7 Ways to Instantly Speed Up Your Private Practice Therapy Website

You have got a therapy website which is slow and you wants to speed it up. In this post reasons a slow website is losing you clients, I have talked about how a slow website is bringing less clients to you. If you have not read it, give it a read. Now coming back to the topic, in this post, I will be discussing 7 quick ways to instantly speed up your website.

1. Compress and Resize Your Images

On your therapist website, you might be having images to showcase your work, clinic, and for other representational purposes. That’s a good thing to include though. Images not only makes your website look good but also build trust. But have you ever checked the file size of images? Maybe you are not aware of this fact that large file size images takes too long to load.

Large images are on of the common reasons of why a therapy website is loading slow. So what is the solution to that? Reducing the size of the images, using fast loading browser optimized image format (WebP), and compressing them.

There are various tools that are available online that helps in compressing the images. One of the popular tool to compress images is TinyPNG. This tool will help you to compress images upto 5 MB on the free plan.

If you are on WordPress, then you can use various image optimization plugins like ShortPixel, Smush, etc. These image optimization plugins will help you optimize your images, compress them, convert them into WebP format for fast loading.

You should also enable lazy-loading of images. This will help you reduce the bandwidth ensuring the website load fast.

One more thing you can do is use JPEGs for photos and then convert them into WebP format for fast loading.

2. Limit Plugins and Scripts

If you are on WordPress you might have noticed that there are various unnecessary plugins that are pre-installed with your WordPress install. Also, designers and developers too install many plugins which might not be necessary.

This creates unnecessary css, javascript code into the website, which makes the website heavy and website loads slowly.

So, if you are on WordPress, identify the plugins which are not in use or doesn’t add value to the website and remove them.

If you are not on WordPress and using some other website platform, try to keep the code as light as possible,

Too many plugins (especially on WordPress) can bog down your site even if you’re not actively using them. So avoid installing plugins which may not add value to your website.

Also read: 4 Tools to check if your private practice website is slow

3. Enable Caching

Caching is a process by which a copy of your website is stored on various levels. Web browsers stores html files, javascript , and images to make a website load fast. Whereas DNS caching is used to serve DNS records, and CDN stores copy of your website on their servers in multiple locations and later serve the website from the closest location to the user.

So if you have web browser cache enabled on your website, a copy of your website will be stored on the local computer of the user. In simple words, instead of loading every file from scratch, caching delivers a faster, ready-to-go version of your site.

This will make your website load fast without adding additional burden on the servers.

Caching helps your site load faster for returning visitors by saving a version of your site in their browser or on your server.

If you’re on WordPress, install a caching plugin like WP Rocket, WP Fastest Cache or W3 Total Cache. These caching plugins are mostly free to install and use. Just install and activate the plugin to take its benefits.

Many plugins also offer other speed optimization features which you should also check.

Also, if your private practice website is not on WordPress but on some other CMS like Squarespace, you can check their page speed optimization settings. Also, if you have a custom coded website hosted on a server, then you can check their hosting dashboard. Most web hosts also offer built-in caching.

4. Minify HTML, CSS and Javascript

Minifying HTML, CSS, and Javascript is a process by which unnecessary code used in the website is removed without affecting the functionality of the website. It is one of the main method to reduce the load time of a website and make it faster.

For your private practice website, you can also enable it using a caching plugin like WP Rocket if you are on WordPress. If you are on another CMS like Squarespace then you don’t have to worry about it. Squarespace handles minification automatically.

5. Switch to Faster Hosting

Even after doing all the fixes I mentioned above, you see that your website is still loading slow, then your hosting provider might have the problem. Not all web hosting offers high speed loading. Many cheap or shared-hosting providers have this problem.

If your website is on some cheap or low quality shared-hosting, then you might have a slow website. This is because shared-hosting provider share a server with many other webmasters like you. In short, you have to share the limited resources with other webmasters. That means low bandwidth, low storage, low CPU power.

This in turn will slow down your website, because the same resources are being used by other website owners too. Also, having server location very far from your clinic can also impact website loading speed.

To fix this problem, upgrade to a performance-focused host. Hosting providers like SiteGround, Cloudways, or Flywheel offer better speed and security for small business websites. Look for hosting providers that offer Servers with SSD storage, automatic caching, and data centers close to your target audience (e.g., Australia, US, UK).

By switching to a much premium hosting provider which provides more resources and modern storage solutions, you will have a fast loading website. In my post, 7 necessary things to check before buying web hosting for therapy website, I have talked about how to select the hosting for your private practice. Do check it too.

6. Use Fast Loading Fonts

You might have noticed this too that some fonts load quickly as compared to others. This simple thing can also have a great impact on the loading time of your therapy website. Large font files takes time to download, negatively affecting your website load time.

To reduce website loading delay due to large or slow loading fonts, you can preload them, host them locally on your servers, using more modern web font formats, edit css to edit font rules. I know some of the methods will sound you technical but I know they are necessary for having a fast loading private practice website. That’s why I included them.

Some WordPress plugins and themes too provide the functionality to optimize fonts but you can hire a developer if you are not technical or need support fixing it.

7. Use CDN

CDN or Content Delivery Network is a network of servers located in various locations around the world, and stores a copy of your private practice website on each of their servers.

What CDN do is when someone visits your website, it delivers the cached version of your website from the closest server location to the user making the website load fast.

So, even if you have tried hosting, and the website is still slow, you should use a CDN. There are various CDN providers who offer quality services. CDNs like Bunny CDN, Key CDN are affordable and easy to setup for a local private practice website.

Final Thoughts

You don’t deserve to lose clients because of a slow private practice website. A fast loading website builds trust, creates a good impression, and smooth experience encourage them to take the next step.

With these 7 quick steps I provided above, I am sure you will have a fast loading website.