There’s nothing more frustrating than a slow-loading website, especially when you’re not sure what’s causing the problem. It can feel like you’re just guessing at fixes, hoping something will work.
That’s where a powerful tool like GTmetrix comes in handy. Having analyzed thousands of WordPress sites, we’ve found it’s one of the most effective ways to get a clear diagnosis of performance issues.
In this guide, we’ll share our proven method for using GTmetrix to speed up your website. We will walk you through how to understand the reports and turn them into a simple, effective action plan.
What Is GTmetrix?
GTmetrix is a website speed check tool that lets you see how fast your website loads. Website loading speed is more important than ever because users have a short attention span.
According to Google’s Core Web Vitals research, page load time directly impacts user experience, bounce rates, and conversions. Slower sites consistently see higher abandonment rates and lower engagement metrics.
This confirms a classic StrangeLoop case study, which found that a one-second delay in page load time can lead to a 7% loss in conversions, 11% fewer page views, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.
More recent data confirms this is still true. For example, a 2022 study by Portent found that website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time.
GTmetrix gives you a glimpse of what’s slowing down your WordPress website with suggestions on what to do to improve your WordPress performance and speed.
That being said, let’s look at how to use the GTmetrix web tool to improve the speed of your WordPress website. This is what we’ll cover in this article:
Running GTmetrix Performance Tests on Your WordPress Site
To get started, simply visit the GTmetrix home page.
Here you can run performance tests for any page on your WordPress website. Simply enter the page URL into the ‘Analyze Performance of’ box.
After you test your site, you’ll get a detailed report.
Understanding GTmetrix Performance Test Results
After the test finishes, GTmetrix provides a helpful summary of your site’s performance. The modern GTmetrix report gives you a GTmetrix Grade (from A to F) and percentage scores for Performance and Structure.
Anything below A means there is room for improvement. However, this does not necessarily mean that your website is really slow.
To understand your score, scroll down to the tabbed section of the report. The ‘Structure’ tab gives you a detailed breakdown of recommendations on what you need to fix to improve your page load time.
Under the ‘Structure’ tab, you will see different ranking items labeled as ‘Audits’. Green items are good and don’t need your attention. Red or orange items are slowing down your website and require further investigation.
We also highly recommend checking out the ‘Waterfall’ tab, which provides a visual chart showing exactly which images or files are taking the longest to load!
The best part is that when you click on the item, it tells you exactly what needs to be fixed.
Each tab has a little ‘What’s this mean?’ button. If you click on that, then it will give you the details on what can be improved.
You can find all your past reports on the GTmetrix » Tests page under the Reports section.
This allows you to manage and run tests as you work on improving your website speed and performance.
Bonus Tips to Improve Website Performance
The GTmetrix speed check will show you a lot of information. However, you may want to compare your results using a different website speed check tool, like the IsItWP Website Speed Test Tool or Pingdom.
If your website is still showing low performance scores, then you can go through the details and improve each item one by one. However, this can become too technical for a beginner.
Here are some quick tips to help you instantly improve website speed issues without any special skills.
1. Use the Best WordPress Hosting
If you are using a low-quality WordPress hosting provider, then there is not much you can do to improve the performance of your website.
Here are our recommendations for the top 3 fast web hosting companies you can try:
- Bluehost – great price + comes with built-in caching.
- SiteGround – premium WordPress hosting + built-in caching + uses Google Cloud. We use SiteGround for WPBeginner.
- WP Engine – top-rated managed WordPress hosting provider with performance optimization.
2. Set Up a WordPress Caching Plugin
All top WordPress hosting companies now offer built-in caching solutions that you can turn on to improve website speed. But you can also use a WordPress caching plugin to improve your website performance.
Caching allows your website to load a page from a temporary file instead of running a new request. We recommend using WP Rocket, the best WordPress caching plugin on the market.
3. Optimize Images for Faster Page Load
Images take more time to load than text, and if a page has a lot of images, then they slow down your website. On the other hand, images are important for user engagement, and you cannot avoid them.
The solution is to optimize WordPress images for faster page load. You will still use the same images but with smaller file sizes.
There is a lot more you can do to make your site load even faster. We have compiled a complete WordPress speed and performance guide for beginners with step-by-step instructions to improve your website speed.
