Table of Contents
Last update on
Picture this: You’re a WordPress agency juggling dozens of client websites, each with its performance challenges. Your clients are asking for faster load times, a 90+ PageSpeed Insights score, and green Core Web Vitals grades – all of which require significant time and effort. Sounds familiar? That’s exactly what WPservice.pro, founded by Dalibor Druzinec, was facing when they discovered their secret weapon: WP Rocket.
You’re about to read how this agency made their work easier and faster, all while creating better-performing WordPress sites for their clients. If you run a web agency too, you’ll pick up some suggestions on how WP Rocket can help you speed up your sites without all the hassle. You’ll also get some practical tips on managing client expectations and avoiding common pitfalls in website optimization.
The Need for Speed: WPservice Pro’s Challenge
Dalibor and his team at WPservice Pro were on a mission: to deliver lightning-fast WordPress websites that not only looked great but also performed exceptionally well to compete online. Speed isn’t just about quick loading times. It’s also about better search engine rankings, higher conversion rates, and a smoother user experience, especially from mobile.
“Our main objective,” Dalibor explains, “is to analyze websites, ensure they run fast and smooth, pass Core Web Vitals assessment, and score well on test scores like WebPageTest, PageSpeed Insights, and GTmetrix.”
However, achieving these goals across multiple client sites isn’t always easy. It requires a combination of technical expertise and the right tools to speed up the process and scale their projects.
The Optimization Journey
Dalibor and his team had explored numerous options to achieve their goal. They tried free caching plugins, which often fell short of their needs. They experimented with paid solutions, including FlyingPress, but found themselves still searching for that perfect balance of power, ease of use, and consistent results.
“In the early days,” Dalibor recalls, “we tried many caching plugins, both free and paid. But we were always left wanting more. Either the results weren’t quite there, or the amount of work needed to get decent performance was too much.”
🚀 Curious about how WP Rocket compares to FlyingPress? Check out our detailed comparison! |
Discovering WP Rocket and Overcoming Concerns
Then, while working on a client’s website, Dalibor discovered WP Rocket. The impact was immediate and significant.
“The first time I encountered WP Rocket was on one of my client’s websites,” Dalibor shares. “I was immediately impressed. It offered a comprehensive set of features that steadily increased while addressing many performance issues we regularly faced.”
Still, like many agency owners, Dalibor had initial concerns about adopting a new plugin for all his client websites.
“The primary concern was compatibility and potential conflicts with other plugins or themes, which can be a common issue with caching and performance plugins,” he explains.
However, Dalibor didn’t let these concerns hold him back. “After reviewing testimonials and seeing the active support and updates WP Rocket offers, I felt confident in its compatibility and reliability,” he shares.
💡 Do you know that WP Rocket offers wide out-of-the-box compatibility with the most popular hosting providers, themes, and plugins? It helps make your job easier and hassle-free! |
What ultimately sealed the deal for Dalibor was a combination of factors. He states:
The first and foremost reasons I chose WP Rocket were its user-friendly interface and consistently high-performance results that matched my standards.
That’s when Dalibor decided to get an Infinite license and implement WP Rocket on more of his clients’ sites. The results exceeded his expectations. He says: “While not all websites can achieve a 90+ score on mobile PageSpeed Insights tests, WP Rocket updates make it easier than ever before”.
WP Rocket in Action: 4 Features That Make a Difference
Dalibor and his team quickly found that WP Rocket wasn’t just another optimization plugin – it was a powerful suite of features designed to tackle common performance issues. In addition to the caching options that are enabled by default right upon activation, here are the key features that help Dalibor the most to achieve outstanding performance results:
- Remove Unused CSS (RUCSS): This one-click feature removes CSS and stylesheets that are not used to make your pages load faster. “It’s like decluttering your website’s style,” Dalibor explains. “By removing unnecessary CSS, you can easily improve a website’s performance and address crucial PageSpeed performance audits.”
💡 Why this feature matters: Unused CSS can bloat your pages, increasing load times and hurting your PageSpeed Insights score and Core Web Vitals grades. |
- Delay JavaScript Execution and Load JavaScript Deferred: Both options can be enabled by a click, too. Delay JS execution postpones the loading of non-essential JavaScript until user interaction. Load JavaScript Deferred eliminates render-blocking JavaScript by letting the browser render the page and load the scripts later on. “These options are a game-changer for initial page load times,” Dalibor notes. “Essential content loads first, making the site feel much faster to users.”
💡 Why these features matter: JavaScript can slow down your website if not managed properly. By deferring and delaying non-critical scripts, you can significantly improve perceived load times and Core Web Vitals metrics like Interaction to Next Paint (INP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). |
- Automatic Lazy Rendering: This automatic feature makes the browser render only the elements visible to users at that moment. “I love the new lazy render capabilities and its effect on the DOM”, says Dalibor.
💡 Why this feature matters: By automatically optimizing how your website renders content as visitors scroll, this option improves the INP metric and the perceived speed, especially on mobile. |
- Optimize Critical Images and Preloading of LCP Images: This feature automatically detects, prioritizes, and auto-optimizes critical images (images above the fold) by auto-excluding them from lazy loading. The Largest Contentful Paint is very often one of these images. “It’s crucial for improving Core Web Vitals scores“, Dalibor explains.
