Contents
The speed of any WordPress site plays a critical role in both User Experience (UX) and SEO. Web pages that load slowly can negatively impact a site’s search engine rankings, as well as cause fewer conversions and orders in online stores.
One of the best ways to improve the server response time of your WordPress website is to pay attention to reducing the time to first byte – Time to First Byte or TTFB. This can help your website load in visitors’ browsers as quickly as possible, making it less likely that they will leave.
In this article we will explain what TTFB is, why it is an important metric and how to test a site for TTFB. Finally, we’ll present a few key tips you can use to reduce TTFB and improve server response time in WordPress (Reduce initial server response time). Let’s get started!
Contents
- What is TTFB?
- Why TTFB matters for your WordPress site?
- How to run a TTFB test on a WordPress site
- How to improve TTFB and reduce server response time
- Turning on WordPress site caching
- Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Optimizing the WordPress database
- Remove unnecessary plugins
- Upgrade to better WordPress hosting
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Final words
What is TTFB? ⏱
TTFB or Time to First Byte represents the time it takes for the browser to receive the first byte of data from a website’s server. In other words, it measures the responsiveness of the web server after the HTTP request is made by the user’s browser. The faster your website’s TTFB, the better. This means that the website’s resources and data will load faster in users’ browsers.
TTFB consists of three main parts:
- HTTP request is sent to the server.
- The server processes the request and generates a response after communicating with network systems, executing scripts, querying databases, etc.
- The server transmits the first byte of the response to the client, which is the Time to First Byte (TTFB).
The time required to complete all these phases constitutes the TTFB. Later in the article, we will discuss how to conduct a TTFB test. A good TTFB is between 200 milliseconds (ms) and 500 ms. Ideally it would be under 100 ms.
TTFB for a site depends on many factors. For example, if you have a large complex website, you can expect a higher TTFB than a simple blog.
Why TTFB matters for your WordPress site? ⚡
When it comes to website optimization and ensuring a positive UX, site speed is paramount. However, if you notice that your site’s performance is suffering, it could be due to an unnecessarily long TTFB.
The longer the TTFB, the longer site visitors will have to wait for their browsers to display the pages. This can lead to frustration and even cause users to leave the site and go to a competitor instead.
A slow website can hurt SEO. Google considers page speed a key ranking signal. So if your website takes too long to load, you risk losing positions in search engine results pages (SERPs).
It is important to note that TTFB is not synonymous with website speed. Rather, it is a measurement of responsiveness. All speed and performance metrics are important for your website. While there is some debate about whether TTFB really matters – or to what extent it is an important metric – improving TTBF can only be positive for a website.
There are several other benefits that come from reducing TTFB as well. Not only can it improve the visitor experience, but it can also increase engagement and retention rates – more pages viewed, higher interaction with the site.
Reducing TTFB can help improve your WordPress site’s server response time by providing a better UX.
How to run a TTFB test on a WordPress site
Before we discuss how to improve Time to First Byte, it’s important to first understand where the site currently is. That’s why we recommend doing a TTFB test.
There are multiple tools that can be used to measure TTFB. It is worth noting that results may vary slightly depending on which service or testing method is used. In most cases the best method comes down to personal preference. Below are some of the most common site testing services for TTFB (and for speed in general).
- WebPageTest
- Pingdom Tools
- GTMetrix
- KeyCDN Performance Test
- Chrome DevTools
NB: Pingdom and GTMetrix refer to Time to first byte as “Wait Time” or simply “Wait” and not as TTFB.
How to improve TTFB and reduce server response time (5 tips) ?
Once we’ve understood what Time to first byte is and why it’s important, we can get to the fun part: reducing TTFB to improve server response time. After running the TTFB test, depending on the tool you’ve used, there will likely be a list of suggestions for improvements and suggestions to start with.
However, there are several common and effective ways to reduce TTFB in WordPress. Let’s take a look at six key tips for reducing server response time through plugins as well as with other tools.
- Turning on WordPress site caching
- Using a CDN
- Optimizing the WordPress database
- Keeping the site light by removing unnecessary plugins
- Upgrade to better WordPress hosting
1. Enable WordPress site caching
Caching reduces the burden on your site’s server, ultimately allowing its data to be transmitted and displayed faster. WordPress has a rich gallery of caching plugins with the better ones being WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, Litespeed Cache, WP Rocket.
