I've googled a bunch of tutorials, tried a bunch of things, and tried using metric websites such as https://pagespeed.web.dev/ and then tweaking things to see if I can increase the performance score, but the website is still taking 8 seconds on first load on desktop (Chromium). Anything easy/obvious I can do to speed it up? What am I missing?
https://pacificorganizers.com/
Hosting: DreamHost virtual private server
PHP 8.3, WordPress 6.6.2
Theme: Astra 4.8.3
Plugins:
- 301 Redirects
- AddFunc Head & Footer Code
- Admin Menu Editor – for alphabetizing the admin panel items
- All in One SEO
- Autoptimize
- Disable Comments
- Duplicate Page
- Duplicator
- Elementor 3.24.6
- Elementor Pro 3.24.4
- Essential Addons for Elementor
- Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights
- Hotjar – tracks user scrolling and clicks, creating a video to see why customers aren't staying on the website and where they're getting confused
- HubSpot All-In-One Marketing – Forms, Popups, Live Chat
- Image Optimizer – Compress, Resize and Optimize Images
- LiteSpeed Cache
- Templately
- Unlimited Elements for Elementor
- Widgets for Google Reviews
- WP-Optimize – Clean, Compress, Cache
- WPCode Lite
Thanks in advance for any help. It's much appreciated.
P.S. I'm also having trouble measuring the 8 seconds consistently. My first time loading the website in a session is always 8 seconds. Then even if I click "Empty Cache & Hard Reload", usually that refresh takes less than 8 seconds, which makes me falsely think whatever tweak I made sped it up. But then I open it in a new browser or after a restart or something and it's back to 8 seconds. Any tips for testing performance more consistently?
Nothing about that setup is simple though, you’re running a multipurpose theme, pagebuilder, and a lot of various plugins just for tracking and optimizing (even some doing the same purpose).
First, dont use PageSpeed for fixing, it is great but for finding deeper issues, use Waterfall in GTmetrix:
Here is yours:
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.pacificorganizers.com/2AB81V63/
A lot of issues but few important ones:
1. Make sure to fix your initial server request (first one in Waterfall). It shouldnt take longer than 250ms roughly and it is taking 1.3
Something is wrong with server, firewall config or maybe try disabling non-critical plugins and test
2. Delay loading of Hubspot to after page is completely loaded
3. Also delay loading of Hotjar, big issue. One of the slowest and heaviest analytics scripts
These alone should improve your score from D to probably B and much lower load times.
You should not be using WP-Optimize,litespeed cache, image optimizer and Autoptimize all at the same time. You can do all of that with one caching plugin like litespeed cache or wp-rocket alone instead of using multiple plugins. Also litespeed caching works better with openlitespeed servers so make sure you have them or use some other plugin. You should also look into reducing the number of plugins as well.
Other then the above you should look into a better vps solution. Something like a $6 digitalocean nvme droplet with ubuntu openlitespeed servers will give you 90+ on google insights on both desktop and mobile.