A slow WordPress website costs you money.
Visitors leave before pages load, Google ranks you lower, and your business looks less trustworthy. The good news? Most speed problems are entirely fixable, and you don’t need to be “technical” to understand what’s causing them.
This guide breaks everything down in plain English and explains the main reasons your WordPress site feels sluggish and what you can do about it.
1. Your Web Hosting Is Too Small (Or Too Cheap)
Hosting is the foundation of your website. If the foundation is weak, everything built on top becomes slow.
Cheap shared hosting often means:
- Hundreds of websites crammed onto the same server
- Limited CPU and RAM
- Slow response times at busy periods
- Poor support when things break
The Fix
Upgrade to a reputable, WordPress friendly host with proper resources.
Look for:
- Fast SSD storage
- LiteSpeed or NGINX servers
- Proper UK/European data centres
- Built in caching
- PHP 8.1 or later
- Cloud hosting rather than old cPanel shared servers
2. Images Are Too Large
This is the most common speed killer.
Modern sites use big, full width images, but uploading them at full camera resolution (e.g., 4000px wide, 5–10MB each) is like trying to push a sofa through a letterbox.
Even one far too large hero image can slow your homepage dramatically.
The Fix
- Always compress images before uploading
- Convert them to WebP
- Aim for under 200KB for most images
- Use a plugin like ShortPixel, Imagify, Smush, or a performance plugin with built in optimisation (Perfmatters/SEOPress Pro)
3. Too Many Plugins (Or Heavy Plugins)
Plugins are brilliant until you have too many of them.
Every plugin adds:
- Extra files
- Extra database queries
- Extra scripts loading on your pages
- More things for WordPress to process
Some plugins are especially heavy: page builders, sliders, mega-menus, form builders, security suites, and anything that loads large CSS/JS libraries.
The Fix
- Delete plugins you’re not using
- Replace heavy plugins with lighter alternatives
- Don’t install “all in one” tools unless you need 100% of the features
- Use a performance plugin (Perfmatters) to disable scripts on pages where they aren’t needed
Most sites can be trimmed from 35–50 plugins down to 15–25 lightweight ones without losing functionality.
4. Poor Quality Themes or Page Builders
Drag and drop page builders are easy… but often slow.
Themes built on Elementor, Divi, WPBakery and older builders load a lot of CSS and JavaScript on every page.
Cheap ThemeForest themes also often include:
- Bloated code
- Multiple builders
- Bundled plugins
- Out of date libraries
- Gigantic page templates
All of this slows down load times.
The Fix
Use a lightweight theme such as:
- GeneratePress
- Kadence
- Block based themes
- A clean custom theme, we can build one for you.
5. No Caching in Place
Without caching, your server has to:
- Rebuild the page
- Query the database
- Load PHP
- Process templates
- Assemble the HTML
- Then send it to the visitor
This happens for every page load.
Caching stores a fast, pre-built version so the server doesn’t have to re-think the page every time.
The Fix
Use a cache plugin or host level caching:
- LiteSpeed Cache
- WP Rocket
- WPRX / QUIC.cloud
- Cloudflare APO (excellent for global performance)
Caching alone can cut load times by 50–90%.
6. Too Many External Scripts
Every external service you connect to your site adds weight:
- Google Analytics
- Facebook Pixel
- Hotjar
- Live chat widgets
- Booking widgets
- Cookie consent tools
- Third party fonts
- YouTube embeds
- Trustpilot widgets
- HubSpot forms
Each one adds a delay.
The Fix
- Only keep what’s necessary
- Use lightweight alternatives where possible
- Load scripts only on pages that need them
- Self-host fonts instead of loading from Google
- Use GDPR-friendly local analytics
Every script you remove noticeably speeds things up.
7. Database Bloat
WordPress databases slowly fill up with:
- Old post revisions
- Auto-saved drafts
- Deleted plugin leftovers
- Spam comments
- Transients
- Logs
Left untouched, this creates unnecessary load.
The Fix
Schedule a monthly database clean up
It won’t make your site “instantly fast”, but it helps everything run more smoothly.
8. Too Many Redirects
Redirects are useful, but if you have too many your visitors can hop through 3–5 redirects before reaching the real page.
That adds seconds.
The Fix
- Remove unnecessary redirects
- Consolidate old redirect chains
- Fix internal links so they point directly to the correct URL
- Check Cloudflare and your hosting rules aren’t doubling up
9. Videos Embedded the Wrong Way
YouTube or Vimeo videos are fine. But embedding them directly, without lazy-loading, means your site loads:
- A video player
- Tracking scripts
- Thumbnails
- External CSS
- Extra requests
The Fix
Use “lazy-load video”:
- A clickable thumbnail
- Light YouTube embeds
- Perfmatters video optimisation
This keeps videos loading only when needed.
10. Using Old Versions of PHP, WordPress or Plugins
Old versions = slow versions.
Newer versions of PHP (8.0 onward) process WordPress 3–4x faster, and updates often include performance improvements.
The Fix
Keep everything up to date:
- WordPress core
- Themes
- Plugins
- PHP version
- Hosting software
How to know what’s slowing Your Website
You can run quick speed tests using:
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- GTmetrix
- WebPageTest
- Cloudflare Observatory (great new tool)
But these tools won’t tell you the full story. They can’t see:
- Bad hosting
- Security issues
- Conflicts
- Theme bloat
- Plugin inefficiency
- Database issues
- Cloudflare misconfiguration
How BBI Can Help
At BBI, we run specialist WordPress performance tuning for business websites, including:
- Full site performance audit
- Plugin/theme cleanup
- Image optimisation
- Database optimisation
- Hosting migration (if needed)
- Cloudflare setup
- Caching configuration
- Lighthouse / PSI 90+ tuning
- Ongoing maintenance & updates
If your site feels slow — or customers are complaining — get in touch so we can help.