Why Your Premier WordPress Host Isn’t Fixing Your Slow Site

Your WordPress host promises speed but delivers frustration. Discover why premium hosting isn’t solving your slow site—and what actually works.

Are you frustrated with a sluggish WordPress site, despite relying on a top-tier hosting provider? In this show, we expose the hidden reasons for your website’s slow performance and discuss why even premier hosts might not be the solution. Learn how to identify the real culprits behind your site’s lag and discover practical steps to enhance speed. Don’t let a slow site hinder your success.

This Week’s Sponsors

Jetpack: LifterLMS

Ninja Forms: Rollback Pro

LifterLMS: LifterLMS

Rollback Pro: Rollback Pro

The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:17.060] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 181. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about why your premium WordPress host isn’t fixing your slow site. Um, there’s various reasons why that might be happening. Gonna give you some pointers, insights, and advice. Should be a great show. I’ve got my co-host, Kirk, with me. So Kirk, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?

[00:00:48.350] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, my name is Kirk Von Ahnen. I own an agency called Mañana No Más, and we do a lot of great work with the WP-Tonic team.

[00:00:55.970] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. So what should we say before we go into specific points? What should be our introduction to this discussion?

[00:01:10.880] – Kurt von Ahnen

I almost think— I almost think the introduction to this should be like, before you have a conversation about website speed, page speed, however you phrase that, you want to have an understanding of what game you’re playing and what field you’re playing on. I have a feeling a lot of people are just led completely astray. You know, you look at the Google PageSpeed report, and you get one impression. You look at other tools, you get a different impression. And then I think we anchor ourselves or we benchmark ourselves against products that aren’t in the same ballpark. And because we don’t get the same results, we get frustrated. And I think we have to take a very realistic approach to what our expectations should be. And then work within those expectations.

[00:02:01.270] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, yeah, I totally agree with you, but I think I, I totally understand why this causes so much confusion and aggro. Um, basically, if you’re running a membership, um, website or a community-focused website and you’ve got any kind of membership Um, I would say, I’m going to be bold here, I would say about 90% of the hosting that’s offered out there isn’t going to be that suitable for it, and you’re, you’re going to have a kind of crazy, um, miserable experience. And this applies to some of the leading quality providers, not because they’re rubbish; it’s just that they’re not set up for the needs or functionality of a membership community website. Uh, I mean, I’m going to go into some specific reasons why they’re not set up. Um, but I, it’s a bold statement, but I would say about 90%, especially on the cheap to medium end. Now, when you add marketing automation and a few other large plugins. It’s not that they’re bad, you know, like, let’s say, FluentCRM or Kadence or LifterLMS. If you add some large plugins to the mix, they’re—they’re well-coded, they’re well-respected. But they’re large plugins, and they require good, good quality hosting and more resources than what a small business marketing website needs.

[00:04:01.840] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s just, it’s just a fact of life. How would you respond, Kurt?

[00:04:06.360] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, as we start this discussion today, I just want to encourage listeners. Think about some of the other conversations you may have had in the space where someone might say, oh, I always put the marketing site on the main URL, but then I use subdomains for X, Y, and Z. Or I, you know, I split things up in this way or that way. Those are people who have had, you know, a poor experience, and they’re thinking to themselves, well, I gotta keep the marketing site clean, pure, and fast. And then anything with performance issues, I just mask it, put it on a subdomain, or move it, or whatever. And that’s, those are earmarks of people that have not taken a very sound, um, you know, cohesive approach to the tools that Jonathan’s talking about. Uh, when he says that LifterLMS is like a resource-hungry tool, yeah. And again, doesn’t mean the product’s bad. It means it’s a resource-hungry tool. Like, like BuddyBoss is a resource-hungry tool. It does a ton of stuff, and it has the features that people want, but it takes a ton of resources to run it.

