How Can WordPress Slider Plugins Affect Load Speed and Optimization Rate?

WordPress slider plugins are among the popular tools that developers and website builders use to add value to their websites. But, in the case of website performance and page load speed, we need to be careful enough in using slider plugins as they cause issues with web page load speed and load performance. 

• Generally, web developers and SEO experts who want high-performance design and SEO-oriented websites avoid using WordPress slider plugins.

In This Article You Will Read:

• • • WordPress Slider Plugins: Slider on WordPress
    • Pros and Cons of Using Sliders on a WordPress Website
    • Is Optimization and Load Speed Worth Spending Time?
    • How Sliders Affect SEO and Website Optimization
    • What Do We Expect During Website Optimization and SEO? The Trusted Methods
    • WordPress Slider Plugins and Conversion Rates
    • Best Practices: How to Add Visual Effects Without Increasing Load Time?
    • Conclusion
    • Why Choose DeljooSoft?
    • Our Portfolio
    • Our Web Design Services

WordPress Slider Plugins: Slider on WordPress

As a website owner, you can add additional features to your website by using WordPress plugins. These tools provide pre-built options designed to save you time, and some of them can take your website to the next level of creativity.

Truth be told, bulky WordPress slider tools don’t make sense when you want high conversion rates and high-speed web pages. A study shows several negative aspects of using WordPress slider plugins, as they are somehow confusing, and website visitors don’t click on them in most cases.

Here is a hands-on experience and performance test we ran on one of our projects. At the first stages of developing the website, performance tests showed a load time of 10.7 seconds without using sliders. In this case, we can reduce the loading time through different practices.

But, in the case of implementing sliders, the performance test showed different results and a load time of 19.6 seconds. That can be a challenging problem. In most cases, that can lead to larger web page sizes, increased server

requests, and more delays. Website speed test, Elementor:

Website speed test, Slider Revolution:

Home page performance test, Elementor desktop version:

Home page performance test, Slider Revolution desktop version:

Website performance test, Elementor mobile version:

Website performance test, Slider Revolution mobile version:

 

You can take a look at the following table provided by our SEO experts and web developers to see performance factors:

Performance Factor	Revolution Slider	Elementor
Web Page Size	1400 KB	1150 KB
Google Performance Index – Desktop	85/100	89/100
Google Performance Index – Mobile	31/100	54/100
Speed Index – Desktop	2.5s	1.6s
Speed Index – Mobile	7.8s	3.9s

Pros and Cons of Using Sliders on a WordPress Website

You can achieve some benefits using WordPress slider plugins, and these tools help your website showcase a unique design.
Sliders, by nature, have been designed and developed to add visual effects and animations and make use of website sections in an efficient way. Here, we can list the benefits of taking sliders into account when developing a website:

• Interactive content to attract visitors’ attention
• Giving a unique view of your website
• Easy to include and use in websites

Accordingly, we can list the negative sides of using slider plugins:

• Sliders can remarkably slow down a site, especially on mobile devices
• Sliders aren’t effective when it comes to increasing the conversion rate
• Sliders look like advertisement boxes and have negative aspects
• Sliders have a negative impact on search engine ranking
• Sliders usually take down website performance on devices with poor memory

Is Optimization and Load Speed Worth Spending Time?

According to Google, optimization and web page load speed are key factors for evaluating website ranking and its position on the first page of search engines. You can use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool to check the essential performance factors of your website.

Ideally, we need to reduce website load speed to touch 2 or 3 seconds, and WordPress speed test best practices help us achieve that goal.

Google daily searches reach 5.6 billion, and it owns more than 90% of the global search engine market share. So, by optimizing your website and getting a better ranking, your platform is more likely to increase visitors and conversion rates.

How Sliders Affect SEO and Website Optimization

If you are a web developer or website owner, you probably have heard about WordPress slider plugins. On the one hand, sliders such as slider revolution or other alternatives give you additional design options, but on the other hand, they increase the web page size.

  These added features have an impact on performance as they need to execute more code lines than usual. More importantly, visitors may ignore them in most cases, and they can be confusing to users.

Now, optimizing web page sizes is the key to delivering optimum performance. SEO experts and consultants usually don’t recommend using sliders as they affect web page sizes, load time, and time index of your website.

• Google’s last updates focus on providing better user experiences for website visitors. Google has made the speed factor one of the basics when it comes to website optimization. As we mentioned earlier, bad UX can be a negative factor after a considerable amount of time spent on optimization.

Multiple H1 headings and, more importantly, flash usage are the other issues related to adding sliders to a WordPress website.

What Do We Expect During Website Optimization and SEO? The Trusted Methods

There is a complete checklist for optimizing a website. First, the important point is that we consider user experience, and different approaches are used to make the user experience better.

Website design and high-quality content are effective factors in improving website ranking.  A good user experience and ranking can also be achieved by optimizing image files, video content, and titles. SEO is more than just ranking higher; it gives you all the methods needed to increase visitors and the conversion rate.

Here is a list of practices performed during the search engine optimization process:

• Keyword optimization
• Providing unique content
• Optimizing titles and headlines
• Optimizing websites for mobile devices
• Checking load speed and performance
• Analyzing images and video content for better web page load

WordPress Slider Plugins and Conversion Rates

Sliders don’t convert, and multiple types of research and surveys prove this statement. Statistics show that only 1% to 2% of people click on sliders, and they may be dismissed in most cases.

Generally, internet users skip your slider since they sound like advertising content. If your main goal is to increase the conversion rate, the better option is spending time on website content and loading time.

Best Practices: How to Add Visual Effects Without Increasing Load Time?

Analyzing revolution slider page speed indicates that it’s not a wise idea to use WordPress slider plugins. Most experts and web admins would like to reduce page load time and provide a remarkable user experience for their users.

If you want to have visual effects on your website, there are better ideas to think about. Image albums and visual content are great features for a site that many website owners don’t want to give up. Our advice to reduce web page load time is to create lightweight visual effects with optimized CSS and JavaScript codes.

This method guarantees you can get a mobile-friendly platform and your website pages load quickly. So, you can design your photo album from scratch and include SEO practices at the same time. Another option is using static sliders that don’t have a bad impact on SEO and website performance.

Conclusion

WordPress slider plugins help developers perform complex animations and add effects quickly. If you don’t need the best loading speed and functionality, sliders are a good choice.

But, we always need to take care of user experience when using sliders, and provide an unforgettable customer journey that is an excellent feature of your business.

Why Choose DeljooSoft?

DeljooSoft is a full service web design company, providing you with small business web design services and affordable web design and development services. We offer all the benefits of SEO and WordPress speed optimization methods, and develop a design according to your business style. 

Our Portfolio

We have listed some of our web design projects in our portfolio. This is up to you to choose from different styles and templates, and we will create your desired website with respect to performance, UX, and load speed.
It doesn’t matter what your business field is and what goals you have. You can contact our experts to start your site design and develop a high-performance online platform.

Our Web Design Services

Web design services include a clear path for developing a responsive platform. WordPress slider plugins are good options, but we offer a better choice to create animations along with performance and functionality. If you want a lightweight and high-speed site, we are ready to help you.

Please feel free to contact us using the below section. You can get full recommendations for your website design before starting the journey.