A one-second delay in page load time can reduce conversions by 7%. For an Irish e-commerce site doing €100,000 per month, that’s €7,000 lost — every single month.
Here’s how to speed things up without breaking your site.
Why WordPress Sites Slow Down
Before fixing the problem, understand what causes it:
- Bloated themes — Many themes load dozens of features you’ll never use
- Too many plugins — Each plugin adds weight. Some add a lot.
- Unoptimised images — A single uncompressed photo can be larger than your entire homepage should be
- Poor hosting — You get what you pay for. €3/month hosting performs like €3/month hosting.
- No caching — WordPress generates pages dynamically. Without caching, it does this work repeatedly for every visitor.
The Speed Fixes That Actually Work
1. Get Proper Hosting
This is the foundation. No amount of optimisation can overcome slow servers. Look for:
- SSD storage (not traditional hard drives)
- Server-level caching (like LiteSpeed or nginx FastCGI)
- PHP 8.x support
- Servers geographically close to your customers (Ireland or UK for Irish businesses)
Cheap shared hosting puts hundreds of sites on one server. When your neighbour’s site gets traffic, yours slows down.
2. Use a Caching Plugin (Properly Configured)
Caching stores pre-built versions of your pages so WordPress doesn’t have to build them from scratch for each visitor.
Recommended: LiteSpeed Cache (if your host uses LiteSpeed) or WP Rocket (paid, but worth it).
Important: Caching can break dynamic features like shopping carts. Configure exclusions properly or things will go wrong.
3. Optimise Your Images
Images are usually the biggest files on any webpage. Before uploading:
- Resize to the actual display size (don’t upload a 4000px image to display at 800px)
- Compress using tools like TinyPNG or ShortPixel
- Use WebP format where possible (30% smaller than JPEG)
4. Audit Your Plugins
Deactivate plugins you’re not using. For the ones you keep, check if they’re adding significant load time using Query Monitor plugin.
Common offenders:
- Social sharing plugins (they load external scripts)
- Page builders (especially on pages that don’t use them)
- Analytics plugins (use Google Tag Manager instead)
5. Use a CDN
A Content Delivery Network stores copies of your files on servers worldwide. Visitors download from the nearest server, reducing load times.
Cloudflare’s free tier is excellent for Irish businesses. It also adds security benefits.
How We Handle Performance at SparkHost
Our speed optimisation services handle all of this for you. Every SparkHost site includes:
- LiteSpeed server with built-in caching
- Cloudflare CDN integration
- Image optimisation on upload
- Regular performance audits
Our Starter plan handles most business sites easily. The Professional plan adds more resources for sites with 10,000+ monthly visitors or WooCommerce stores.
Quick Wins You Can Do Today
- Run Google PageSpeed Insights on your homepage — note the score and specific recommendations
- Delete unused plugins — if you haven’t used it in 6 months, remove it
- Check your hosting — if you’re on €5/month hosting, that’s your bottleneck
- Compress your images — run existing images through ShortPixel
Speed improvements compound. A 20% improvement here, 30% there, and suddenly your site loads in 2 seconds instead of 6. For a complete guide to what Google measures, see our Core Web Vitals guide.