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I am creating a website in WordPress and using the free version of Elementor to design it. Given your experience, I have a few questions:
1. What are some best practices for better page loading time and SEO?
2. Which image/media format do you use and why?
3. Are Lottie files good, or do they slow down your page speed? If so, what is an alternative to them?
4. I wanted to add some basic animations like text sliding in and out or fading in and out. It looks good, but I think it slows down the page a bit. What is your experience with such transitions, and what plugin do you use to achieve them?
So many questions—sorry! I’m new to this development world, so I thought I would get my doubts cleared and seek help from a community that really helps.
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1. Keep the website clean, minimal and simple. Also, avoid using a lot of plugins and install what you absolutely need.
2. Best for speed is webp.
3. No idea what is “Lottie files”
4. Animations might affect your Core Web Vitals. Thus less SEO.
Elementor also adds a lot of overhead, so it’s better to avoid if you can use the block editor. Otherwise, just make sure to have good caching in place.
Again, you ask too much about which plugin, what plugin. It’s very important to understand that plugins should not be installed carelessly. I’ve worked with hundreds of clients, and I can say that most performance issues come from the plugins they install. Some people think that if you encounter a problem with a plugin, you can simply uninstall it. However, you should know that once you install a plugin, it adds data to your database, sometimes a lot of data. To make the matter worse, some plugins might autoload this data/options by default.
As bad as it may sound, some developers don’t care about what remains on your website after you uninstall their plugin. Fortunately, some developers do care enough to create an option for a full uninstall, which is a good thing, and you should make sure to use that when you want to uninstall a plugin. On some client websites, I found autoloaded options exceeding 5MB from plugins that were no longer installed. This data loads on every page, and without caching, it puts a heavy load on your database and CPU. Even with caching, it still affects performance. So, be careful and only install what you absolutely need. If you need to test a plugin, do it on a staging website.