[00:05:14.820] – Kurt von Ahnen

And think about it from the hosting perspective. If, if a host can, can run 1,000 other, you know, 5-page brochure websites efficiently, effectively, you know, for pennies on a dollar, why would they voluntarily give you extra resources because you chose to use a resource-heavy tool? That’s kind of like the status— that, that’s kind of like where we’re coming from in this. And so I think Jonathan’s got some really good notes here to try and bring everybody up to speed on, hey, what’s required, what’s a proper expectation, and how to build around some of this.

[00:05:49.050] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. So I think, with our introduction, we’ve addressed point one I was going to make. It’s just that different types of websites, built on WordPress or anything else, will require different hosting infrastructure. Um, it’s just, just the reality. You’re— and that would be the same if you’re running e-commerce, but actually a membership community website needs more resources than, uh, an e-commerce website using WooCommerce. So if you add WooCommerce, LifterLMS, FluentCRM or Fluent, um, their own shopping cart. If you— these are meaty plugins; these are meaty applications, and they just need a lot more resources. Now what—and this affects what I’m going to say next —affects some of the Premier hosting providers like Rocket, like Kinsta, like WP-Tonic. And that’s caching. Now, caching, um, and a CDN— but, um, both these types of technologies for your typical marketing website, they’re great technologies, you know. Um, they will help make your website perform significantly, significantly better if you’ve got caching, caching provided by the hosting provider, or caching— I say that, but it’s normally best if you’re with a reasonably quality hosting provider to either they will use a specific plugin, a custom-made plugin, or they will use something else, um, and they will install it.

[00:07:59.830] – Jonathan Denwood

Um, and it’s not a good idea to start installing your own caching plugins. Um, that just— that— or they will provide a CDN. It is not a good idea to install a third-party plugin that provides a CDN. Um, but when it comes to membership websites, caching, if it’s not set up correctly, is a nightmare. It truly is a nightmare for a membership website when someone logs in and tries to use the lessons and courses. It’s just gonna be a nightmare. What you got to say about this, Kurt?

[00:08:45.360] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think people need a better description, Jonathan, of what’s actually happening. So caching is basically taking snapshots of your website and storing them all over the globe so that wherever someone’s closest to a snapshot, that’s the version of the website that they see. And so what we’re describing as, you know, e-commerce or e-learning or any of the— these are called dynamic websites, meaning people are interacting with them. They’re not just serving static content. They’re— the, the content changes based on the activity of the user, makes it a dynamic website. And so if someone is signed into the website, you know, and they’re seeing a cached version of it from Germany but something’s been updated, you know, in Florida, they’re not seeing the most recent version. And so when Jonathan says there’s like user issues What typically happens, and, and remember, I do a lot of support with LifterLMS, so I can tell you what happens when people misuse caching. If they misuse the caching, someone signs up for a course, then they go to log in and they can’t get logged in. They’re told they don’t have an account. They go to re-register and it says, well, you can’t register, this email already exists.

[00:09:56.650] – Kurt von Ahnen

You know, they get like in these weird loops where, where the user experience is, is totally befuddled because they’re not seeing seeing a current version of the website and the website’s database. They’re seeing a snapshot of the video from some other server somewhere around the globe. And so that’s why dynamic pages like WooCommerce, like LifterLMS, like BuddyBoss— you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t cache that content. So that’s why the caching wouldn’t help you, you know, in, in a page speed quest.

[00:10:26.800] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, thanks for that. Um, I think it’s a good place for us to go for our middle break. And when we come back, we’ve got 3 or 4 other points to make that will make you better educated about making a choice when it comes to hosting your membership community website. We will be back in a few moments, folks.

