Whether you’re looking to launch your blog, service-based agency, or even an e-commerce store, WordPress ranks among some of the top platform choices that can get you started.
The easy-to-use interface, search engine-friendly features, and customizability make it an effective tool to reach, engage, and retain your target audience.
But hold your horses, my friend, because all of this depends on one very crucial factor, the internet bandwidth of the provider that your target audience uses. Yes, I know, that’s unfair.
But as unfair as it may be, it falls on your shoulders to optimize your WordPress site and tone down the effects of low-bandwidth internet. How can you do that? By choosing fast WordPress themes, and in this article, I’ll help you do just that.
I’ve compiled a list of some of them that can mitigate the effects of slow or low-bandwidth internet. Together, we’ll dive into:
Let’s begin!
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a free, open-source content management system on which you can build your website. In case you’re wondering what a content management system is, it’s a tool that can help you handle important parts of your website, like the content on it, without any programming knowledge.
Coming back to WordPress, the platform was originally aimed towards blogs. However, it now supports different types of businesses, such as e-commerce stores, agencies, portfolios, and more. The platform currently powers more than 43.6% of websites across the internet.
Something you might want to note is that there are two versions of WordPress online, ‘wordpress.com’ and ‘wordpress.org’.
I’ve shared the difference between them below.
WordPress.com is a paid service supported by the WordPress software. It’s easy to use, but there’s no room for flexibility, unlike WordPress.org.
WordPress.org, on the other hand, is the free, open-source version that I’ve been talking about above. You can install your own web host on it, and you own 100% of it.
You might be wondering, “Hey, where do WordPress themes fall into any of this?” Don’t worry, I’ve covered it all in the next section.
What is the Role of WordPress Themes for Your Website?
To put it simply, a WordPress theme is a set of templates, scripts, and stylesheets that will govern the look and feel of your website.
The second most important thing WordPress themes do is ensure a balance and visual consistency among the typography, colors, headers, footers, page layout, and design elements.
And the first, most important thing is that they improve your user experience by offering navigation structures, faster speeds, mobile responsiveness, and a range of accessibility features.
There are many different types of WordPress themes, and when choosing them, you want to go for well-optimized, fast WordPress themes.
This is because the internet bandwidth and speed your users have may not always be very fast, and might vary based on their provider. For example, users in remote areas generally don’t have access to fast internet, and slower pages can cause a lot of frustration for them.
On the other hand, ISPs like Xfinity have an established infrastructure across the U.S., meaning that millions of people have access to fast and reliable Xfinity Internet, so loading complex pages may not even be an issue for them.
Regardless of the type of internet a user has, it’s important to use fast WordPress themes, since they have a certain set of qualities that allow them to reduce loading times and improve overall website speed, both of which are crucial factors for user experience and your SEO ranking.
I’ve explored these qualities in the next section. Understanding these will give you more clarity on which one you should choose when I share some of the best options.
Fast WordPress Themes – The Qualities That Set Them Apart
Most fast WordPress themes can be categorized into one of the following categories:
- Lightweight WordPress themes
- Minimal WordPress themes
- Clean code WP themes
- Performance-Focused Themes
Let’s explore each of these in more detail.
Lightweight WordPress Themes
Lightweight here doesn’t mean they weigh less; it means that they’re designed with minimal code and resources. This reduces the amount of data and website elements that need to be loaded, which in turn results in faster website loading times.
Minimal WordPress Themes
These can often be confused with lightweight themes because they use less code and resources. However, lightweight WordPress themes focus on speed and efficiency, whereas minimal WordPress themes focus on a neat and uncluttered design to offer a better visual experience.
Clean Code WP Themes
Clean code WP themes are themes that are designed with a focus on better code quality, higher efficiency, and compliance with WordPress coding standards. Their main goal is to be well-structured, easy to understand, and maintain.
Performance-Focused WP Themes
The name should make it pretty clear that these themes are specifically designed and optimized to deliver the best possible performance. They use techniques like lazy loading, optimized images, and efficient JavaScript to improve usability and speed.
Now that you know the types of fast WordPress themes, it’s time to explore your options. Let’s dive into them in the next section.
3 Fast WordPress Themes for Poor Connectivity
The themes shared below have been repeatedly tried and tested, and always make their place in the list of fast WordPress themes you can get for your website. I’ve broken down their main features and performance test results below.
