EVERY SECOND COUNTS
My website is slow: why it happens, how to measure it and how to fix it
You open your website on your phone and it takes ages. You wait because it's yours; your clients don't. A slow website loses visitors before they even read what you do, and worsens the experience Google takes into account. The good news is that it can almost always be improved a lot without rebuilding it. Here is how to measure speed, the most common causes and what to do about each one.
Why speed matters
- Visitors leave. On mobile with poor signal, a heavy website can take so long that the client goes back to Google and clicks the next result.
- Google takes it into account. Its systems reward pages that offer a good experience, and speed is part of that. It won't make up for poor content, but between two similar pages it can make a difference.
- It looks careless. A website that lags or “jumps” while loading reflects badly on the business.
- Ads cost more: if you pay per click, every visitor who leaves before the page loads is money lost.
How to measure your website's speed
- PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev): paste your website's address and look mainly at the mobile result. If your site has enough traffic, you'll also see real-user data.
- The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console: it shows which pages on your site have problems based on real data.
- Your own phone on mobile data, not the office wifi. It's the most honest way to see what your client sees.
Core Web Vitals are the three metrics Google uses to measure loading experience:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
- How long the largest element, usually the main image or headline, takes to appear. Good: 2.5 seconds or less.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint)
- How long the page takes to respond when you tap a button or menu. Good: 200 milliseconds or less.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
- How much elements “jump” while loading. Good: 0.1 or less.
The most common causes
- Huge images. A photo uploaded straight from the camera or phone can weigh several megabytes, when a fraction of that would often do.
- Slow or overloaded hosting. A cheap server shared with hundreds of sites, or without enough resources, takes a while to respond before anything even starts loading.
- Too many plugins or a heavy page builder. Each piece adds code the browser has to download and run, even if it isn't used on that page.
- Third-party scripts: chats, advertising pixels, maps, embedded videos, social media widgets and multiple fonts.
- No caching or compression: the server builds the page from scratch on every visit.
- Sliders and background videos on the home page, which load a lot before showing anything useful.
What to do in each case
- Optimise images
- Resize them to the size they're displayed at, use modern formats such as WebP and lazy-load the ones further down. It's usually the quickest and most noticeable improvement.
- Review your hosting
- If the server is slow to respond, no other optimisation fully makes up for it. Good hosting doesn't have to be expensive; I explain it in the difference between hosting and a domain.
- Remove what you don't use
- Deactivated plugins that are still installed, theme features you don't use, old scripts from tools you've abandoned.
- Keep third parties in check
- Ask whether each chat, pixel or widget is worth what it costs in speed. Many can be loaded only when needed.
- Turn on caching and compression
- Your hosting or CMS usually has options to serve pre-built, compressed pages.
- Simplify
- Sometimes the most effective step is a simpler website. A static site, with no database and no dozens of plugins, loads very fast on almost any hosting; I compare the options in WordPress: advantages, drawbacks and alternatives.
When slowness is a warning
If your website has suddenly become slow without you changing anything, don't dismiss it as a bad day for the server. A hack can eat up hosting resources in the background. That's how I discovered it on my own website: while investigating why the server was at 100% CPU and memory. I tell the story in my website was hacked: what I did.
Common mistakes
- Obsessing over the PageSpeed score instead of what users actually notice.
- Installing yet another plugin to speed up a website that's slow because of too many plugins.
- Only testing on a computer with a good connection.
- Optimising the home page and forgetting the rest, especially the service pages, which matter most.
- Switching hosting without knowing whether that was the problem.
Common questions
How long should my website take to load?
As a reference, Google considers it good if the main content appears within 2.5 seconds. More than an exact figure, what matters is that the essentials appear almost instantly on mobile.
Does a slow website lose me rankings on Google?
It can play a part, especially if it's very slow, but content and relevance carry more weight. What's certain is that you lose visitors who get tired of waiting.
Do I have to rebuild my website to make it fast?
Not always. Optimising images, removing plugins and improving hosting solve many cases. If the base is very heavy, starting again is sometimes better value; I explain it in rebuild your website or improve the one you have?
Is a static website always faster?
It usually is, because it doesn't have to build each page on the fly. But a static site with huge images and lots of scripts can be slow too.
Fast websites from the start
I build lightweight websites, with optimised images and without dozens of plugins, so they load quickly on mobile. If your current website is slow, an audit will tell you why and what to fix first.
See the website audit