WordPress Lazy Loading: How to Implement it on Your Website

Imagine you visit a website that sells the best stuff, like the best gadgets or beautiful clothes. But here’s the problem: the website takes forever to show you these amazing things. What will happen next? 

You have two choices: Do you wait patiently, hoping it will eventually show you the awesome stuff? Or do you decide it is not worth the wait and look for something else that loads faster? That’s what slow websites do: they make people feel impatient and can even make them leave without ever seeing the great things businesses offer. In the growing competition, being fast, using advanced techniques and  WordPress migration plugins are like magic keys that unlock all the fun and exciting stuff.

The slow website makes people lose interest. According to Google, if a web page’s loading time increases from 1 to 3 seconds, the probability of a user bouncing increases by 32%. Another study shows that a delay of just one second in page load time can lead to a 7% reduction in conversion. What is the solution?

WordPress Lazy Loading and Its Role in Page Speed

WordPress lazy loading is a performance optimization technique critical for WordPress websites, especially those including numerous images.

So, let’s see what lazy load images are. Regular images load all at once when the user opens a webpage. It means that all the images on a page, including those below the initial viewport, load simultaneously. However, loading all images at once can increase the initial page load time, especially on image-heavy websites. Lazy-loading images, on the other hand, load only when they are about to come into the user’s viewport (i.e. when the user scrolls down to view them). WordPress lazy-load images reduce the initial page load time because they prioritize the loading of images that the user can currently see. Non-visible images are loaded as the user scrolls down, preventing issues in the page load.

Hence, implementing lazy loading on your WordPress website is essential for optimizing page speed, user experience, SEO, and site performance. It’s a valuable technique that aligns with the expectations of modern internet users and can help you in your online presence success. So, let’s find out how to do it:

Identify the Elements of Lazy Load:  Identifying specific elements, such as images, videos, or iframes, allows you to prioritize the loading of resource-intensive assets. It ensures that critical content is loaded first, providing a faster initial page load experience.  By targeting crucial elements for the user’s initial view of the page, you enhance the overall user experience.

Update HTML Markup: Updating your HTML markup when implementing lazy loading is a technical requirement and a best practice for maintaining accessibility, SEO, clarity, and overall code quality. It ensures that your lazy loading implementation aligns with your website’s structure and goals.

Apply Lazy Loading with JavaScript: Applying lazy loading with JavaScript is crucial for optimizing website performance, user experience, and resource management, making it a fundamental part of lazy loading implementation. JavaScript can track elements as they enter the viewport and allows for optimization of the delivery of resources, ensuring that critical elements load first for a better user experience.

Style Placeholders to Enhance the UX During Loading: Incorporating placeholders is a UX best practice that enhances user perception of your site’s performance and responsiveness.

Test your Website to Ensure Lazy Loading Works as Expected: Lazy loading directly impacts the user experience. Testing ensures content loads when it should, providing a smooth and responsive browsing experience. It helps identify issues like elements not loading at all or loading too late, which can frustrate users.

Consider Browser Compatibility: Checking browser compatibility is essential to ensure your website functions correctly and consistently across various browsers.

Continuously monitor and adjust your implementation: Websites evolve, and with it, you add new content. Monitoring helps adapt to changing content, user feedback, and technology updates while improving performance metrics and promptly addressing bugs or errors. This continuous process ensures that lazy loading remains effective and aligned with your website’s objectives.

Implement progressive enhancement for core content: You should begin by serving essential content in the initial HTML load, making it accessible to all users, including those with slower connections or browsers that don’t support lazy loading. Then, use JavaScript to enhance the page by lazy loading non-essential elements, such as images, videos, or additional content, as the user interacts with the webpage. 

Use natively supported attributes: When implementing a lazy loading strategy, use natively supported attributes for elements like images and iframes. These attributes are built into modern web browsers and provide a standardized and efficient way to enable lazy loading without relying on JavaScript or third-party libraries.

Include a <noscript> tag for JavaScript-disabled users: Including a <noscript> tag for JavaScript-disabled users is a good practice to ensure a fallback experience for those who have JavaScript disabled in their browsers.

Set up monitoring and error tracking for lazy loading issues: Monitoring and error tracking systems help detect lazy loading issues, such as elements failing to load, loading too slowly, or not displaying correctly. Early detection enables you to address problems. By identifying and resolving issues quickly, you can enhance the user experience, ensuring that content loads as expected and users don’t encounter broken or delayed content.

Maintain backups and use version control: Maintaining backups and using version control facilitates separate testing environments where you can experiment with different lazy loading strategies or configurations without affecting the live website. This is crucial for testing and improving your implementation.

Last But Not Least

Lazy loading is often implemented using plugins. Some plugins can interact with your theme, other plugins, and content. In rare cases, conflicts or compatibility issues may appear and affect your website’s functionality or appearance. A backup WordPress website ensures that you can quickly restore your site to its previous state if such issues occur.

Before you make your website faster with lazy loading, ensure it’s safe. Transferito is your trusted migration plugin. It’s like a safety net for your site.