WordPress Performance Optimization
Project Information
- Client: St. Louis News Blog
- Industry: Online Publishing
- Location: St. Louis, MO
- Services: WordPress Optimization
- Timeline: 2 weeks
- Completed: November 2023
The Challenge
St. Louis News Blog was experiencing slow load times that were causing readers to leave. Their bounce rate was 75%, ad revenue was declining due to poor Core Web Vitals scores, and they were losing search rankings. The site was running on outdated shared hosting with no caching.
- Average page load time of 12 seconds
- Bounce rate of 75%
- Poor Core Web Vitals failing all metrics
- Declining ad revenue due to slow site
- Outdated plugins and PHP version
Our Solution
We migrated the blog to managed WordPress hosting with LiteSpeed, implemented comprehensive caching strategies, optimized images and code, upgraded to PHP 8.1, and cleaned up unnecessary plugins. We also implemented lazy loading for images and ads, and set up a CDN for global content delivery.
Performance Analysis
Identified bottlenecks using GTmetrix, PageSpeed Insights, and Chrome DevTools
Hosting Migration
Moved to managed WordPress hosting with LiteSpeed Cache
Image Optimization
Compressed and converted 2,000+ images to WebP format
Code Optimization
Minified CSS/JS, removed unused code, implemented critical CSS
CDN Setup
Configured Cloudflare CDN for global content delivery
The Results
The optimization dramatically improved site performance. Page load times decreased by 70%, Core Web Vitals passed all metrics, and bounce rate dropped to 42%. Ad revenue increased 55% due to better ad viewability, and organic traffic grew 35% as search rankings improved.
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Before & After
| Metric | Before | After | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Page Load Time | 12.4s | 3.7s | |
| PageSpeed Score | 32/100 | 94/100 | |
| Bounce Rate | 75% | 42% | |
| Monthly Ad Revenue | $4,200 | $6,510 |
What the Client Says
Technologies Used
LiteSpeed Cache
Advanced server-level caching
WebP Images
Modern image format for faster loading
Cloudflare
CDN and performance optimization
PHP 8.1
Latest PHP for better performance
WP-Optimize
Database optimization
Lazy Load
Deferred image and iframe loading
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