{"id":4049327,"date":"2022-02-07T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/?p=4049327"},"modified":"2022-02-07T10:50:53","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T09:50:53","slug":"how-to-speed-up-astra-wp-rocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/blog\/how-to-speed-up-astra-wp-rocket\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Speed up Your Astra Site with WP Rocket"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a guest post. Opinions and recommendations are the author\u2019s own.<\/em><\/p>

Do you use the Astra WordPress theme? Want to speed it up?<\/p>

In our previous article on getting a 99 mobile PageSpeed Insights score<\/a>, we saw how fast the Astra theme is. It\u2019s a good theme, and it loads quickly by default. When you add WP Rocket into the mix, you can see an improvement in page load times of up to 25%!<\/p>

It\u2019s 2022, and your customers are going to want everything yesterday. <\/p>

Search engines take this growing need for instant gratification very seriously. They want to rank pages that deliver the best user experience, and this is precisely why website performance needs to be your top priority.<\/p>

This article will discuss speeding up your Astra website with WP Rocket. <\/p>

We will show you how to install the Astra theme and the WP Rocket plugin. Then we will share the optimum settings for the best possible performance.<\/p>

Why Page Speed Matters<\/h2>

Page speed is one of the most important factors of user experience<\/a>, as nobody likes a slow website. <\/p>

Here are four more reasons why you should be taking page speed seriously:<\/p>

1. Page Speed and SEO<\/h3>

Google’s algorithm updates have made page speed more important than ever before. Pages that load quickly and offer a great user experience will rank higher on SERPs than those that take too long to load.<\/p>

Google recently declared Core Web Vitals <\/a>as a ranking factor. These vitals focus on factors beyond page speed. They focus on how your website\u2019s performance connects to the user experience on the site. Though page speed still remains one of the most important criteria.<\/p>

2. Page Speed and Engagement<\/h3>

People are always on-the-go, so they want to find answers quickly. When your website loads fast, it makes the content easier and more engaging, as your visitors don\u2019t have to wait. <\/p>

Alternatively, if your page loads slowly, you will see a higher bounce rate and less dwell time on your pages.<\/p>

3. Page Speed and Sales for Online Stores<\/h3>

In a study<\/a>, Walmart found that every second of improvement in page speed caused an increase of 2% in sales. Sure, the percentage number doesn\u2019t seem much, but when the company does more than $100 billion in sales, it soon adds up.<\/p>

It\u2019s not just eCommerce giants or enterprises either. Smaller businesses can retain more visitors with fast load times, thereby contributing to more sales.<\/p>

4. Page Speed and Landing Page Conversion<\/h3>

A faster page may not guarantee a higher conversion, but a slow website definitely kills your online sales!<\/p>

As we discussed earlier, page speed contributes significantly to the user experience. <\/p>

A slow website requires visitors to wait for the content to load. The longer they wait, the more negatively they will view your brand and the less likely they are to convert.<\/p>

What Does Impact Page Speed?<\/h2>

Now that you know why page speed is so important let us see what factors impact page speed. <\/p>

\"why<\/figure>

1. Your Web Server<\/h3>

If your web host is slow, your pages will be slow, no matter how many optimizations you make. <\/p>

One of the most critical factors that affect website speed is web hosting.<\/a><\/p>

If you are on a budget, you might be using shared hosting. That means potentially sharing the same server with hundreds, or thousands, of other websites. <\/p>

You can spend more performance with VPS or dedicated servers. They dedicate all their resources to your website. <\/p>

While shared hosting is more economical for newer and new sites, you might want to upgrade your hosting to cloud, VPS, or dedicated hosting based on the size of your website.<\/p>

2. WordPress Theme<\/h3>

The WordPress theme<\/a> you pick to build your website makes a lot of difference in load times. <\/p>

A theme provides the visual framework for building and customizing your website design. It controls many essential elements like header, footer, widgets, sidebars, colors, fonts, and everything you see. <\/p>

However, not all themes perform as well as they should. The more elements a theme contains, the larger the file and the more work WordPress and your web host have to do. This will have an obvious negative impact on page load speed.<\/p>

We recommend Astra<\/a>. Not only is it the most popular WordPress theme around, but it is also super lightweight (less than 50KB) \u2013 definitely it\u2019s one of the fastest WordPress themes<\/a>.<\/p>