[00:10:47.110] – Speaker 4

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[00:12:05.860] – Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back, folks. Also wanna point out, I do a great free newsletter. You can go, it covers one of these subjects that we discuss in the show in a bit more detail. Plus I do a curated list of the best stories, tech stories that come on my radar every week. I set it all up myself. It’s totally free. You get it by going over to wp-tonic.com/newsletter. wp-tonic.com/newsletter. So next one, PHP Workers. Now caching, great thing, but most, especially when a membership site starts to get more than half a dozen users, and it does depend what the, the dynamics of the course, is it very heavily, um, orientated to interaction? Um, there’s, but there’s going to be a lot of back and forth data going to the user and then data going back. And that depends on the type of courses that are constructed. If somebody is just got some reading and they’re just watching a video, that’s not going to be so dynamic. But if they’re interacting with the course, that’s going to be more demanding. And that interaction is controlled by something called PHP workers. And especially on the lower level hosting providers, cheaper, anything below $25, between $35 and $25, you’re really going to see a decline in the amount of PHP workers that they provide and they, and the setups they’re going to have.

[00:14:06.420] – Jonathan Denwood

Won’t allow them to increase the workers. You’re either going to have to go up to a higher plan, and a lot of the time they’re reluctant to tell you how many PHP workers is provided. But that’s what— that’s why PHP workers is important. What’s your take on this, Kurt?

[00:14:29.710] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think the key part of what you just said is that not many are going to be quick to disclose you know, act— how they actually set up your account or how they manage, um, your hosting instance, right? Your package. Um, this is something, and I’m going to be very transparent right now, Jonathan, you might be surprised, but I really don’t understand some of the garbly gook when I am trying to compare different hosting packages, especially if I’m talking with a client. The client’s like, well, I need to know if we’re going to have this, this, this, this, this as part of the, you know, that’s included included the hosting. I’m like, where’s that coming from? And then I go to these hosts and you look at their sales material and you’re like, okay, that’s cool, they got some numbers and some— this much RAM and this much this and this much that, but how’s my website really gonna perform in this instance? You know, like, how many PHP workers do I have?

[00:15:20.030] – Jonathan Denwood

How—

[00:15:20.640] – Kurt von Ahnen

what kind of support do I get? What— and those, those answers aren’t given in the marketing material. Sometimes you you got to dig a little harder if you’re, especially if you’re going to try and compare services.

[00:15:31.950] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, um, it is confusing with some of the higher ones. They like Redis, um, database and they object caching and this and that. Really great for really top end when you’ve got thousands of users. The truth is it’s a bit overkill for the majority of membership. It’s more at, you know, what type of server you’re on, how much RAM, the con— what CPUs they’re using, is, is it, uh, a modern, um, hard drive, you know, um, that they’re using, um, and the PHP workers. Some of the other that are listed in the topper end that specialize in membership and community really only kick in if you got the most demanding websites. They’re not bad, but, um, yeah. Um, and it makes me laugh when like they list like we, we, um, yeah, I’m gonna say something and I’ll bit my tongue actually. Um, So let’s go on to the other one. This is all great stuff that we have talked about so far, but you can have the best quality hosting and the best support going. And I think we really do. I, and I’m, and I know Kirk does, um, and my team does.

[00:17:07.940] – Jonathan Denwood

We go above the call of duty in the amount of— there, there is, we do offer support plans and there is a line. Where if somebody’s consistently asking us something, they really got to sign up for support plan, right? Because they’re asking stuff that is not really involved with hosting, um, um, or, you know, why FluentCRM isn’t sending email. But if it’s around the sending out. Um, we’ll probably investigate it because it could be a hosting problem, but there’s definitely a lot of stuff that’s not— is out the bounds of hosting. But get back to it. If you’ve got multiple different types of plugin, and we do provide a staging site, and really you really want to try out your plugins on your staging site and do the updates on the staging site. Does this really matter if you haven’t got one student yet or you’ve only got half a dozen students? It probably doesn’t really matter. If you’ve got 30, 50, 100 students, it really does matter, right? It just depends where you are on your journey. So we don’t automatically tell people you got— and we do provide staging sites, but we don’t enforce it because if they’re starting out, they’ve got enough on their plate.

