To achieve an A grade on GTmetrix for your WordPress website without relying on a cache plugin, there are several optimization techniques you can implement. First, ensure your website is using a lightweight and well-optimized WordPress theme that loads quickly. Avoid using resource-heavy themes or those with a lot of unnecessary features, as they can significantly slow down your site’s performance. Minimize the number of plugins installed, as each plugin can add additional HTTP requests and slow down your site. Review your active plugins and deactivate any that are not essential to your website’s functionality.
Focus on optimizing your images. Compress your images without sacrificing quality using tools. Enable lazy loading to only load images as they are needed, rather than loading all images on the page at once. This can dramatically improve your site’s initial load times. Additionally, consider serving your images from a content delivery network (CDN) to reduce latency for users accessing your site from different geographic locations. Choose Fast, Reliable, and Secure Hosting with NVMe storage
Beyond image optimization, leverage browser caching to reduce the number of resources that need to be downloaded on each page load. This can be done by modifying your .htaccess file. Minify your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to reduce file size and improve load times.
Consider using a service to serve your static assets, such as CSS, JavaScript, and images, from their global network of servers. This can significantly improve your site’s performance by reducing the distance between your users and the server serving the content.