Slow-loading website! Image heavy web pages taking forever to load!
Both users and search engines hate it.
Approximately 2 to 5 seconds is the wait time and if the page takes more time to load, without further ado, visitors right away click that little ‘x’, present top of the browser tab and leave the site.
47% of customers expect a website to load within 2 seconds or less.
Slow website speed is the sign of bad user experience. So undeniably good page speed is very precious. Thankfully, it is not anymore a difficult problem to solve. With a lazy loading technique, you can surely improve your website speed.
What is lazy loading?
In WordPress, lazy loading is an optimization technique where instead of the entire page loading, only the on-demand objects on the web page is loaded. To put in simple words, lazy loading only allows loading the images and content that comes into view on the browser, the rest part of webpage loads as the user scrolls or as that part comes into view.
This mechanism has helped a lot in decreasing the page load time and enhancing user experience. It also saves storage space and cuts down redundant execution of code.
So till now, you must have understood how crucial is page load for traffic and sales. So for faster website speed, you can incorporate an appropriate lazy load plugin by WordPress.
We’ve listed the top 5 lazy load plugins, you can choose the one that suits your website the best:
Lazy Load WP Rocket
If your website content is image-heavy then page load will definitely be a problem. Lazy Load by WP Rocket is the best plugin that would speed up your website by displaying images that are only visible above the fold or when it comes in view on the browser.
Any sort of thumbnail, video, the image in the post, widget, etc. are compatible with this plugin. It is an SEO friendly technique and can certainly have a positive impact on your website performance. Lazy load plugin doesn’t use any JavaScript library like Jquery while the size of the script is less than 10 kb.
Not just images, you can use this plugin for widgets, text or even YouTube iframes present on your webpage.
a3 Lazy Load
If you are not that technically sound then a3 Lazy Load is a super simple plugin to incorporate in your WordPress site and accelerate its speed. It is a mobile-oriented plugin, best suited for content-heavy websites. As compared to other plugins, a3 Lazy Load is easy to install and ensures your site is mobile optimized.
It’s a fully-featured plugin that loads your web element as you scroll down the page. The web elements become visible only within the viewport. Images are the top priority to consider as it is the predominant reason for your page slowdown and increased bandwidth. But apart from images, you can also pay attention to other elements that affect your website speed. This plugin is suitable for posts, widgets, and thumbnails too.
a3 Lazy Load plugin is compatible with WordPress version 4.0 and above.
BJ Lazy Load
Improve your website speed as well as save bandwidth with BJ Lazy Load WordPress plugin. With this plugin, all your post images, thumbnails, content iframes, gravatar images get replaced with a placeholder. The contents load when the visitor scrolls and enters the browser window. The idea is to load the content when the user/visitor is closer to the viewport while scrolling.
This plugin supports images, thumbnails, text widgets, iframe, gravatar images and also embedded videos from Vimeo, YouTube, and such video channels. No external JavaScript library is being used by this plugin. Visitors without JavaScript will get the original element in no script.
BJ Lazy Load plugin is compatible with WordPress version 3.5 and higher.
Lazy Load for Videos
Lazy Load for Videos is an incredibly awesome WordPress plugin for websites that have lost their speed due to heavy videos. This plugin loads the video, only when the user clicks on the preview image. Lazy Load for Videos is purely dedicated to websites with a lot of embedded videos on YouTube and Vimeo as it helps the videos to get replaced with a clickable preview image.
The unnecessary loading of JavaScript is eliminated which affects the website speed. With this simple installation of the plugin, your page load time can be significantly reduced and it also helps in increasing the Google PageSpeed score. You can also incorporate some ideal customization tools with this plugin.
Some of the additional features of Lazy Load for Videos plugin are:
- Show video titles on preview images
- Colour customization for video player
- Add custom CSS
- Hide controls and information, you want
- Play button style options
- Hide annotations to avoid distraction while playing video
- Pre-roll and post-roll advertisement options
And much more.
Lazy Load for Videos plugin is compatible with WordPress 3.5 and above.
Ajax Load More
With more than 50,000+ installations, Ajax Load More is an ultimate Lazy Load plugin by WordPress. It is an infinite scroll plugin suitable for pages, single posts, comments, and other Ajax powered queries.
This plugin is dedicatedly developed for infinite scrolling needs and is mostly compatible with most used eCommerce plugins like Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce. As compared to other lazy load plugins Ajax Load More is a bit complicated approach, however, it comes with a shortcode builder. So overall, this plugin is suitable for blog posts to multipage websites to eCommerce products.
Some of the notable features of this plugin are:
- Easy to use custom shortcode builder
- Query parameters like Query by post type, category, tags, date, etc.
- Repeater template to fit look and feel of your website
- Multiple instances to integrate on a single page, template or posts
- Ajax custom filtering
- Repeater templates compatibility across all sites
- Setting panel
Ajax Load More plugin is compatible with WordPress version 4.0 and above.
So as per your website need, install the plugin that’s best suited and increase your website’s speed substantially.