[00:18:43.860] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. Um, but if you just keep installing plugins and you get up, you get up to 70, 100 plugins and you just keep installing more and more plugins, you’re gonna have the best hosting going. It’s going to slow down and they’re going to come to you and they can say you need upgrade. Um, and if you’re not making any money, you haven’t even got your first student, you’re going to push back because you’re not making any money. Um, so it’s a difficult situation. You tend to lose a client. Um, so we try and avoid it, but you just can’t keep installing stuff and more stuff, and where you should be concentrating on getting the initial setup and getting some students. What do you reckon, Kurt?

[00:19:42.240] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, there’s so much that goes into a badly set up website. I mean, I’m literally dealing with that this week, and that is, you know, built the platform, put the right tools in, everything should be fine, everything’s configured. They start complaining about, you know, performance or what I got back as a support ticket was, you know, bad site structure. And I was like, bad site structure? What are they talking about? And, um, Jonathan, you go in there and it’s like, you know, this is a website equipped with Fluent Forms. And then they say, well, this form doesn’t work. And I go, what form? And they say, this form. And I look in Fluent Forms and that form’s not in there. And I go, well, I don’t know how you built this form, but the form you’re saying doesn’t work ain’t part of the default form tool. I don’t know how you built this, but this, this ain’t even part of the website. Like, you put something in the website, but it’s not configured. It’s not configured to anything. It doesn’t work. It’s like people that, like, you and I both know there’s a difference between professional-level work and like hobbyist-level work.

[00:20:43.770] – Kurt von Ahnen

And sometimes I go into these sites and I’ll say, well, my page speed is down and this isn’t right and I need to optimize. And I’ll talk about, you know, and they think optimizing like, like SEO optimization, like there’s some magic black art to it. But you go in there and it’s like, well, if you’re trying to play, you know, high-density, you know, high-resolution video is the background of your hero, uh, you know, section in your thing. Well, that’s, that’s a bad move. When you start looking at picture files and the files are big enough to plaster, you know, um, signs on the highway, you’re like, look, people are looking at this on a 15-inch screen and you’re using a resolution that a printer would use if they were going to make a billboard on the highway. Like, we— you have to appropriately size your assets so that the server’s resources can do their job. And so a lot of times what I find, Jonathan, is you’re right, like the quality hosting doesn’t make up for a badly set up website. But even if the website is set up well, if the client doesn’t manage, you know, their digital assets, their, their visual assets within that setup, they’re in the same hole.

[00:21:54.750] – Kurt von Ahnen

It’s— there’s so much to building a good performing good experience, user experience website that it’s weird because we see it all the time where the marketing says WordPress is easy or it’s democratized publishing or it’s, you know, anybody can do it. AI makes it simple. And what we’re finding is more and more and more having a professional in the loop is, is the only real option to get in something that performs well.

[00:22:23.180] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it depends on who that individual is. There’s an enormous span in price and quality. If you’re just getting somebody off Fiverr or you’re just getting somebody off Upwork, um, the quality that you might be dealing with is very diverse. I’m going to leave it at that. Um, and really it’s open market. You’ve got to do your research. Um, It’s better to get, you know, if you’re gonna go there, it’s better to get a recommendation in my opinion, or at WP-Tonic, we offer a very inexpensive, inexpensive support and maintenance package. But people are very resistant, so I don’t push it. But there’s definitely, ’cause we do help a lot more than we should, but there’s definitely a line which we won’t, go over. Um, and that’s taken time for me to understand where that line is. Um, you know, this is, you know, great flexibility, great ownership, great ownership of your intellectual property, being able to build something that you have the maximum control over. Does have some responsibilities, but I can honestly tell you, if you avoid getting too much in the weeds initially, installing too much, thinking you’re going to sell products even when you haven’t even got your first customer membership member.

