There have been several studies that show that visual elements of your website are more important and effective than text elements for your business. The primary reason for this is that visuals are not only highly engaging but they also ensure easier understanding and enhance user experience exponentially. These pros have led to the increase in their overall usage by website owners which has resulted in graphics-heavy websites.
However, the increase of visual elements on a web page is directly proportional to the size of that respective page. This implies greater the size of a web page, the longer it will take to load. Although, since page loading speed is one of the most important aspects of a website, loading too many visual elements can cause serious problems like traffic decrease, lesser engagement, and user dissatisfaction.
So, does this mean that you must use fewer visual elements on your site and insert more text wherever possible? Certainly not. You can design your web pages as extensively as you like. You do not need to compromise even a single bit and use all types of images, videos, and other compelling visual elements freely on your website. What’s better is that you can get a higher page loading speed even with these things through a simple technique called Lazy Load. Let us see what is it.
Plugins Name | Rating | Price |
---|---|---|
a3 Lazy Load | 5 / 5 | Free |
BJ Lazy Load | 5 / 5 | Free |
WordPress Infinite Scroll – Ajax Load More | 4.70 / 5 | Free |
Lazy Load by WP Rocket | 5 / 5 | Free |
WP YouTube Lyte – Lazy Load Video | 4.77 / 5 | Free |
Table of Contents
ToggleWhat is the Lazy Load feature for the WordPress website?
Lazy Load is the opposite of image preloading. In simple words, Lazy Load is a technique that allows you to delay the loading of visual elements like videos and images on your web pages. Although it may sound a bit weird to slow down the loading speed of certain elements on your web page it is not as it does this only to images that are outside the viewport or the visible part of your web page. The delayed elements are automatically loaded as soon as visitors scroll to them to ensure an exclusive user experience. Easy enough, we would say.
Advantages of the Lazy Load feature
With rapidly declining attention spans, it is essential to utilize images and other multimedia trends for your WordPress site. However, it is equally important for your website to load faster. That is why there are no reasons that you should not use Lazy Load even if you have a small website with a few images. A few advantages that you get with Lazy Load are:
- It helps you deliver optimized content to your visitors.
- Allows viewers to connect to the content faster.
- Increases customer retention rates
- Lazy Load reduces resource costs as only the essential content is delivered to the user.
- Increases page and site loading speed.
- It enhances the user experience by leaps and bounds.
- Leads to increased traffic and higher conversion rates.
How to Enable Lazy Load on Your WordPress Site?
If you are familiar with WordPress, then you already know that there would be an easy yet incredible solution for Lazy Load in its extensive plugin library. There is not one but many powerful plugins that are easy to install and easy to use. Hence, to help you gain a better understanding of these plugins, here is a list of the Best Lazy Load Plugins for WordPress to make your site faster. Take a look.
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Lazy Load Plugins For WordPress
1. a3 Lazy Load
Extremely easy and simple to use, a3 Lazy Load is the most downloaded Lazy Load plugin on WordPress. It is one of the most effective tools that can help you speed up your site and page loading speeds remarkably. Easily integrated with extensive plugins like WooCommerce, it is a mobile-oriented plugin that allows you to select elements on your website that you want to be lazy-loaded. Not only this, but it also lets you set the time of their visibility.
This incredible plugin works well for images, videos, iframe, embed posts, WordPress AMP, and, Advanced Custom Fields in posts, pages, widgets, thumbnails, gravatars, and any other content areas you desire on your site.
2. BJ Lazy Load
Save bandwidth and make your site load faster with one of the most incredible Lazy Load plugins on WordPress called BJ Lazy Load. It allows you to completely take control of the content on your WordPress website. Setting a specific time for specific elements, this useful plugin enables you to lazy load images, videos, and other heavier elements in your user comments, post images, thumbnails, gravatar images, and iframe content.
Not only this but it also supports embedded videos from YouTube and Vimeo. Compatible with the RICG Responsive Images plugin, this is the second most downloaded Lazy Load plugin due to its flexibility and ease of use.
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3. WordPress Infinite Scroll – Ajax Load More
One of the best Lazy Load Plugins For WordPress, the effective WordPress Infinite Scroll – Ajax Load More is easy to use and easy to install. Equipped with Ajax Load More Shortcode Builder and Ajax-powered queries, this incredible plugin can be used to lazy load pages, posts, single posts, and comments smoothly for infinite scrolling. What’s even better is that it can also be used to create WordPress queries that are custom. Compatible with WooCommerce and EDD, it also supports incredible additional features like Repeater Templates, Query Parameter, Multiple Instances, and Ajax Filtering.
4. Lazy Load by WP Rocket
Lazy Load by WP Rocket is a free WordPress plugin that lets you instantly display images on your site pages only when you want them to. This leads not only to the reduction in HTTP requests but also leads to faster upload and site loading speed.
You can work on several different elements like images, videos, and other visual elements in a post or thumbnail, avatars, widget text, and iframes. What’s better is that you can replace the YouTube iframes with preview thumbnails to even further speed up the time taken by your WordPress website to load.
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5. WP YouTube Lyte – Lazy Load Video
One of the most simple yet effective plugins on WordPress, WP YouTube Lyte is a free plugin that is specifically designed to enable you to embed your website videos. It allows you to enable them to pass via responsive embed. This feature is enabled by inserting ‘Lite YouTube Embeds’. Ideal to embed some videos on a web page, this powerful plugin has been successfully verified for maximum compatibility with the browser as well.
