20 Super Fast Loading WordPress Genesis Child Themes for a Speedy Site in 2023

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When it comes to creating a WordPress site, few things are more important than having a fast page load time. The speed of your site not only impacts the user experience and how likely visitors are to engage with your content, but it‘s also become an important search ranking factor.

While the WordPress core software is quite lightweight and fast, the theme and plugins you choose can have a big impact on your site‘s load times. That‘s why selecting a fast-loading, well-coded WordPress theme is crucial, especially if you‘re using a theme framework like Genesis.

In this post, we‘ll take a look at what the Genesis Framework is, why site speed is so important, and showcase 20 of the fastest loading Genesis child themes available today. Whether you‘re creating a blog, business site, ecommerce store or portfolio, you‘ll find a quick-loading Genesis child theme on the list to help you achieve top speeds.

Let‘s get started!

About the Genesis Framework for WordPress

Before we dive into the fastest Genesis child themes, let‘s quickly cover what Genesis is and why it‘s a smart choice for WordPress sites.

Genesis is a popular theme framework for WordPress that provides a solid foundation to build your site upon. It was created by StudioPress, one of the leading WordPress theme shops, and is known for its emphasis on clean code, security, and SEO.

Some of the key benefits of using the Genesis framework include:

  • Fast loading times: The Genesis framework follows WordPress coding best practices and is lightweight, giving it an inherent speed advantage over bloated themes.

  • Strong security: Genesis is audited by security professionals and provides multiple security enhancements such as preventing malicious code execution.

  • Built-in SEO optimization: Genesis has clean, semantic code and outputs proper microdata to give your site an SEO edge right out of the box.

  • Mobile responsive: All Genesis child themes are automatically mobile responsive and look great on any device.

  • Built for customization: The Genesis framework makes it easy for developers to customize and extend with hooks, filters, and layouts.

To use Genesis, you first install the base framework, then add on one of the many pre-made Genesis child themes to get the exact look and functionality you need. The Genesis framework currently powers over 500,000 WordPress sites.

Why Site Speed is Crucial for SEO and UX

Now that we‘ve covered what the Genesis framework is, let‘s talk about why site speed is so important in the first place.

It should come as no surprise that the faster your pages load, the happier your visitors will be. Here are a few eye-opening site speed statistics:

  • 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less
  • 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load
  • A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions
  • 73% of mobile internet users say that they‘ve encountered a website that was too slow to load

But beyond providing a good user experience, your site‘s page load times are important for SEO as well. Google has used site speed as a ranking signal for desktop searches since 2010, and more recently they‘ve started using mobile page speed as a ranking factor for mobile searches too.

While site speed is just one of over 200 signals in Google‘s search algorithms, it‘s clear that faster loading pages are given preference over slower ones, all else being equal. So if you want your WordPress site to rank well in Google and convert visits into subscribers or customers, optimizing your page load times is crucial.

Factors that Impact WordPress Site Speed

There are a number of factors that impact how fast a WordPress site loads. Some of the major ones include:

  • Web hosting: The server resources and infrastructure of your hosting company play a huge role in site speed. Choosing a reputable host that‘s optimized for WordPress is important.

  • WordPress theme: Bloated themes with excessive features, unoptimized code and images can really slow down a site. Choose a lightweight, fast theme like Genesis.

  • Plugins: Too many WordPress plugins or poorly coded ones can significantly increase your site‘s load times. Minimize your plugin use and choose plugins wisely.

  • Images: Uploading giant, uncompressed images is an easy way to slow down your pages. Always optimize your images before uploading to WordPress.

  • Caching: Enabling server-side and/or browser caching reduces the amount of work required to load a page and speeds up your site.

  • Scripts: Running too many scripts or loading JavaScript libraries improperly can slow things down. Minify and concatenate your JS and CSS files.

Selecting a fast WordPress theme like one of the Genesis child themes we‘ll list below is just one piece of the puzzle, but it‘s an important place to start. You‘ll also want to follow WordPress optimization best practices to ensure your site runs as quickly as possible.