[00:24:02.520] – Jonathan Denwood

Avoid all this complication, which is okay as your journey, as you go along your journey, but is a mistake and it ends up making your life complicated. Um, we give a really great setup package at WP-Tonic. We configure it all. If you use one of our starter websites, it’s all configured, it’s all set up. You can do the odd changes, you can change the colors, and then you’ll be off. Um, set up your Stripe, um, and you’re off, aren’t you, Kirk? But a lot of people overcomplicate it at a too early stage, don’t they?

[00:24:44.720] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, and you couldn’t have been truer in what you just described. I mean, real life example, our agency launched a new e-learning client just this week, a formal launch. We did a soft launch a month ago, proof of concept, did the real launch this week. They had thousands of people on an email list. We, we scrubbed that list properly before we used it. We’ve sent out thousands of emails this week. We’ve been able to track conversions. Um, by all accounts, this is a very successful launch, and we know that the project is going to be successful, which, which is really fun. But I think what I really want to drive home is when we look at how this website was put together, Jonathan, it’s, it’s like out of the box. There’s no, there’s no real customizations. It’s like LifterLMS, FluentCRM, Fluent perform, integrate the three together, and, and now let’s just fill the thing with content, quality content, and then market it. Like, it’s, it’s not confusing, it’s not involved. We didn’t have to consult AI for custom code. Like, I keep hearing customers use the term vibe code with me, and they’re new in the space, and like, well, I want to vibe code some features for this, and I’m like, why?

[00:25:56.450] – Kurt von Ahnen

Like, it works out of the box. Like, out of the box, Launch something simple, and as it grows, if you want to add features or add elements or use feedback from students to go, oh, my students think it’d be really cool if it did X, Y, and Z, well, then you can build that downstream when you have revenue, traction, and momentum. But, but to do that before you launch and before you have revenue coming in, to me, is just silly. And, um, you and I have had this private conversation multiple times, and I don’t know if we We could say it enough publicly, out of the box and simple is a beautiful recipe for success.

[00:26:31.510] – Speaker 4

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[00:27:08.570] – Speaker 1

This podcast episode is brought to you by LifterLMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any kind of online course, training-based membership website, or any type of e-learning project, LifterLMS is the most secure, stable, well-supported solution on the market. Go to lifterlms.com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code PODCAST20. That’s PODCAST20. Enjoy the rest of your show.

[00:27:46.040] – Jonathan Denwood

Especially at WP-Tonic, we set everything up for you.

[00:27:49.890] – Speaker 4

We’re ready to go.

[00:27:50.680] – Jonathan Denwood

We provide FluentCRM, we connect it with SendGrid, with Cadence. You can build a landing page really easily and with one of our starter themes, you can be up and running really quick. But then when you move on, you have got the flexibility of now linking Claude or AI coding with your WordPress website. Yeah. And you, you know, I would strongly advise you to only do that on a staging website. And then after you built something, move it to production. Obviously there’s, there’s security, but security is always, you know, we spend a lot of money. Kurt knows I spend a lot of money on a top-notch security platform. Not only is the hosting top-notch and it, it’s patched and patched regularly, but I also spend a lot of money on a third-party system that’s the best in the market. And I do that because it was the right thing to do. Um, but I do spend a fair bit of money on security, so we’re very anal when it comes to security and backup. Um, kind of overlap, the final thing is avoid what in the trade is called a Frankenstein website, and there’s absolutely no need to end up with one.

[00:29:24.120] – Jonathan Denwood

Just have it built out, try and get your first students, do your first marketing, get market fit, and then you’ve got a website that if you want to feature, you’ve got You’ve got AI coding, you’ve got maybe getting another plugin. You won’t be trapped in some, somebody else’s platform. You know, actually, I think in some ways WordPress with AI coding is one of the best platforms out there because I haven’t said this too much publicly because obviously people say you’re biased. Um, but I don’t think I’ve lost my rationality, but I really think with this, with the 20 years that WordPress has been around and it’s a solid platform and combining it with AI coding, you’re getting best of both worlds really. Um, and I, I think a lot of people are gonna, um, really start to realize that in the next 18 months. So in some ways I’m quite excited because I think, I think the bigger question is it doesn’t affect membership and the e-learning so much, but it’s more about, we’re in the final thought stage here now, folks, is how important, and like I said, I don’t think it’s going to affect e-learning.