In the later sections, you can see how it loads fast even without WP Rocket.<\/p>

3. Size of Pages <\/h3>

Media files like images, audio, pdfs, and videos all add to the size of a page, which slows it down. Lighter, simpler pages load fastest but there are ways to speed up pages with video or audio, especially if you use WP Rocket.<\/p>

4. Video Content<\/h3>

Videos are much heavier than images, and we don\u2019t recommend hosting videos directly on your website. They consume a lot of bandwidth and might cause delays. <\/p>

We recommend hosting videos on a third-party platform and embedding them on your web pages. <\/p>

5. HTTP Requests<\/h3>

HTTP is a protocol used to distribute data on the internet. This can include content, HTML files, CSS, media files, and more.<\/p>

When you visit a website, your browser requests to see the data in the website to the server. The server responds to the request and delivers the data. This is an HTTP request<\/a>.<\/p>

A browser has to make an HTTP request for every separate element on a page. The more elements you have on a page, the more HTTP requests your browser makes to request them. <\/p>

This will all slow down page load times.<\/p>

Well-designed themes reduce requests by as much as possible but you can also minimize HTTP requests as part of website optimization.<\/p>

Optimizing Websites with Astra and WP Rocket – Real World Test<\/h2>

Now that you understand why page speed is important and the factors that impact page speed, let us take a look at a real-world test where we optimized a live Astra website with WP Rocket.<\/p>

We will use the GTmetrix<\/a> tool to analyze the website speed.<\/p>

\"GTmetrix<\/figure>

GTmetrix accurately analyses your website speed. It considers the page speed rules and recommendations<\/a> by Google.<\/p>

The Test<\/h3>

The website we used is from Starter Templates<\/a> from Brainstorm Force. That\u2019s the team that developed the Astra WordPress theme. <\/p>

Here\u2019s how it performs on GTmetrix:<\/p>

Without WP Rocket:<\/h4>
\"GTmetrix<\/figure>

The loading time was 1.6 seconds on the default page with a size of 912 KB and 33 requests. Compared to the industry average, that\u2019s not bad!<\/p>

But here\u2019s what happened when we optimized it with WP Rocket.<\/p>

With WP Rocket:<\/h4>
\"GTmetrix<\/figure>

That\u2019s some improvement!<\/p>

The load time was reduced by more than a second, and the number of requests reduced from 33 to 13. The overall page size was also reduced from 912 KB to 832 KB.<\/p>

Let us clarify that this improvement did not happen automatically. We configured the WP Rocket plugin to deliver the best possible performance.<\/p>

It is super easy to configure WP Rocket, and you can do it in just 15 minutes.<\/p>

We\u2019ll show you how.<\/p>

Speed Up Your Astra Website in Less Than 15 Minutes<\/h2>

You\u2019ve seen how WP Rocket can improve the performance of a website using Astra. Now let\u2019s do the same for yours.<\/p>

Here\u2019s a step-by-step guide on picking the best optimization options for your website with WP Rocket.<\/p>

Step 1: Install and Activate Astra Theme<\/h3>
\"Choose<\/figure>

The Astra theme is available to download for free in the WordPress repository. Here are the steps to install the Astra theme:<\/p>

  1. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.<\/li>
  2. Go to Appearance <\/strong>> Themes <\/strong>> Add New<\/strong><\/li>
  3. Search for \u2013 Astra<\/strong><\/li>
  4. Install <\/strong>Astra and activate <\/strong>it.<\/li><\/ol>

    Step 2: Install and Activate WP Rocket<\/h3>

    WP Rocket is a premium plugin and is not available in the WordPress repository. You will have to upload this plugin manually.<\/p>

    To install the plugin, take the following steps:<\/p>

    1. Go to Plugins <\/strong>> Add new<\/strong> > Upload<\/strong> to install <\/strong>the plugin<\/li>
    2. Click Activate<\/strong> to enable the plugin<\/li><\/ol>

      WP Rocket will instantly implement caching on your website.<\/p>

      Step 3: Configure File Optimization<\/h3>

      From your WordPress Dashboard go to Settings <\/strong>> WP Rocke<\/strong>t > File Optimization<\/strong>.<\/p>

      \"Optimize<\/figure>

      Set the following options by checking the boxes:<\/p>