How much will optimization improve my website’s speed?
We hate sounding dodgy about this, but the honest truth is it depends on numerous factors – the biggest one being how much you’re willing to change.
One site may have huge gains because it started off incredibly slow. The next may not gain much percentage-wise, because it wasn’t that slow to begin with, or because the client opted out of pursuing some of our recommendations.
Even if there were one or two recommendations you decided weren’t currently in your best interest, you’d have several others (at least) to work with.
It’s worth mentioning that we’re acutely aware of the need to balance website performance and visitor happiness with business goals, as well as your day to day routine as you work in your site. Our process is extremely collaborative; we work with you to understand your business or blog and tailor our recommendations accordingly.
As we work on your site, we take notes about any additional steps you could do to improve your site’s speed, e.g., changing to a faster server or using a different theme.
We’ll share these recommendations in the report we’ll provide after your optimization is complete. Your report will also include before and after stats showing how much your site has improved in each of the four key areas we use to measure site speed.
Here are results from some recent website optimization projects.
How will I know how much my site improved?
We’ll make it easy.
Before we work on your site, we run performance tests to document where we started. Once our work is complete, we test again.
You’ll get results of both before and after tests as part of the personalized Website Speed Optimization Report we’ll prepare for you.
For a visual, check out the charts accompanying the question above.
Why is your service so friggin’ expensive?
We don’t do the cookie-cutter, low-ball, offshore/outsourced optimizations like those that come up when you Google WordPress website optimization service or do similar searches on the topic.
Those services make the same changes to every website they touch. They don’t ask or care how you use your site or how their tweaks impact you. They’ll promise X number of second load times, or perfect scores on Google PageSpeed tests, but fail to mention it’s at the expense of something important to your workflow.
Then, somehow, down the road your site is slow again.
When you work with us, we will dig into your site and find out exactly what’s slowing it. And if it’s something you’re doing, we’re not shy about telling you. But nicely, and we’ll also help you figure out a way to keep from doing it again going forward.
We have been in the website business since the late ’90s, when there was barely a web at all. We’ve worked with WordPress almost exclusively since 2011. In short, we are seasoned pros who know our stuff. You will get what you pay for.
Our optimization projects take between eight and 12 hours, and usually span the course of a week or two. If this doesn’t seem like a good value to you, our service may not be a good fit for you.
If it’s a matter of budget, we totally feel ya. Experience may not be cheap, but there’s a ton you can do yourself. Teresa spent about three weeks writing a killer post with over a hundred of her simplest speed optimization tips. Read it and put it into action.
Will my site stay optimized?
The short answer is yes. But there are definitely ways you could undo some of the improvements we make. We’ll work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen 🙂
We take time to educate you throughout the process. We want you to understand what made your site slow, and know enough about how we’ve improved it to avoid undermining your investment.
Also, wherever possible we leave behind solutions that automatically address the worst slow-site culprits so you don’t have to worry about them or do any extra work.
My site has unusual features/slow plugins/some other problem; can you help?
Almost always.
We won’t know for sure until we dig into your site, but not much surprises us anymore. In almost every case, there are at least several things you can do to improve speed.
Think of speed as a budget vs an all or nothing proposition. Is that heavy plugin a must? OK, let’s cut somewhere else.
If we see that your unusual or off-limits situation really is a big deal, we’ll come back to you with recommendations for mitigating the impact if possible.
We don’t want you to be disappointed, so please read the answer to the “What if you can’t improve my site’s speed at all?” question below.
Will you optimize my images?
Yes!
Plus, we’ll leave in place a solution that will help you automatically keep images in check going forward. It does a fabulous job of reducing their size and load time without affecting quality.
Even if you’re using something like WP Smush, our tools usually do a better job.
If you have a large image library (this is common with sites that have been online a while), there may be a small additional charge (and possibly a slight increase in turnaround time) to optimize the entire library. If we find that this is the case we will get in touch and let you know.
Will you fix all the things that cause slow loading?
We tackle the issues responsible for the vast majority of slow website problems.
Even if it’s something we don’t handle, we’ll let you know what’s going on and can almost always provide recommendations to help solve the issue.
Someone else optimized my site, but it’s still slow. Can you make it faster?
We often can make improvements, but as you might imagine it depends on why the site is still slow.
Other companies do things differently, and may not have looked at the specific things affecting your site. Even if something is outside the scope of our services, if it affects site speed we identify it, make recommendations around it and often help you fix it.
We’re glad to help you figure out what makes sense. Just get in touch and tell us about your site.
Will my website get an ‘A’ in performance when you’re done?
Not necessarily, but an ‘A’ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
We focus on things that improve actual site speed the most – not letter grades assigned by speed checking websites or scores issued by Google PageSpeed Insights.
Some performance test recommendations won’t help page load speed much, and they’re more technical a fix than it’s worth pursuing for what you might gain. They also require additional time that’s beyond the scope of our regular speed optimization service.
If you’re interested in scoring high regardless, the best way to get there is to first work with us on site optimization. You’ll improve your site speed, and we’ll have the opportunity to evaluate your site and provide you with a quote for the additional work.
Please let us know during signup about any specific performance goal you’re looking to meet.
What if you can’t improve my site’s speed at all?
In the five years we’ve offered our website optimization service, we’ve had only a single instance where we did not improve a client’s site speed.
Since several hours of testing and diagnostic work go into each project before we can even determine what specific steps we need to take, we don’t always know how much of a difference we can make until we’ve already invested a considerable amount of time.
We work hard to provide expertise most people appreciate, even if things don’t turn out as expected. In the rare instance the resulting site speed isn’t spectacular, you’ll know why, and what you should do to address it.
Sometimes that will be something difficult. As it was in the case mentioned above.
If you are attached to a specific outcome, but you’ve unreasonably limited what you’re willing to do to get there, we might not be a good fit for you.
I know everything I need to know now. Will you please fix my site speed?
Yep. Just click the button.
