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No, really, it’s true. If your website takes forever to load you’ll end up losing visitors and business. That can kill your bottom line.

If you haven’t updated your WordPress in a while there is a really good chance your theme is the problem. Commercial themes from online marketplaces are usually loaded with extras trying to be all things to all people. Often those extra plugins come with a limited license making them difficult to upgrade later. I’ve seen designers spend hours and hours trying to find the perfect theme for a client. A theme is just a frame that binds the styling with the functions. An experienced WordPress developer can build whatever you need without a special theme.

Websites are a collection of code, styles, images and video. Your web browser has to go grab all those pieces and assemble them. It’s important that those files are as small as possible and loaded in the most efficient manner. Sometimes older themes will grab the pictures last. This leaves big white spaces making you think nothing is happening. New themes know all the tricks to get the important stuff first and the rest later. A well-designed site might look complete while still putting together the bottom of the page.

My theme of choice is called Astra from Brainstorm Force. This theme is lean, flexible and fast as lightning! I don’t mean to sound like a Stepford Wife when I describe it, but I love Astra. Are a dozen websites a big enough test to be objective evidence? Every site I’ve converted to Astra has gone from a D or F speed rating to a B or better without doing anything else to it.

Talk to me about optimizing your slow website before your theme kills your business!