1) Optimise your images
Oversized images are the most common cause of slow WordPress sites. The larger the picture files on your website, the longer your site takes to load.
Optimizing your images is, therefore, a vital step to improve your website speed. Optimizing involves resizing and compressing image files so that they can be retrieved and loaded more quickly.
Good image optimization involves two stages. Firstly, make sure to edit your image before uploading it to your site.
To do this, you’ll need to decide where the image will be used and what size is needed. You can then use a tool such as Pixlr to crop and save the image in the smallest possible size. Sometimes even changing the file type can reduce size – for example, jpg is usually smaller than png images.
Secondly, install an image optimization plugin on your website – we recommend Smush (it’s what we use on the Pedalo site). This not only compresses images further after they are uploaded – thus boosting page speed – but also has various other image optimization features, including lazy loading.