The performance results are based on tests run on GTmetrix and Page Speed Insights. Also, this part gets a bit technical, but I tried my best to keep it simple, to keep it easy to understand for beginners.
Astra
Astra is one of the most well-known fast WordPress themes out there. As a lightweight WordPress theme, it offers great speed and design. The theme currently has more than a million downloads and a 4.9 rating.
The theme also allows you a lot of room for customization by supporting page builders and plugins such as LearnDash, WooCommerce, and Yoast, to name a few. Oh, and it’s free, talk about adding the cherry on top of the cake. But they do offer a paid plan if you’re looking for more advanced customization features.
Here are some of the themes’ performance results:
GTmetrix Results
- Performance Score: 100%
- Structure Score: 98%
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): 396ms
- Total Blocking Time (TBT): 0ms
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0
- Fully Loaded Time: 484 ms
- Time to Interactive (TTI): 397ms
- HTTP Requests: 7
PageSpeed Insights For Mobile
- Performance Score: 100
- First Contentful Paint: 0.9s
- Speed Index: 1.9s
- Large Contentful Paint: 0.9s
- Total Blocking Time: 0ms
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 0.001
PageSpeed Insights For Desktop
- Performance Score: 100
- First Contentful Paint: 0.3s
- Speed Index: 1.0s
- Large Contentful Paint: 0.3s
- Total Blocking Time: 0ms
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 0
Neve
Neve is another free, lightweight WordPress theme that’s known for its versatility and speed. The theme also supports a lot of third-party plugins like WooCommerce, Gutenberg Block Editor, and page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Divi, allowing you more customization power.
The theme offers you more than 49 starter templates. It also helps that the theme itself is highly customizable, thanks to a reliable code and flexible structure. So, whether you’re trying to build an agency, launch a startup or small business, or even your blog, it has you covered.
The theme, like Astra, also has free and paid options based on the level of customization you want.
Below are the performance scores:
GTmetrix
- Performance Score: 100%
- Structure Score: 98%
- Largest Contentful Paint: 503ms
- Total Blocking Time: 0ms
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 0
- Fully Loaded Time: 643ms
- Time to Interactive: 504ms
- HTTP Requests: 7
PageSpeed Insights For Mobile
- Performance Score: 100
- First Contentful Paint: 1.1s
- Speed Index: 1.9s
- Large Contentful Paint: 1.1s
- Total Blocking Time: 0ms
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 0.001
PageSpeed Insights For Desktop
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 0
- Performance Score: 100
- First Contentful Paint: 0.2s
- Speed Index: 0.8s
- Large Contentful Paint: 0.2s
- Total Blocking Time: 0ms
Hello Elementor
Hello is the theme created by the minds behind one of the best drag-and-drop page builders out there – Elementor.
The theme, needless to say, supports this page builder, making it quite versatile. In addition to Elementor, the theme also supports other plugins such as WooCommerce, Advanced Custom Fields, and Yoast, allowing a lot of room for customization.
The theme is lightweight and puts a special emphasis on speed, which makes it particularly great for e-commerce WordPress stores, where each second matters. While the theme itself is free, the Elementor page builder offers both free and paid plans.
Here’s how the theme performed:
GTmetrix
- Performance Score: 100%
- Structure Score: 98%
- Largest Contentful Paint: 622ms
- Total Blocking Time: 0ms
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 0
- Fully Loaded Time: 703ms
- Time to Interactive: 623ms
- HTTP Requests: 8
PageSpeed Insights For Mobile
- Performance Score: 100
- First Contentful Paint: 1.1s
- Speed Index: 2.5s
- Large Contentful Paint: 1.1s
- Total Blocking Time: 0ms
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 0
PageSpeed Insights For Desktop
- Performance Score: 100
- First Contentful Paint: 0.3s
- Speed Index: 0.9s
- Large Contentful Paint: 0.3s
- Total Blocking Time: 0ms
- Cumulative Layout Shift: 0
Fast WordPress Themes – Leveling the Battlefield for a Fair Advantage
Choosing fast WordPress themes is a way to level up your chances of delivering a great user experience, despite your customers having low-bandwidth internet.
Additionally, each of the elements that play a part in creating a great user experience, such as mobile responsiveness, speed, and plugins, also helps with search engine optimization.
With the themes shared above, you can use their power to launch a diverse range of online platforms, whether it’s an agency, blog, or e-commerce store, and engage your customers every step of the way.
