We have a website built on an Elementor theme from Themeforest (we were noobs and didn’t know better) which we want to replace with maybe Kadence or Bricks & redesign to improve site performance.
GTmetrix gives the site an F. TTFB, LCP, FCP are all > 5 seconds. Initial server response time is around 5 seconds, then a bunch of CSS from Elementor and the theme eat up another 3 seconds. It’s using Hostinger shared hosting with free Cloudflare.
My graphic designer designed this site in figma by requesting existing reference websites from us, as well as a wishlist of features. Then, we asked a WP developer to implement the design using Elementor + Themeforest theme.
What ended up happening was that the developer had to add quite a bit of 3rd party plugins and custom code to satisfy design and UX requirements.
If I want to prioritize site performance for site redesign, I’m wondering if a better approach would be to first shop around for a builder known to be fast, or theme and perhaps a template pre-packaged with the theme, which contains as many of the features I want as baked in as possible. And then figure out which plugins or custom code to implement to address feature gaps.
Once the WP stack has been decided, this stack will be handed off to the graphic designer, who will then attempt to create a design built around the tech stack, rather than try forcing the tech stack to accommodate a design.
With this approach, web aesthetics takes a secondary role to performance, but we don’t think aesthetics needs to be prioritized for the target audience of this site.
What are your thoughts?
Curious to hear your ideas, and what your design & build process looks like.
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