Images are one of the key contributors to its increased loading time on your website. Heavier images take longer to load, ruining the experience of the users and increasing the bounce rate. Lazy loading is one of the solutions to this problem.
Since you have landed on this article through search or any other platform, you probably know what lazy loading is, and I would suggest you skip directly to lazy WordPress loading plugins.
But if you don’t, I’m going to tell you what lazy loading is. So, stick to the post and understand and how it works.
What is Lazy Loading
Lazy loading is an excellent technique that helps increasing the loading speed of your site. It loads only the content that is visible to the user while delaying the content that is in the next fold. This doesn’t mean that it will partially load your web page. It only means that the content is loaded when the user reaches to it. This is the opposite of loading the whole page in bulk where it is loaded in one go.
For example your web page consists of 4 folds. They see the first fold and not the folds below when visitors land on your website, because lazy loading only loads the first fold, and if users scroll to the next fold, only that fold is loaded.
This type of loading makes sense because you don’t need to load the entire webpage if your users find relevant data in the first fold, which can increase your load time and ruin user experience.
Top WordPress Lazy Loading Plugins
Now that we have understood what lazy loading is, let’s have a look at the best WordPress lazy loading plugins.
1. Ajax Load More
Ajax Load More is one of the best lazy load plugin for WordPress sites. Using this plugin, you can eliminate lag and promote endless scrolling. With its unique ability, it’s also known to be one of the best lazy WordPress plugins to load.
Ajax Load More can be used to create custom WordPress shortcode queries and also includes features such as shortcode builder, query parameters, repeater templates to edit and extend your website’s functionality, multiple instances, and compatibility with multiple sites.
All of the above mentioned features and enhanced features make Ajax WordPress lazy load plugin load more than one of the best lazy load WordPress plugins available.
2. A3 Lazy Load
The A3 lazy WordPress plugin is loaded. It’s a very easy-to-use plugin designed to help your page load faster, with minimal resources being used from the back. The good thing about this lazy load WordPress plugin is that the heavier the content of your page, the better this plugin works to help you optimise it and ensure that your website does not lag or cause any stability problems for your users.
What’s more, it’s optimised for mobile use, which means it’s responsive, so since almost all types of content are optimised for viewing on mobile phones, A3 is one of the best, if not the best, lazy WordPress plugins ever to load.
What makes A3 lazy load WordPress plugin even better is that it’s very easy to install and set up. With the Extensive controls over Admin will help you choose exactly what you want. After that the plugin will work it magic.
3. Lazy Loader
Lazy Loader is a lazy loading plugin for WordPress that supports images, iframes, elements of audio and video. The plugin also allows users to change the markup manually for lazy loading of background scripts, images and styles. The post thumbnails and background images are also provided by Lazy Loader. It is possible to allow all these lazy loading elements from the settings.
The plugin only works for PHP 7 or higher, so before you decide to download this plugin, make sure you update your WordPress version. The plugin settings allow you to add filters to be processed by the lazy loader, to allow iframes, photos, videos and background images to load lazily.
Via this plugin, you can also show a loading spinner on your web page. You may also opt to load particular posts and pages lazily.
4. Lazy Load by WP Rocket
WP Rocket is a popular WordPress cache plugin that improves your site’s speed by caching static data. Keeping up with their optimization theme, WP Rocket also has a WordPress lazy load plugin that displays images and frames only when viewed by the visitor. This will reduce HTTP requests and reduces site loading time, by improving speed.
The plugin works not only with content images, but also with thumbnails, text widgets, avatars, smiles and iframes. It’s a very light script, so it doesn’t put a lot of work on your WordPress.
This plugin has over 100,000 installs on the official WordPress repository and is rated 4-star of over 65 star ratings.
5. Lazy Load for Videos
Lazy Load for Videos is a powerful lazy loading plugin created by Kevin Weber for WordPress. Kevin is an engineer at Airbnb who has developed a range of plugins for those who don’t know, including wBounce, Inline Comments and Lazy Load Videos.
By replacing embedded Youtube and Vimeo videos with clickable preview images that also include video titles, the plugin enhances site speed. This lazy WordPress smart load plugin only loads the video until the preview is clicked by the visitor.
You can also delete similar videos that appear at the end of YouTube videos, choose between thumbnail sizes, choose from different play button types, and much more with Lazy Load for Videos.
6. Speed Up – Lazy Load
Speed Up is another lazy load plugin that is available at the WordPress repository for free. It is simple to install and configure the plugin. All you have to do is download and install the plugin on your dashboard from the WordPress repository. The plugin weighs just 5kb, so your overall WordPress performance won’t be affected.
iframes and images that are not shown on the visitor’s screen are not downloaded by the plugin, such as images that are at the bottom of the screen and take 2 or 3 scrolls to reach.
Since it is new, this WordPress lazy load plugin does not have much installation, but it certainly does the job.
Conclusion
Lazy loading of WordPress is a step to enhancing your website’s load time. The technique is powerful and many site owners use lazy loading to increase their site speed with image-heavy websites. The WordPress lazy load plugins listed in the article make lazy loading on your website easier for you to implement.
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