide a monthly Hosting & Maintenance product as an additional service.
- We will complete a thorough site speed audit, testing on various platforms at various times to generate a selection of averages metrics, and compile a list of optimization recommendations based on the test results.
- After the audit, we will perform a set of baseline optimizations on the website, including minifying and combining scripts and stylesheets, cleaning out unnecessary plugins, updating all tools on the site, adding lazy-load functionality, and disabling a few default WordPress functions, if they are not needed on your site.
- When these optimizations are complete, we will run another series of performance tests, measure the improvements, and compile a report of the remaining performance issues.
- Once we have the new performance results, we will put together a quote for additional performance optimization work, where we will deep-dive into the details of the remaining issues on your specific website, and implement the changes needed to get your site performing to the best of its ability.
- We do not guarantee any specific performance metrics with this product. Site speed varies greatly depending on many factors, and it may not be possible to attain a specific page load time, or to maintain a consistent load speed over time.
- We can only perform this service on a managed WordPress hosting platform that we deem to be optimized for website performance. The server where your website is hosted can have a major impact on site speed, and all the other optimization tasks may have little effect if the server is not also optimized.
- Site speed varies from moment to moment, based on many factors, so reported test results and recommendations will be based on averaged metrics from a variety of tests performed on varying platforms at varying times.
- The specific optimization tasks that we complete as part of the base optimization may vary depending on your specific website. We may choose to skip any optimizations that we deem to have a negative impact on your website’s performance, functionality, or usability. We may also skip any optimizations that are already in place on the site.
- The metrics and suggestions we provide in our reporting are dependent on the tools we use for site speed testing. We will choose a selection of popular site speed testing tools that, to the best of our knowledge, work as advertised. We are not responsible for the accuracy of the data from these tools and cannot make guarantees in regard to their functioning. The terms and conditions of each tool apply to the data we receive from them. We can provide you with a list of the tools that we have used to generate your metics, on request.
- Once the base website optimizations are complete, we will provide a separate quote for the additional costs to further optimize your website. This quote will take into account the results of the second performance report and the unique needs of your specific website. We will not perform further optimizations until you approve this quote.
- If we determine that your website performance would benefit from additional paid tools, we will provide a separate quote for the cost of those tools, as well as the additional costs for the development time to implement them on your website. We will not implement the tools until you have approved the additional quote.
- We are unable to fix performance issues caused by third-party services (ex: a live chat feature, embedded contact forms, web font services, etc.) If we determine a third party service to be causing a performance issue with your site, we will attempt to provide a better-performing alternative option for the service, if one exists.
Is the website built in WordPress?
- If no – we likely cannot perform the speed optimization service
Is the website on an optimized WordPress hosting platform (ex: WP Engine, Kinsta, Pressable, Pantheon, Pagely, etc.)?
- If no – we cannot provide the speed optimization service unless they are on an optimized hosting platform. If they want to move to our hosting, they can pair the speed optimization service with our hosting audit & migration service at a discount.
If already on optimized hosting, will we be able to get full access to their hosting platform?
- If no – we will not be able to perform the speed optimization service
Can we get full non-restricted admin access to the WordPress dashboard?
- If no – we will not be able to perform the speed optimization service