Frequently Asked Questions About GTmetrix
Here are the answers to some of the most common questions we receive about using GTmetrix to test website performance.
1. What is a good GTmetrix score?
You should aim for a GTmetrix Grade of ‘A’ in the performance report. It’s also important to have all three Core Web Vitals in the ‘Good’ range (indicated by a green score). These vitals include LCP (how fast your main content loads), TBT (how quickly your site reacts to clicks), and CLS (if your layout jumps around while loading).
2. Is GTmetrix free to use?
Yes, GTmetrix offers a free plan that allows you to test your site and get detailed reports. The free account has a limited number of daily API requests, but it is usually enough for a single website owner.
3. How do I fix a poor GTmetrix score?
The fastest way to improve your score is by focusing on the ‘Big 3’ of website performance. These are choosing a fast WordPress hosting provider, using a caching plugin like WP Rocket, and optimizing your images for the web.
4. Do I have to use the GTmetrix plugin?
No, we recommend against using the legacy GTmetrix plugin. The official plugin has not been updated in a long time and uses an outdated API. To get the most accurate and modern performance data, you should always test your site’s URL directly on the GTmetrix website.
Additional Resources to Improve Website Speed
Now that you know how to analyze your website with GTmetrix, here are some more expert guides to help you make your site even faster.
- The Ultimate Guide to Boost WordPress Speed & Performance
- How to Properly Run a Website Speed Test (Best Tools)
- How to Optimize Images for Web Performance without Losing Quality
- How We Boost Page Load Speed on WPBeginner
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Jiří Vaněk
The speed of a website is absolutely crucial not only for a good user experience but also for its ranking by Google. Initially, I closely monitored Google Search Console and then began measuring the website using Google Pagespeed Insights and GTMetrix. Both tools were invaluable in fine-tuning the website’s speed and measuring speed from abroad (I have a server in the Czech Republic). I can’t recommend GTMetrix highly enough. Although I don’t necessarily need it directly in WordPress, as another plugin would unnecessarily burden the website (in my opinion), I use online measurement practically for every new website. It’s quite beneficial to have an account on GTMetrix, because even with the free plan, it allows you to perform more measurements, which is great when you’re trying to fine-tune some small detail that’s slowing down the website.
Christopher Ohlsen
Nice post about GTmetrix. I agree with that GTmetrix is awesome (paraphrasing) with one caveat… Though I could probably somehow fix my issue within account settings. Here it is; it doesn’t seem to be recognizing maxcdn. My site is much much faster since I began using maxcdn. I definitely am using cdn but it says that I’m not… Not sure why this is but it even shows the netdna url in the links under the tab that says I’m not using CDN. Also, my Yslow score is slighly higher in the firefox & chrome Yslow addons which do recognize maxcdn… Still, it is an awesome site that I have been able to use to increase my page load speeds significantly.
Editorial Staff
When using custom CDNs like MaxCDN, these providers do not recognize them by default. You have to edit your browser settings to let them know that the netdna URL is actually a CDN. So in short these tools are a good reference point, but not entirely perfect when it comes to detecting CDN.
Admin
Matthew
Hey, GTMetrix provides optimized versions of the images on my site that I can save and use to replace my original, unoptimized images. Though, I have a few thousand images on my website and saving each optimized image, in order to replace all of my original images, take a really long time.
What exactly does GTMetrix use to provide me with a list of reoptimized and compressed images?
I tried the smush.it plugin for wordpress, but sadly GTMetrix still tells me that I can compress some of my images by up to 50% or so.
I have even emailed them, but no reply. I am already using a CDN, but it’s just not as fast as I need.
M Copinger
Thanks for letting us know of this plugin, i have been using it for about a week now not knowing they have a plugin. great article and continue such a good job
Matej Latin
I don’t see a point using a plugin while you can use the Pingdom tools. It’s not you’re going to test this every day…
leena
Hello, these are some of the useful tips that i am unaware of mostly. I will try if I can make to do this kind of task. Thanks for shearing.
Ivan Lim
Loving this tool… good point about YSlow not picking up CDNs helps explains some of the differing speed reports.
Editorial Staff
Yes, this is an awesome tool. We use it all the time.
Admin