Divi is one of the most popular WordPress themes right now, as a modern theme divi tries to deliver an optimised website to its buyers.  This has urged the theme maker to add a plethora of optimization features. 

When you tried to set up the WordPress Divi theme for the very first time, you might have noticed the Divi lazy load feature. 

But what is divi lazy load? Why should you activate it ? and when should you avoid activating the divi lazy load feature?

The feature in the Divi theme allows the browser to defer the loading of your website’s below-the-fold content until it’s required.

What Is Lazy Loading?

Lazy loading is one of the essential performance optimization features that allows a browser to load above-the-fold images as quickly as possible and defer or delay the loading of below-the-fold images until they are required. 

Let’s understand lazy loading with an example. Assume you have 10 images on your website. Four are above-the-fold images, and the remaining 6 are outside the viewport. In general, in order to render your web page, the browser needs to load all 10 images which might increase the loading time. 

When you implement lazy loading on your website, during the initial loading time, the browser only loads the 4 images that are available above the fold as they are critical for the user when first loading the website. The remaining images are loaded when scrolling down to them. This would improve the performance of core web vitals, especially Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and First Contentful Paint (FCP), which calculate the initial loading time. 

What Is The Lazy Load Feature In The Divi Theme?

Divi theme has many in-built optimization features, such as critical CSS, dynamic CSS, lazy load, deferred jQuery and jQuery migration, among others.

If you add multiple media files such as high-resolution images, and videos to your Divi-powered website, it may slow your website by increasing the page size. By implementing lazy loading in the below-the-fold content, you can significantly boost the loading speed of a divi-powered website and improve the Google PageSpeed Insights score without the help of a third party plugin.

Why Should You Activate The Lazy Loading Feature?

Lazy Loading your images can prove your website in many way, 

Boost Your Page Loading Time

Lazy loading defers below-the-fold content such as images, video, and scripting files until they are needed. This indicates that when a user initially loads the web page, the browser will load the above-the-fold content first, decreasing the Time to First Byte (TTFB). 

Time to First Byte is inversely correlated with loading speed. Thus, reducing the Time to First Byte can significantly reduce the WordPress website’s loading speed.

Improve the user experience

PageSpeed determines users’ first impressions of your website. A faster page loading time is essential for providing a seamless user experience and engaging the user with the website’s content. It can also positively impact the average on-page time on your website by reducing your bounce rate. 

If you have a faster-loading WordPress website, users are more likely to complete the desired action on  your website, whether it is completing a registration process, downloading an ebook, booking an appointment, making a payment, and many more, and convert into potential leads. A good PageSpeed should help you take your conversion rates higher.

Higher SEO rankings

Prioritizing the user, Google considers PageSpeed as an essential ranking factor. Improving PageSpeed by optimizing the website with lazy loading technique can improve the search Engine Optimization (SEO) rankings, giving the organic traffic in your WordPress site a boost. 

When Should You Not Activate Divi Lazy Loading?

While divi lazy load intends to help you improve your WordPress website’s PageSpeed performance, you might need to deactivate it to avoid the conflict when you are using other PageSpeed optimization tools like RabbitLoader. 

When you install RabbitLoader, it performs all the optimization techniques, such as image optimization, lazy load implementation, and many other optimization techniques required to improve the loading time of your WordPress site. 

Conclusion 

PageSpeed is a crucial factor for your user experience as well as the google search rankings. By activating the divi lazy load you can typically improve the PageSpeed performance of your divi-powered website. 

But to do so, comes with some tradeoffs. If you are planning to use RabbitLoader plugin on your divi powered WordPress website, we advise your to turn of any and all optimization features offered by the divi theme including the divi lazy load feature, this would help you avoid conflicts and allow RabbitLoader to do its magic on your divi theme.