With the rising importance of the internet in almost every of our day to day activities, the primary aim of customer’s visits to a website is the speed to which information can be accessed; a slow website can deter visitors and can have a negative effect on the SEO score. Many digital marketers believe that an effective strategy to increase the speed of a website or WordPress speed optimization is lazy loading.
Lazy loading, within the context of web design, is defined as the practice of delaying the loading of images, videos, and iframes until the user needs them. Lazy loading as a mechanism can greatly decrease initial page load time and enhance how users feel about the site by improving their first page view and interaction with other pages.
Why is Lazy Loading Important for WordPress Site Development?
- Improved Page Load Speed: Lazy loading helps reduce the standard time it takes a page to load in its entirety since non-active resources are loaded last. As a result, a fairly quick website can achieve this by delivering a better user experience to both visitors and constant users of the site.
- Enhanced User Experience: A website that loads faster enhances users as customers’ experience throughout the site. When a visitor is kept waiting for a long time, he is less likely to remain on your site.
- Reduced Server Load: Considering that not all of the resources are loaded immediately, the load on your server during high traffic periods can be significantly reduced, hence reducing server collapse and downtime.
- Improved SEO: Fast loading speeds are an asset sought after by search engines and so employing lazy loading has the ability to grow the site’s SEO and boost traffic organically.
Understanding Lazy Loading Techniques
There are basically two methods of applying lazy loading in WordPress. These include browser-level lazy loading and plugin-based lazy loading.
Browser-Level Lazy Loading
Through the use of HTML attributes, native lazy loading can also be enabled for certain modern browsers. Although, the use of native lazy loading is still somewhat limited and does not always yield positive results in all instances.
Plugin-Based Lazy Loading
One of the most effective ways of applying lazy loading in WordPress with ease is through the use of a plugin. There are quite a number of lazy plugins with great performance, functions, and features. Some of them include:
- WP Rocket: It is a paid plugin, which boosts a number of performance features including lazy loading, image optimization and caching.
- Smush: It is a free plugin that offers lazy loading and is basically concentrated on image optimization only.
- Lazy Load: It is a lighter plugin that supports lazy loading of images only.
Lazy Loading Images
Core WordPress Lazy Loading
WordPress version 5.5 brought with it the ability to lazy load images incorporated in the core. What this means is that you can apply lazy load to all images on your site without using any plugin. To turn on the core plugin, all you have to do is go to your WordPress dashboard and toggle it.
Plugin-Based Image Lazy Loading
For users who would want to use a plugin specific to lazy loading images to enhance their website, quite a number of great options are available. Below are some examples:
- WP Rocket: It is a premium plugin suitable for those looking for a wide range of performance enhancements or WordPress speed optimization, including the lazy load feature.
- Smush: This plugin is also free, mainly used for image compressing with the other features incorporating lazy loading.
- Lazy Load: This is a simple straightforward light plugin that supports image lazy loading only.
Additional Tips for Image Optimization
- Compress Images: Images that are large tend to be heavy file weight which slows down loading speed.
- Resize Images: Resize images to the appropriate size for your website. Avoid using large images that need to be scaled down by the browser.
- Use WebP Format: For those looking modern images, WebP image has lower weight in file while maintaining good quality without the overbearing structure of JPEG and PNG.
Lazy Loading Videos
The use of lazy loading in videos has become rather popular in today’s world especially when it comes to creating web persistence which is the use of designing a page that collects data and stores it for later use.
HTML5 Video Player Lazy Loading
The HTML5 video player allows you to set attributes that enable lazy loading. However, this may not be workable on all browsers and could be rather complicated.
Plugin-Based Video Lazy Loading
If you are using WordPress, plugin use will be the most effective way to enable lazy load on videos. The same plugins mentioned before regarding image lazy loading will sell the purposes here as well.
Lazy Loading of Other Media
Besides videos and pictures, there is a great opportunity to implement lazy loading on other types of media as well such as.
Lazy Loading IFrames
With the use of JavaScript, it is also possible to lazy load iframes. This usually entails the creation of an element that would act as place holder and will be changed with the iframe whenever required.
Lazy Loading Background Images
Background images lazy loading can expose more problems than lazy loading for example images. There are however strategies which can be adopted to achieve it for instance using Javascript or CSS.
Lazy Loading Fonts
Overall, lazy loading for fonts can greatly reduce the initial load of any page, particularly one that has different types of fonts. CSS font-display property can be used to determine how fonts are to be rendered while loading.
Testing and Optimization
After incorporating lazy loading feature on your WordPress website, the next step is to ensure that you test the site for any impact. You can use such tools as GTmetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze your site’s speed.
Key Takeaway
There is no doubt that it is possible to boost the performance of your WordPress website or in other words WordPress speed optimization, through the use of lazy loading techniques. Pages that are laden with multiple media elements need this option especially in loading pages faster, improving the user experiences, and even optimizing the site’s SEO.
It is important to note that lazy loading is not the only trick for increased WordPress site speeds. There is a dire need to externally optimize the site for other aspects such as image optimization tools, minifying codes, and even caching tools.
It only requires strategic guidance along with appropriate tools to achieve high speeds of a WordPress website and WordPress speed optimization which will ultimately provide a pleasant encounter for the visitors.