💡 Why this feature matters: A green Largest Contentful Paint grade is a key factor in Google’s Page Experience ranking factor and can positively impact your search rankings. |
Dalibor concludes:
Thanks to WP Rocket, I can now forget about manually preloading LCP images and lazy rendering content. It’s also much easier to handle CSS and JS optimization – these are big needle movers to improve a website performance.
Tackling Common Performance Pitfalls
What are the website speed issues giving you the biggest headaches? We asked Dalibor about the performance problems he finds most challenging to fix. Here are the top three he pointed out:
- Image optimization: “Many sites have images that aren’t in next-gen formats or don’t have proper width and height attributes,” Dalibor explains. “This can slow down page loads and hurt Core Web Vitals scores.”
- Render-blocking resources: “A lot of render-blocking JS and CSS code is a frequent issue,” he notes. “WP Rocket’s delay JS and RUCSS functions are particularly effective in addressing this, also thanks to the plugin exclusions lists.”
- Unnecessary code: “We often see pages loaded with scripts or styles they don’t need,” Dalibor says. “For instance, having contact form scripts on every page instead of just the contact page.”
To tackle these issues, Dalibor’s team relies not only on WP Rocket but also on image optimization tools. “We use whatever the client already has in place,” he says. “It’s usually Imagify, which I highly appreciate for the ease of use and compatibility with WP Rocket. For clients without an image optimizer, we recommend EWWW IO as a free option.”
🚀 Imagify is the easiest image optimizer to make your images lighter and speed up your website automatically. Did you know it’s built by the same team behind WP Rocket? |
The Results: Transformative Improvements
The impact of implementing WP Rocket was significant across WPservice Pro’s client base. “We saw improvements across the board,” Dalibor reports. “WP Rocket delivered consistent performance boosts from e-commerce sites built on WooCommerce to corporate websites with custom themes.”
While specific metrics vary by site, Dalibor mentions notable improvements in Core Web Vitals scores and overall page load times – which are closely related to higher conversion rates.
Dalibor has shared a few test cases from before and after the speed optimization to show the improvements he achieved with WP Rocket.
The first example is a WooCommerce website hosted on WordPress.com and built on a custom theme that went from a 39 PageSpeed score and almost all Lighthouse metrics in red to a 99 score and green Core Web Vitals:
Before WP Rocket | After WP Rocket |
Another example is a PC service website customized with the Twenty-twelve theme, hosted on AWS and with Cloudflare CDN. The website went from a red 34 PageSpeed Insights score to a 90 grade:
Before WP Rocket | After WP Rocket |
The third example is a WooCommerce website hosted on WP Engine with Cloudflare CDN. The improvement is outstanding: the website went from a 10 score on PageSpeed Insights to a 90 green grade, including an impressive boost in the performance metrics as well:
Before WP Rocket | After WP Rocket |
Dalibor adds:
“It’s not just about the numbers. Our clients are happier, their customers are having a better experience, and we’re spending less time troubleshooting performance issues and more time on strategic improvements.
Beyond Speed: The Business & Human Benefits
WP Rocket brought significant benefits to Dalibor and his team beyond faster websites and happier clients. There are 4 main satisfaction pillars for the agency:
Time savings: “WP Rocket automates many optimization tasks,” Dalibor says. “This frees up our team to focus on other important aspects of web development and strategy.”
Ease of use across the team: “The interface is intuitive,” Dalibor notes. “It allows even team members with less technical expertise to implement effective optimizations.”
Expert and reliable support: “When we’ve needed help, WP Rocket’s support team has been responsive and knowledgeable, so we know we can rely on them anytime”, Dalibor shares.
Continuous improvements: “WP Rocket regularly updates with new features and optimizations,” Dalibor observes. “This helps us stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of web performance.”
Wisdom for the Wise: 4 Tips from Experience
You’ve seen how WP Rocket improved Dalibor’s agency work and business results. But what about the lessons learned along the way? Dalibor shares some practical advice for fellow agencies looking to improve their optimization processes:
- Invest in quality tools like WP Rocket. It saves time and delivers better results in the long run.
- Be realistic with clients. Perfect scores aren’t always achievable, and that’s okay.
- Always test your optimizations. Every site is unique and may respond differently.
- Stay informed about web performance trends and best practices.
The Bottom Line: Why Use WP Rocket
When asked why other agencies should use WP Rocket, Dalibor is sure:
It’s the most efficient tool we’ve found for WordPress optimization. It’s easy to use but packed with powerful features. The out-of-the-box compatibility with major hosts and themes is a huge time-saver.
From our side, we say thank you to WPservice Pro for successfully using WP Rocket on speed optimization projects! 🚀
Your Turn to Boost Performance
Are you inspired by WPservice Pro’s experience and ready to optimize your clients’ websites and scale your projects while saving time and effort?
Discover WP Rocket plans and begin your journey to faster, more efficient WordPress sites. With our 14-day money-back guarantee, you can test WP Rocket risk-free and see for yourself how easy it is to boost your clients’ websites and achieve your business goals more easily!