The 20 Fastest Loading Genesis Child Themes

Now that we understand a bit more about Genesis and why site speed is important, let‘s get to the main event – the fastest loading Genesis child themes available today.

To come up with this list, we ran multiple speed tests of the theme demo sites using Pingdom and Google PageSpeed Insights. So all of these Genesis child themes are not only well-designed, but they‘re also optimized for super fast loading right out of the box.

1. Monochrome Pro

  • Theme Description: Monochrome Pro is a minimal, typography-driven blogging theme for Genesis that‘s perfect for lifestyle, fashion, or design blogs.
  • Pingdom Load Time: 491 ms
  • Google PageSpeed Insights Scores: 92 (mobile) / 100 (desktop)
  • Key Features: Responsive design, sticky header, after entry widget, beautiful typography

2. Infinity Pro

  • Theme Description: Infinity Pro is a clean and minimal Genesis child theme that works well for blogs, photography sites, or small businesses.
  • Pingdom Load Time: 619 ms
  • Google PageSpeed Insights Scores: 74 (mobile) / 99 (desktop)
  • Key Features: Masonry blog layout, 4 color styles, customizable header, theme options, WooCommerce support

3. Atmosphere Pro

  • Theme Description: Atmosphere Pro is a minimal blogging and portfolio theme for Genesis that features a responsive, masonry-style homepage.
  • Pingdom Load Time: 487 ms
  • Google PageSpeed Insights Scores: 91 (mobile) / 100 (desktop)
  • Key Features: Responsive design, portfolio integration, landing page template, 3 page layouts

4. Breakthrough Pro

  • Theme Description: Breakthrough Pro is a clean, minimal Genesis child theme designed for small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs.
  • Pingdom Load Time: 487 ms
  • Google PageSpeed Insights Scores: 86 (mobile) / 100 (desktop)
  • Key Features: Responsive layout, parallax effect, pricing table page template, customizable header

5. Authority Pro

  • Theme Description: Authority Pro is an SEO optimized Genesis theme well-suited for marketers, agencies, and online businesses.
  • Pingdom Load Time: 839 ms
  • Google PageSpeed Insights Scores: 76 (mobile) / 100 (desktop)
  • Key Features: Advanced SEO settings, multiple header layouts, lead capture options, mobile responsive

6. Studio Pro

  • Theme Description: Studio Pro is a fast portfolio theme for agencies, freelancers and design firms to showcase their work.
  • Pingdom Load Time: 612 ms
  • Google PageSpeed Insights Scores: 85 (mobile) / 100 (desktop)
  • Key Features: Portfolio custom post type, customizable home page, Google Fonts, mobile optimized

7. Magazine Pro

  • Theme Description: Magazine Pro is a flexible theme designed for online magazines, news websites, or content-heavy blogs.
  • Pingdom Load Time: 1.19 seconds
  • Google PageSpeed Insights Scores: 66 (mobile) / 100 (desktop)
  • Key Features: 6 widget areas, featured posts and videos, 3 layout options, responsive design

8. Workstation Pro

  • Theme Description: Workstation Pro is a clean, professional Genesis child theme perfect for businesses, agencies or freelancers.
  • Pingdom Load Time: 669 ms
  • Google PageSpeed Insights Scores: 74 (mobile) / 100 (desktop)
  • Key Features: Widgetized homepage, portfolio template, on-click demo importer, HTML5 design

9. Aspire Pro

  • Theme Description: Aspire Pro is a minimal Genesis child theme for bloggers with a masonry blog layout and sleek design.
  • Pingdom Load Time: 564 ms
  • Google PageSpeed Insights Scores: 91 (mobile) / 100 (desktop)
  • Key Features: Responsive design, 3 blog layouts, after entry widget area, simple customization

10. Foodie Pro

  • Theme Description: Foodie Pro is a recipe-centric theme for food bloggers running on the Genesis framework.
  • Pingdom Load Time: 1.15 seconds
  • Google PageSpeed Insights Scores: 69 (mobile) / 97 (desktop)
  • Key Features: Recipe index template, mobile responsive, 3 color options, simple social icons

And here are 10 more fast Genesis child themes worth considering:

