Guest post by Tom Fanelli, CEO and founder of Convesio
The best thing you can do for your WordPress website in 2021 is to tune up its performance, but that's not always as simple as it sounds. Generally, you can sum up performance as 50% site speed and 50% user experience, otherwise known as UX. Unfortunately, UX improvements often lead to lower site speed, which means you may be faced with a difficult challenge when optimizing your site.
It takes a delicate balance, but it's possible to fine-tune your WordPress performance by enhancing both UX and site speed when you choose the right techniques and technology.
My name is Tom Fanelli and I'm the co-founder of Convesio, a next-generation managed WordPress host. With two decades of digital experience, I've gone from owning my own agency to taking on multiple senior executive roles at large public companies.
In this post, I'll cover the most common issues I see with WordPress performance while considering the perspective and impact of both speed and UX, as well as what you can do about them. Let's get to it!
Finally, the long-awaited framework update is here. This version (v5) is all about page speed improvements, so we called it the Pagespeed Framework. We initiated the Pagespeed Framework because we saw a common problem, all multi-purpose themes and builders are bloated and slow. So we've decided to solve this issue. In the past 11 months, rather than adding new features on the framework, we put all our effort to make our themes fast and light. It was not an easy task as we had to recode the framework plus the 42+ themes and 25+ addons compatibility. Today we are happy to announce the official release!
Why Does Page Speed Matter?
No one wants to see a slow site. Reports show that slow page load can reduce conversions and increase bounce rates. In other words, if your site is slow, your visitors/customers are likely to exit and move on to your competitors.
Slow page load can also impact your site's SEO as Google uses page load speed and user experience as one of the key ranking factors. If your site relies on search engine traffics, using a fast loading theme is essential. That is why we're committed to make Ultra and Shoppe the fastest multi-purpose themes. Most of our demos now score 90+ on Google Pagespeed Insights without using any additional plugins.
Popups are increasingly becoming one of the most common tools that most website owners are using. Whether you need survey responses, signups, or sales, popups allow you to take control of your audience online. Popups are types of interfaces that would suddenly appear in the foreground, usually in a small boxed window, to display information as the visitor lands or scrolls on a site. This window displays information related to the website and its objective would be to capture the visitor's attention and take control of their next step.
Today, there are many different type of popups, making it challenging and equally important to select the right design for the right purpose. The free Themify Popup plugin provides you with an easy and intuitive way to create all kinds of popups that would cater to your needs. You can display popups based on certain conditions such as time-based, on-site load, scroll-triggered, or exit-intent - all of which can be used to fulfill a certain action on any given site. In this post, we'll look at some of the best recommended designs for WordPress users.
UPDATE: We've released the pagespeed framework (Themify v5) that can achieve 90+ score on Google Pagespeed Insights without using any third party plugins. If you are using the latest Themify themes, please skip this post.
Ranking higher on Google searches likely means the number of visitors crossing your page will increase as well. But how do you ensure you make it to the top of the Google search list? Well, there are a variety of factors that play into how high your website ranks.
You can improve your Google search ranking by adding an SSL certificate to your site, translate your site to be multi-lingual, or you can ensure your site loads super quickly! That's what we'll look at in this foundational tutorial, and we'll show you just how to achieve a powerfully fast WordPress site!
Parallax scrolling has been around for some time and capitalizes on a 3D-like experience in a 2D environment. This special visual technique simply scrolls the background image at a slower rate than the foreground image or text, creating a sensation of depth or an almost 3D feeling. The bottom line is that you can create some pretty dynamic and interesting visual experiences for a visitor scrolling through your site.
Some website design trends come and go, but as we grow deeper into this scrolling culture, you may want to take advantage of the need for scrolling. Especially as mobile website usage increases, one thing is clear - we like scrolling on our phones. Even the split moment Instagram accidentally released a tapping to advance feed, the immediate uproar was enough for them to ditch the idea, at least for now.
In this edition of our Customer Stories, we’re getting an inside look at the creation of The Killer’s guitar player, Dave Keuning’s solo website. We’ll hear from Keuning and speak to web developer and returning story contributor, Joseph Abraham, about his award-winning website for Keuning Music and why Themify Ultra was the theme of choice.
Before we get to the technical aspects, let’s hear a little from the man himself, Dave Keuning, in this short Q&A.
From The Musician
What was the inspiration behind your website, Keuning Music?
I wanted some cool kaleidoscope imagery. You can never go wrong with that stuff and it tied in with the album. Joseph, the developer, did a good job implementing that, and created a website pretty much exactly how I wanted it.
