WordPress is a great Content Management System (CMS) for running your blog or website. The fact that it powers more than 40% of all websites is a testimonial to its popularity and reliability.

Still, there will be instances when WordPress websites don't load as quickly as expected and sometimes fail the Core Web Vitals (CWV) metrics of Google.

Below, I will list 7 reasons why WordPress websites load slowly and what you can do to rectify these speed issues.

Let's rock on.

1. Using a sub-optimized theme

All WordPress websites need one theme or the other to function. There are thousands of free themes to pick from on the WordPress.org theme repository.

Apart from these themes, there are multiple marketplaces like Themeforest that sell premium WordPress themes. Many of these themes are well coded with site speed kept central.

However, there are many other themes as well that are poorly coded and multiple features are crammed into one theme. The casualty here is page load times.

To avoid this problem, go with a small-sized and fast-loading theme like GeneratePress, Astra, or Neve.

2. Using multiple plugins

We love to use multiple plugins on our WordPress websites. After all, what is WordPress without the thousands of free plugins that have enriched user websites in multiple ways?

One drawback of having such a rich variety of plugins to choose from is installing excessive plugins than what we need. Now, you should not feel that more number of plugins automatically translates into slower website speed.

Rather, it is more number of slow plugins that contribute excessively to slower websites. For this reason, you should only install those plugins that are absolutely essential for your blog.

If you can get the same results manually by investing a little time and effort, you should always pick this route over the plugin one.

3. Not using the right performance optimization plugins

While on the topic of plugins, did you know that there are multiple WordPress optimization plugins that can lower your page load times?

Some of these plugins include:

1. Cache plugins like WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, etc.

2. Performance plugins like Perfmatters, and Asset CleanUp

3. Image compression plugins like EWWW Image Optimizer, ShortPixel, Smush, Imagify, etc.

4. Database optimization plugins like Autoptimize, WP-Optimize, etc.

You absolutely should be using some of these plugins (especially for cache) to speed up your WordPress website.

4. Using a slow web host

Slow hosting is usually the number one reason behind slow WordPress websites.

After all, every time a user lands on your website, the data is loaded from your web server. And if the server is slow at transmitting the information requested by the user's web browser, then the web page will load more slowly.

That's why it's vital to invest in fast web hosting. Trust me, it's one of the best investments you will make in keeping your site fast and responsive.

5. Using page builders

Page builders have revolutionized the way we create content and design our websites. They offer drag and drop simplicity minus the pain of learning a scripting language.

We can simply install one of the popular page builders like Elementor and design complete websites in no time.

I have nothing adverse against page builders. The problem occurs when we over design our web pages just for the heck of it. This adds hundreds of lines of CSS code to the page size making it bloated and slow loading.

For this reason, even if you're using a page builder, make sure to only add the effects that will add value to the user experience without compromising on site speed.

Further, you can take advantage of the Gutenberg WordPress block editor that is a native page builder in WordPress and offers similar functionality as a commercial page builder plugin.

The other benefit of using the block editor to create your pages is that it does not add to the page bloat since it loads the CSS code natively and not externally like 3rd party page builders.

6. Not compressing and optimizing your images

If you check your web pages on page speed tools like GTmetrix, you will observe that images account for the Lion's share of the page size.

Also, certain image formats like PNG are larger in size than other formats.

To resolve this issue, you should use an image optimization plugin like EWWW Image Optimizer that does two things very effectively:

1. Compresses all images automatically on upload

2. Converts the uploaded images to WebP format for faster loading

This translates into lower image sizes and consequently faster WordPress websites.

7. Not optimizing the database

Once you have published a few blog posts and pages, your WordPress database will accumulate all sorts of junk like trashed posts, spam and trashed comments, expired transients, pingbacks and trackbacks, multiple post revisions, etc.

This will slow down your WordPress admin backend and make it frustrating for you to work on your website.

To tackle this problem, you should use a database optimization plugin like WP-Optimize that schedules all the database cleanup activity on weekly basis.

If you're using a cache plugin like WP Rocket, it includes database management options so you don't need to install any additional plugin for this purpose.

Wrapping up

You've seen the 7 most important reasons why you're WordPress website loads slowly. We also discussed 7 ways to tackle slow-speed issues on WordPress.

Fortunately, you will start implementing all or at least some of these suggestions and experience faster website speed immediately.

Thanks for reading.