  1. Parallax Pro: A fast, versatile business theme with a stunning parallax effect

  2. Daily Dish Pro: An elegant theme for food and lifestyle bloggers

  3. Digital Pro: A fast, SEO optimized theme for online marketers and entrepreneurs

  4. AgentPress Pro: A speedy theme for real estate agents and agencies

  5. Executive Pro: An SEO-friendly theme for professional service sites

  6. Gallery Pro: A quick-loading, mobile responsive photography portfolio theme

  7. Lifestyle Pro: A chic, performance optimized theme for lifestyle bloggers

  8. Modern Studio Pro: A contemporary, fast-loading portfolio theme for creatives

  9. Wellness Pro: An inviting theme for health, fitness and lifestyle bloggers

  10. Niche Pro: A fast, powerful theme for affiliate marketers and niche sites

All of these Genesis child themes have demonstrated lightning-fast speeds out of the box when following WordPress optimization best practices. They‘re well-coded, SEO-friendly, and they let your content shine without needless bloat.

Tips to Speed Up Your Genesis WordPress Site

In addition to choosing a fast-loading Genesis child theme, there are a number of other steps you can take to speed up your WordPress site even more. Some quick tips:

  • Upgrade your hosting: Your hosting service has a huge impact on speed. Invest in premium WordPress hosting from a reputable provider.

  • Use a CDN: Offload static assets like images, CSS and JS files to a CDN to reduce load on your server and speed up global access.

  • Compress your images: Images are typically the biggest resources on a page. Optimize them with a WordPress plugin like Smush.

  • Enable caching: Cache your pages and assets to improve loading times for repeat visitors. Use a caching plugin or your host‘s caching tools.

  • Minimize plugins: Too many plugins will slow your site. Remove unnecessary plugins and use lightweight, well-maintained ones.

  • Optimize your database: Over time, your WordPress database gets bloated with unused data. Clean it up with a plugin like WP-Optimize.

  • Lazy load images/video: Defer loading of below-the-fold images and video until a user scrolls down to them to speed up the initial page load.

  • Minify CSS/JS: Minimize your code files to strip out unnecessary characters and speed up loading. Use a plugin like Autoptimize.

For more in-depth tips, check out our WordPress speed optimization guide and walkthrough on how to score 100/100 on Google PageSpeed Insights.

Genesis Framework vs Other WordPress Themes

Genesis isn‘t the only WordPress theme framework on the market. Let‘s quickly see how it stacks up against some other popular WordPress theme providers in terms of site speed and performance:

  • Divi: Divi is a hugely popular WordPress theme and visual page builder. While quite flexible, Divi has a reputation of adding a lot of code bloat which can slow down sites if you‘re not careful. Out of the box Genesis sites typically outperform Divi in raw speed.

  • Avada: Avada is the #1 selling theme on ThemeForest. It‘s packed with customization options, but all those features come at the cost of extra code and slower performance. Genesis is faster.

  • Astra: Astra is another lightweight, multipurpose WordPress theme that‘s popular with the page builder crowd. It has great performance, but requires extra plugins to match some of Genesis‘ SEO functionality.

  • OceanWP: OceanWP is a freemium multipurpose theme that offers a lot of integrations with page builders. It‘s fast-loading, but not quite as quick or clean as Genesis according to our tests.

Of course, any well-optimized WordPress theme can load quickly and performance will depend on your use case. But based on our research and experience, Genesis child themes offer the best combination of speed, SEO, design and functionality.

Conclusion

When it comes to WordPress site speed, your theme plays a big role. By choosing a fast-loading Genesis child theme and following WordPress optimization best practices, you can ensure your site loads lightning fast for your visitors and search engines.

The 20 Genesis child themes featured here are all coded for speed and performance. Whether you need an elegant blogging theme, a sleek portfolio design, or a professional business layout, you‘ll find a quick-loading Genesis child theme to meet your needs.

Remember, when it comes to site speed, every second counts. Invest in a fast Genesis theme, quality hosting, and smart optimization to give your WordPress site the edge. Your visitors and search rankings will thank you for it!

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