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Speed

Your pages have too many elements

What this means for your business

Your page has an unusually large number of HTML elements. Browsers have to track and manage every element on a page, and very large pages slow down scrolling, animations, and interactions — especially on older phones.

How to fix it
Hard
2–4 hours

  1. 1A large DOM means your page has too many HTML elements — often over 1,500. Browsers have to track every element in memory, which slows scrolling, animations, and user interactions, especially on older phones.
  2. 2The most common causes are page builders adding deeply nested wrapper elements, and pages that display very long lists of items all at once.
  3. 3For long lists (products, blog posts, team members), add pagination or a "Load more" button so only a portion of items renders at a time.
  4. 4Check your page builder output — builders like Elementor and Divi can add 5–10 wrapper divs around a single paragraph. Simplify your layout structure where possible.
  5. 5Remove sections, widgets, or blocks that are hidden or invisible to users — hidden elements still count toward DOM size.
  6. 6Run your page through PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) — it shows your total DOM node count and flags the deepest or widest parts of your element tree.

On WordPress

Page builders are the main culprit — Elementor, Divi, and WPBakery all generate verbose HTML. Consider switching to the leaner Gutenberg block editor for pages where performance matters. Also audit widgets and shortcodes that generate large amounts of HTML.

On Shopify

Collection pages that display all products at once are a common source of DOM bloat. Enable pagination in your theme settings under Online Store → Themes → Customize → Collection pages. Also check for apps that inject hidden HTML into every page.

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