In this article, we will discuss a reliable step that can be taken to speed up any type of website i.e. add lazy load on WordPress website. Here, we will describe what a lazy loading of the image really is, how it works and how it will help you to improve the loading time of your website.
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What is Lazy Loading?
Lazy Loading is an optimization technique of loading the visible contents while delaying the rendering of the contents below fold. It is a very popular technique to optimize the speed of your website and many popular websites like buzzfeed uses Lazy Loading.
How Lazy Load for Image Works?
When someone visits your website instead of loading the images of the entire website, lazy loading downloads only the images visible on the user screen while replacing all other images with placeholder images. And after the user scrolls down, the website will load images that are now visible to the browser viewing area.
Why Lazy Load Images in Your WordPress Website?
As Lazy Loading only loads a small portion of images available in the beginning, the size of your web page decreases and takes less time to load. This can decrease the loading time of your website even if it has a large number of high resolution of images.
How to Add Lazy Load on WordPress Website?
You can lazy load images of your WordPress website with the help of the WordPress plugins. There are several free WordPress plugins available on WordPress.org repository. You can simply download and install the plugins to enable the lazy load on your WordPress website as they requires zero configuration.
Here, we will show you how it is done by using Lazy Load plugin by WPRocket.
Setting Up Lazy Load Plugin by WP Rocket:
Download a copy of Lazy Load by WP Rocket. Then, install it on your WordPress website.
Activate the plugin once it is installed.
After that, go to Settings >> LazyLoad. There, check the Images options to enable lazy load of the website for images.
You can also lazy load the iFrames and Videos. Besides, the plugin will also allow you to replace Youtube videos by thumbnails.
Once done click on “Save Changes” to save.
Alternatives of Lazy Load Plugin:
Now let’s checkout some other WordPress plugins that will help lazy load your WordPress website.
a3 Lazy Load
a3 Lazy Load is a powerful WordPress plugin to lazy load the images, videos and iFrames of your WordPress website. It comes with the options to enable/disable lazy load of different elements of your site. You can simply disable the lazy load of certain images of our website by just choosing them. Also, it is fully compatible with WooCommerce and cache plugins.