[00:30:56.090] – Jonathan Denwood

I think you need a hub or e-community as I call it. E-learning, e-community. When you’re building and you’re combining both together. I don’t see that effective in the, what I’m just about to say. I think in a lot of our other areas, it’s, we are gonna get a lot less traffic to the website. But really that traffic should be more ready to buy our service and products because they’re going to be influenced by our videos, our social media, our going to community events, whatever factor that influences them. But then your website still needs to convert. Because most based on— I’ll be interested in what your views. People think a website is there to get customers, right? It isn’t, in my opinion. The blogs, articles, whatever, videos, whatever on the website through whatever search using traditional Google or AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, whatever, whatever they’re using, right? But when they get, if they’re a real customer, a real possible purchaser, the real purpose of your website is to overcome overcome objections because they’re looking for my— and you’ve been in sales a lot more than me, but hopefully you would agree. If you don’t, it’s no problem, you know.

[00:32:54.350] – Jonathan Denwood

But I think when somebody— if people have done a lot of research and they’re coming in to buy something, they’re looking for reasons not to buy. They’re looking for reasons to say that they’re This is the right product. This is the right service. I made the right decision. And that’s because their actions are very different to somebody that might be at some stage because they read everything. They go over the webs. And if you’ve got a tracking tool on your website, you’ll see that they literally go over the whole, they spend 20, 30 minutes on the website going over everything. Right. It’s a very different behavior than somebody that’s might at some stage be interested in, in purchasing something. What do you reckon?

[00:33:47.030] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I think it’s changed a lot and I think that’s something that people need to be aware of. I think, you know, looking back 15, 18, 20 years ago, yeah, a website did sell, a website got attention. But now It seems like social media referrals, Shorts on YouTube, which is social media, that seems to be like the selling. That seems to be like the net that you throw that net out and they’re kind of already making their, their intent. If we listen to the propaganda that Google says now, it’s like, no, it’s not that we’ve cut your traffic. It was never your traffic to begin with. We’re only sending people, we’re only referring your website when there’s purchase intent. We’re only, we’re only referring your site to people that have, you know, high intent. And so if, if we start to believe that, uh, then Jonathan’s correct. And, and in fact, I, I’ll say the last client that I met with locally, she was a direct referral. And when I met with her, she said, A, I was referred to you.

[00:34:51.340] – Speaker 1

Mm-hmm.

[00:34:51.630] – Kurt von Ahnen

B, I looked you up on the internet and I saw all the podcasts and all the stuff that you’re in. Then I went to your website and she goes, and after I visited your website, I just knew that you’re the people we want to do business with, right? And it’s so— it— on one hand, you know, I look at, wow, I just paid some guy a ton of money to help me write the copy on my home page, and part of me is like, was it worth it? But then the other part of me goes to a meeting and someone says, then I read your home page and I knew what you’re— who I want to do business with. Well, then that says, yeah, it was worth it. Like, and I know this about Jonathan, maybe he won’t divulge it on air, but I’ll divulge it for him. He is absolutely maniacal about wanting to change headlines over and over and over again on the, on the home page, on different pages within the website. Hey, let’s change this word out, let’s change this, let’s change this phrase. We’ll build you a website in 30 days.

[00:35:41.730] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, now let’s, let’s build a website in less than 14 days. Let’s— we’ve always tried something different because we want to measure, hey, what’s creating—

[00:35:49.850] – Jonathan Denwood

in defense, I have slowed down a A bit, I know.

[00:35:54.110] – Kurt von Ahnen

But it’s all about conversion, and I think a lot of people lose sight of that, right? It really— once people get to your website, by all intents and purposes, they should have some type of intent, and now it’s your job to solidify that intent. Like Jonathan says, overcome the objections and close the deal.

