PageSpeed Insights Performance is Poor on Website

[core365]

Hi, it seems that on most of the websites I use your theme on, the performance is poor on the PageSpeed Insights diagnosis.

I’ve created a staging site on one of my sites and followed your ‘How to Improve Site Performance’ guide and implemented as much as I could. I installed the W3 Total Cache plugin, changed the php settings and added the GZIP Compression code into the .htaccess file.

https://www.staging.ukcaringservices.co.uk/

I retested it and the performance had improved slightly, but the score is still only 55.

It’s not as though the site is image heavy, there’s a total of 10 in the media library. I’ve also kept the plugins to a minimum, there’s only 8 installed.

I don’t know if I’m able to improve the score much more, or whether it’s something to do with the theme which I’m unable to do anything about.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

[Ismael]

Hello @core365,

Thank you for the inquiry.

The image used in the hero slider is very large (2500x1677px). We recommend reducing its dimensions to 1600px or smaller and preloading the image using this plugin:

– https://wordpress.org/plugins/preload-lcp-image/

This should help improve the LCP score. We also recommend not using the Revolution Slider for the first section since it doesn’t have complex animations. You can achieve the same effect using a Section element with a background image.

For other factors related to JavaScript and CSS, you may need to adjust the cache and compression settings until you get the best results.

Pro is very fast out of the box. Check out this customer review for more information on a real-world scenario

If you need more help with loading speed optimizations, you can check out our Boost service.

Best regards,
Ismael

[core365]

Hi @Ismael

Thanks for the info!

I’ve reduced the size of the image on the hero slider and installed the suggested Preload LCP Image plugin, however neither have had any impact, in fact the performance has reduced slightly from 55 to 54! The Diagnostics on PageSpeed Insights doesn’t look like it has acknowledged the LCP plugin, as it still mentions the ‘Largest Contentful Paint element’ and the ‘Preload Largest Contentful Paint Image’ as issues to be fixed.

Out of interest, I made a copy of the Home page and removed all of the images on there and tested it on the PageSpeed Insights and the score hardly improved! It scored 59.

https://www.staging.ukcaringservices.co.uk/home-page-test/

Is it the theme itself that is causing these low scores? I don’t know what else explains why the low score without any images on the page.

Thanks!

[Jonson]

@core365 maybe you had cache in broswer? Cuz I’m getting this: (img below).
Are you using cache for your site? That can def improve it quite a bit

[marc_a]

Hey @core365,

Upon checking your site performance, the issue doesn’t rely on the theme. It is how the content is implemented. You need to address the LCP and CLS issues. Just to let you know site speed is outside the scope of our theme support.

If you need more help with loading speed optimizations, I highly recommend checking Boost service.

Thank you.

[core365]

Hi @Jonson

Thank you for checking! I have no idea how you managed to get it to show that score. I checked on a different browser and cleared my cache and I still I can’t get it to go above 60.

I am using cache for the site, with the W3 Total Cache plugin, as suggested in ThemeCo’s documentation for ‘How to Improve Site Performance’. It’s set up according to their guidelines.

Thanks!

[core365]

Hi @marc_a

Even on a blank page the score is only 70, which suggests the theme/cornerstone must have an impact on the score.

Thanks

[Ismael]

What happens if you hide the current hero slider and display another section with an image that is properly optimized for mobile view? Again, avoiding the use of Revolution Slider in this case will help improve the score.

Yes, the theme does impact the score, but the implementation of content and site optimization matters more. Here is the score from our test on the “home-page-test”:

As mentioned above, if you need further assistance with this, please check out our Boost service.

Please feel free to open another thread if you have more questions.

[core365]

Hi @Ismael

I’m not understanding why you’re getting a performance score of 93. I’ve just retested it and got 68! It’s not a caching issue as my colleague checked on their PC and got the same score.

Would you know why the scores are varying so much between what you and I see?

Thanks!

[Ismael]

We’re not entirely sure why it differs, but we ran the test again and got the same score: https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-www-staging-ukcaringservices-co-uk-home-page-test/ao7yf116aw?form_factor=mobile

Did you try the suggestions above about temporarily hiding the “hero slider”?

This might also help: https://gtmetrix.com/wordpress-optimization-guide.html

[core365]

Hi @Ismael

Thanks for the link! I’ll take a look through it and try hiding the hero slider too.

Thanks for your time and help!

[Ismael]

No problem! Please don’t hesitate to open another thread if you have more questions.