Every website owner these days is busy optimizing his/her website(s). We all want Google to rank us and the loading speed is an important ranking factor. More speed ultimately means more impressions in the search results and will therefore generate more traffic. Here are two tools that can make a significant contribution to that goal.

Measurement of initial situation

Optimizing a website starts with a measurement where you map out the initial situation. What is being loaded in terms of images, scripts and css to make the page appear? Once you have that information you can quickly see where you can make a profit.

Scripts of marketing tools

If the website is used as a marketing tool, all kinds of scripts will be loaded that will slow down the page considerably. Think of scripts for Facebook, Hotjar, Google Analytics, a CRM, but also for example a chat plugin. A large website can easily load about 800kb of scripts, which is often a large part of all requests.

The plugin Flying Scripts – Loads scripts after DOM loaded

With the plugin ‘Flying Scripts’ you delay the execution of JavaScript until there is no user activity. You can specify keywords to target a specific script. Think analytics.js or datepicker.min.js as a keyword. There is also a timeout that executes JavaScript when there is no user activity. You can quickly save 25 – 30% on scripts to load with this plugin.

De plugin Flying Pages – Preload pages for instant loading experience

From the same creator comes the plugin ‘Flying Pages’. Flying Pages injects a tiny JavaScript code (1KB gzipped), waits until the browser becomes idle. Then it detects pages in the viewport and on mouse hover and preloads them. Flying Pages preload pages before the user click on it, making them load instantly. So the page doesn’t get smaller and doesn’t load faster, but the user experience is improved by steps.

More on improving loading speed with a good tip for a caching plugin can be found in the WordPress Speed Optimization The Practical Guide 2021