[00:36:15.480] – Jonathan Denwood

They are in very turbulent times when it comes to online. There are some patterns appearing now. I think there’s marketing methodologies that will work. Um, I know I’m getting my plans in hand, um, but I needed to get the content on the website sorted. Um, I had to get the website to a level. Um, there’s no point in doing the kind of marketing that I’m thinking of doing until I’ve got the website sorted out. And that takes, that takes time. That doesn’t happen overnight. That’s taken about 3, 3 to 4 or 5 months to get it. But I think, and that’s what you should be spending. We’re coming back because you might think, oh, they’ve gone off topic. We haven’t. Because that’s where you should be spending your time on.

[00:37:13.240] – Speaker 4

Mm-hmm.

[00:37:14.830] – Jonathan Denwood

The message, the landing page, the homepage, the about us page. Does it resonate with your target student base? Will it persuade them when you are making those short videos, when you are going on those podcasts, when you are doing that post on LinkedIn, when you’re posting that video on LinkedIn, you’re doing that TikTok, when they go to your website, is it the right message? And people just mess around with functionality and backend plugins, turning it into a kind of quasar Frankenstein instead of really focusing on the message of their key pages on their website. Would you agree with that, Kurt?

[00:38:01.730] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, yeah. And, and the core message there is if you create yourself one of these Frankenstein websites, sites that we’ve described, you have negatively affected part of the message, which is the page speed. Like, if you’re telling people—

[00:38:15.970] – Jonathan Denwood

Sorry to interrupt you, but thank you; I forgot to— you’re so right, Kirk.

[00:38:20.120] – Speaker 4

Yeah, because—

[00:38:20.900] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, sorry.

[00:38:22.280] – Kurt von Ahnen

Part of the message is how the content is served. And so if someone’s got to wait 3, 5, 6, 8 seconds for your page to load, you’ve lost that customer no matter what the copy says.

[00:38:33.240] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, and it’s worse than that because one of the— it’s proven there’s a lot of misinformation when it comes to AI search. They also want to call it by different terms, but fundamentally—and we had— we did another podcast, and we had a returning friend of the show. He’s become a friend of mine. He is one of the top SEO experts in the US, and within his SEO community, he is widely regarded as a leader. And you can tell he’s an expert, can’t you? Uh, um, and he’s fought against a lot of this misinformation, but one thing is proven in AI search: if your website is slow, the AI will not index it. Their agents, um, I’m not going to go into the misinformation that they’re in— index it; they have indexed everything, because they haven’t. But when they’re doing a fan out, and they’re actually going outside memory to actually look what’s out there, because it’s not in— it’s not in their memory, they’re indexed, and their index is a lot smaller than Google. Um, they— that’s when they go out and do a fan out.

[00:39:59.680] – Jonathan Denwood

Um, well, if your site’s slow, they’re not gonna— when they do that fan out, they’re not gonna read; they’re not gonna bring any information back. So it’s dire, absolutely dire. Right, I think we end it there. So Kirk, what’s the best place for people to find out more about you?

[00:40:19.710] – Kurt von Ahnen

Uh, LinkedIn. I’m the only Kurt Von Ahnen in there; easy to find. And our business is Mañana No Más. So mañananomas.com, or you can reach out to me through the WP-Tonic team.

[00:40:30.560] – Jonathan Denwood

And if you’re looking for a great hosting platform and a much more real partner for your membership community and WordPress and the attraction of owning your intellectual property, having the maximum control over your website, not having to adapt your process and having the freedom to utilize AI to build new functionality out, have a look at WP-Tonic. We’d love you to become a partner with us. We will be back next week, hopefully with a great topic. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.

[00:41:07.260] – Speaker 1

Thanks for listening to the Membership Machine Show. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes and leave a rating to support the show. Until next time.

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