6. JCH Optimize
Even though JCH Optimize is not a dedicated Lazy Load plugin, it still is considered one of the best plugins to enable lazy load on your site pages. Equipped with exclusive features to speed up your WordPress site instantly, JCH Optimize combines CSS and JavaScript files to reduce the frequency of HTTP requests.
Reducing bandwidth requirements, server load, and page loading times, this incredible plugin offers a one-click setup feature that enables you to optimize your WordPress website.
7. Lazy Load for Videos
Another useful plugin dedicated to embedding videos, the Lazy Load for Videos plugin is a perfect choice for lazy loading the videos of your website. The best thing about this plugin is that it replaces embedded Vimeo and YouTube videos on your site with clickable preview images.
This automatically leads to an improvement in page load and site load times. Another helpful feature of this powerful plugin is that it transforms all videos into a unique playlist and then shows the video titles as image previews. Not only this but it is also equipped with easy-to-use options to customize all videos on your site.
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8. Crazy Lazy
One of the newer yet reliable Lazy Load plugins on WordPress from pluginkollektiv, Crazy Lazy is a free plugin that allows you to lazy load the images of your website easily and conveniently. Easily integrated with simple themes by using Lazyload.js, this effective plugin also supports and utilizes Unveil.js jQuery for the efficient working of dynamic themes. A simple yet powerful plugin, it reduces the loading page and site times of your website instantly by loading images when needed.
9. WooCommerce Infinite Scroll and Ajax Pagination
One of the premium plugins on CodeCanyon, the WooCommerce Infinite Scroll, and Ajax Pagination, is a Lazy Load plugin for WordPress. Ideal for WooCommerce-powered stores, it applies Lazyload for WooCommerce to convert the default pagination for products into either Ajax or Scroll Pagination.
Not only this but it also enables infinite scrolling to the end of your web page in a way that the next page retrieves automatically. This plugin also allows you to customize and use different types of pagination for mobiles.
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10. SEO Friendly Images Pro for WordPress
SEO Friendly Images Pro for WordPress is another complete solution for all the heavy images on your WordPress website from Pascal-Bajorat. It takes complete care of your image SEO as well by letting you optimize the title as well as alt attributes of the images on your website. It is also ideal to enable lazy load functionality on your WordPress website to boost its performance by postponing image loading in pages and posts.
Another useful feature of this SEO-friendly plugin is that it enables you to optimize links in the custom posts, pages, and posts. It also adds title attributes automatically to these links depending on the content.
11. Speed Up – Lazy Load
This plugin uses the “Lazy Load” technique to delay the download of images and iframes that are not currently visible on the screen (for example, images at the bottom of the page). This improves the page’s load time and saves bandwidth.
There are no configurations necessary! All you have to do is install it, and the plugin will take care of everything else. This plugin is quite small, weighing in at only 5 kb.
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12. Zedna WP Image Lazy Load
Zenda progressive loading of photos and other elements reduces website load time. They will only load when they reach the visible portion of the screen. Themes can also benefit from lazy loading.
Features:
- compatible with Visual Composer
- compatible with WooCommerce
- you have the option of skipping all iframes or only one in a particular element.
- with some classes, you can select to skip specific elements.
- you can display components before or after they appear on the screen.
- optional fade in animation
13. Smush
Smush is a WordPress plugin that allows you to compress your image without sacrificing quality. When you install and activate this plugin, each image you post will be automatically compressed. This does not affect the image’s quality, and most importantly, you won’t miss out on any images due to their loading time.
This function compresses all old photos in your WordPress image folder, which might help you save time loading older posts. If you have a large blog or one with a lot of photographs, you may want to put it in maintenance mode and compress all of the old images.
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14. Optimole
Optimole is an all-in-one image optimization tool for WordPress and other platforms. It works in real-time with your images and is completely cloud-based. Optimole outperforms every other tool on the market.
The average web page’s total load time is 60 percent due to images. As a result, by doing something as basic as optimizing them, you can make your site load twice as quickly. On autopilot, Optimole takes care of that for you!
Final Thoughts on Lazy Load Plugins For WordPress
Lazy loading is undoubtedly one of the best ways to speed up your WordPress website. Hence, even if you have a small website, ensuring that it is Lazy Load enabled is a big advantage and saves server load.
Hence, if you are currently running a WordPress site without a Lazy Load plugin or planning to create a new WordPress site, then you need to add one of these exclusive Lazy Load plugins listed above today to your WordPress site to boost your speed even more.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Lazy Load is a technique used in web design to optimize page loading times. In WordPress, Lazy Load plugins delay the loading of images and other media on a webpage until they become visible in the user’s viewport, improving site performance.
Lazy Load plugins help reduce page loading times and save bandwidth by loading images and media only when a user scrolls down the page and sees them. This results in faster page rendering and a better user experience.
Most Lazy Load plugins are designed to work with a wide range of WordPress themes and plugins. However, it’s essential to test compatibility when using custom themes or plugins to ensure smooth performance.
Yes, many Lazy Load plugins for WordPress offer customization options. You can typically configure settings such as the type of content to lazy load (images, videos, iframes), loading thresholds, and animation effects to match your website’s requirements.
While Lazy Load plugins offer performance benefits, they may occasionally cause compatibility issues with certain third-party scripts or widgets. It’s advisable to test your website thoroughly after implementing Lazy Load to ensure all content functions correctly.
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