How to Use GTMetrix Plugin to Improve WordPress Site Performance

What is GTmetrix?

Do you want to check the speed of your WordPress website using GTmetrix? As you are surely aware, a quick loading website is essential for customer satisfaction, search engine positioning, and general success. Due to issues like sluggish web hosting, big image files, and poorly developed plugins, many WordPress sites are slow. 

This post will demonstrate how to use the GTMetrix Plugin. With this plugin you can evaluate and enhance the speed of your WordPress site. We’ll go through everything, including how to set up the plugin, run performance tests, interpret the findings, and use tips and tactics to speed up your website. This post includes something for everyone, whether you’re a new or seasoned WordPress user.

You may assess the speed of your website’s loading using the GTmetrix tool. Users today have a short attention span, making website performance more crucial than ever.

A one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% loss in conversions, 11% fewer page visits, and a 16% drop in consumer satisfaction, according to several case studies including Amazon, Google, and other major sites.

With recommendations on how to increase WordPress performance and speed, GTmetrix provides you a view of what’s slowing down your WordPress website.

Let’s look at how to use GTmetrix plugin to speed up your WordPress website.

Setting Up GTmetrix Plugin in WordPress

The GTmetrix for WordPress plugin must first be installed and activated. 

When the plugin is activated, your WordPress admin sidebar will gain a new menu item with the name “GTmetrix.” To access the settings page for the plugin, you must click it.

Your GTmetrix account email and API credentials must be entered on this page.

To obtain the API keys, you can open a free account. There will be a cap on the daily requests for this free account. You won’t probably ever run out of credits if you only use this on one website, though.

Simply click the link that reads “Register for a GTmetrix account immediately” to access the GTmetrix website and create an account.

You must first log in by clicking the ‘Account’ tab at the top of the page.

After that, just click the Generate API key button. You will be provided with an API key from GTmetrix, which you must duplicate.

Back in your WordPress dashboard, you can now access the “GTmetrix” settings page. Enter the API Key that you previously copied as well as your account email address.

Do not forget to save your settings by clicking the “Save Changes” button.

Running GTmetrix Performance Tests in WordPress

You may now conduct your WordPress performance tests after configuring the plugin.

Visit the GTmetrix » Tests page. By selecting the “Test your Front Page now” option, you may easily check the homepage of your website from this point.

Additionally, you may test the performance of any page on your WordPress website. Under the “Test performance of” box, just enter the URL of the page.

You can specify a label and a location for these unique tests as well. Ideally, you should concentrate on areas near your target market.

Understanding GTMetrix Performance Test Results

The performance of the page you are evaluating is completely broken down by GTmetrix. Your page load is scored using the YSlow and Google Page Speed tests, and the results are summarized with an overall score.

Any grade below an A indicates opportunity for improvement. This does not necessarily imply that your website is really sluggish, though.

To view your URL on the GTmetrix website and comprehend the score, click the ‘Detailed Report’ option.

Your PageSpeed score, YSlow score, and a list of suggestions for how to speed up your page load time are all broken down in depth in this report.

There are various tabs on it. The first thing you’ll notice is your page speed score, along with a summary of the ranking factors and each one’s unique score.

The green things are OK and don’t require your attention. Your website is being slowed down by red items, which need more analysis.

The fact that you can see precisely what needs to be corrected when you click on an item is the finest aspect.

A little “What’s this mean?” button may be seen on each tab. The information about what can be improved will be provided if you click on that.

All of your previous reports are available on the GTmetrix » Tests page in the Reports section.

This enables you to organize and conduct testing as you strive to enhance the speed and functionality of your website.

Using GTmetrix Without a Plugin

You may access GTmetrix by going to the GTMetrix home page and entering your URL if you would rather not install the plugin.

You’ll receive a thorough report after testing your website, exactly like with the plugin.

The drawback of this approach is that you can’t keep many reports and contrast them as your website speed improves.

Tips to Improve Website Performance

You will see a ton of information from the GTmetrix speed test. An alternative to check might be for example the Pingdom Website Speed Check.

If your website continues to receive low ratings, you may go over the details and boost each component individually. For a beginner, this may, however, become too technical.

Here are a few short steps that will enable you to rapidly fix website performance issues without any specialized knowledge.

1. Use the Best WordPress Hosting

There isn’t much you can do to boost your website’s performance if you are utilizing a poor WordPress hosting company. If your web site hosting is performing slow this should be the first setting you should consider to change.

The best 5 quick web hosting providers are listed below for your consideration:

• Bluehost – great price + comes with built-in caching, we are using Bluehost
• SiteGround – premium WordPress hosting + built-in caching + uses Google cloud. 
• WP Engine – top-rated managed WordPress hosting provider with performance optimization.
• A2 Hosting is a popular choice with bloggers
• HostPapa is an Ontario-based hosting provider that’s helped businesses get online since 2006.

2. Set Up a WordPress Caching Plugin

You may activate the built-in caching solutions which the leading WordPress hosting providers already provide to increase the performance of your website. Further it would be a good idea to utilize a WordPress caching plugin.

Your website can load a page from a temporary file thanks to caching rather than making each time a new request. The top WordPress caching plugin available is without a doubt WP Rocket. If you want to dive deeper into this, we recommend a read of our blog post How to improvde Google Pagespeed.

3. Optimize Images for Faster Page Load

When a page includes plenty of photos, your website will load more slowly than when there are few images. However, visuals are necessary for user engagement and you cannot do without them.

WordPress image optimization can speed your page load time. Even if the picture files are smaller, you may still utilize the same photos.

You can do a lot more to speed up the loading of your website. With detailed instructions on how to increase your website’s speed, we have put up a comprehensive WordPress Image performance guide.

We hoped that this post would be useful in teaching you how to use GTmetrix plugin to enhance the functionality of your WordPress website.