2. Using Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDN can help improve site speed and reduce TTFB. It is a network of servers located around the world that allows the site to be loaded from the data center that is closest to each visitor’s location. This minimizes the distance data has to travel to load your WordPress site, ultimately resulting in faster load times. A CDN is a particularly useful solution if you have users from all over the world, not just Bulgaria.
Popular CDN platforms are CloudFlare and StackPath.
Some of the major WordPress caching plugins come with an option to set up a Cloudflare CDN. This includes WP Rocket and W3 Total Cache.
3. WordPress database optimization
Over time, the WordPress database can become very large and queries to it can run slower. Database growth can be due to:
- Hundreds, even thousands of saved revisions of pages and posts;
- Remaining data and tables from deleted plugins;
- Unapproved, spam or trash comments;
- “Orphaned” metadata;
- Pingbacks, Trackbacks;
- Auto-draft as well as trash posts and pages, etc.
In addition to cleansing, the WordPress database optimization process includes the separate “optimize datatable” operation.
Some of the popular WordPress database optimization plugins:
- WP-Optimize – Clean, Compress, Cache
- Advanced Database Cleaner
4. Keeping the site light by removing unnecessary plugins
Just as with optimizing your WordPress database, keeping the site as lightweight as possible can help reduce TTFB and improve overall performance. To reduce site burden, you can delete any unused or unnecessary plugins installed.
Too many plugins can slow down the site and increase server response time. That’s why it’s best to choose carefully which plugins to install on your website and update regularly. If you no longer need a plugin, disable it and delete it completely (this includes purging the database). This will minimize unnecessary load.
See also How to speed up WordPress – two important things
5. Upgrade to better WordPress hosting
The hosting provider plays a key role in the speed and performance of your website. So if your site is suffering from slow load times and problematic TTFB (and the tips above aren’t helping), it might be time to consider switching to another host or upgrading your current plan.
If you’re currently on a shared hosting plan, this could be one of the reasons for increased TTFB. Shared hosting plans often don’t have enough resources to handle traffic-intensive sites, let alone the server equipment and power needed to make each site as fast as possible.
That’s why we recommend upgrading from shared to Managed WordPress hosting or Managed VPS / VPS, which will reduce TTFB.
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Frequently Asked Questions ✌️
What does TTFB mean?
TTFB stands for Time to First Byte. It measures how long it takes for the first byte of a website’s data to render in the user’s browser.
There are three main components that make up TTFB. The first is the time it takes the browser to send the HTTP request to the server. The second is the time it takes the server to process that request and generate a response. The third and final factor is the time it takes the server to transmit the first byte in the response back to the browser.
What is the best way to measure TTFB?
If you want to measure the TTFB of your WordPress site, there are several options. As we discussed earlier, you can use online tools like WebPageTest, Pingdom, GTMetrix, etc. All of these sites are free and provide a wealth of information regarding your website’s speed and performance. Another option to measure TTFB is through Chrome DevTools.
What is considered a good TTFB?
The standard TTFB is somewhere between 200 ms to 600 ms. However, the lower this indicator is, the better. Ideally, you’d be looking for a score under 100 ms, which is hard to achieve if you have a complex and large website. On the other hand, anything higher than 600 ms is a problem that should be resolved as soon as possible.
What is the fastest way to reduce TTFB?
There are various methods that can be used to reduce the TTFB of a site and in turn improve server response time. However, some techniques are faster and easier than others. For example, you might consider using a caching plugin or implementing a CDN. If that doesn’t help, you can look into upgrading your hosting plan.
Final words
TTFB is an important metric that affects the speed and overall performance of a website. If TTFB is more than 600 ms, it can lead to poor UX and negatively affect SEO rankings.
In this article, we discussed how to reduce TTFB and improve server response time.
Knowing how to improve TTFB is just one way to improve the load time of a WordPress site. If you need help optimizing your site’s speed, we’re here to help.
Learn more about our WordPress and WooCommerce Speed Optimization service.
