A step-by-step account of how we took a client's WordPress site from a 40 PageSpeed score to 98 — and exactly what we did to get there.
The Starting Point
A client came to us with a WordPress site scoring 40 on Google PageSpeed Insights. Pages were taking 8+ seconds to load on mobile. Bounce rate was 74%. They were losing leads every day.
Day 1–2: Audit and Hosting Migration
Full audit revealed: 47 active plugins, 12MB page weight, no caching, all images JPEG/PNG, and $5/month shared hosting. Moving to Cloudways (DigitalOcean 2GB) alone dropped Time to First Byte from 1.8s to 180ms.
Day 3: Plugin Audit and Caching
Deactivated and deleted 31 unused plugins. Installed WP Rocket with page caching, browser caching, GZIP, and database cleanup. Homepage load time dropped from 8.2s to 3.1s.
Day 4–5: Images and JavaScript
Ran all images through ShortPixel — converted to WebP, compressed to 80% quality. Image weight dropped from 9.8MB to 1.1MB. Used WP Rocket to defer JavaScript and Asset CleanUp Pro to load scripts only where needed.
Day 6–7: CDN and Final Result
Set up BunnyCDN and enabled Redis object caching. Final score: 98 Mobile, 99 Desktop. Load time: 0.9 seconds. Bounce rate dropped from 74% to 41% within two weeks.
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ARIOSETECH Team
WordPress, Shopify & WooCommerce Specialists
We've been building WordPress, WooCommerce, and Shopify solutions since 2017 for clients in the USA, UAE, Switzerland, and beyond.