People don't wait for slow websites. If your page takes too long to appear, especially on a phone, many visitors leave before they ever see what you offer. Speed also affects how Google evaluates your site, so a slow site can cost you both visitors and visibility.
How Google measures speed
Google uses a set of measurements called Core Web Vitals to judge the real-world experience of a page:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how long it takes for the main content to appear. Aim for 2.5 seconds or less.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks. Aim for 200 milliseconds or less.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much the page jumps around while it loads. Aim for 0.1 or less.
How to test your site
Paste your homepage and key service pages into PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). Check the mobile results first, since that's where most sites struggle. Google Search Console also has a Core Web Vitals report showing which pages need work.
The most common causes of a slow site
- Oversized images. A photo straight off a camera or phone can be many times larger than it needs to be.
- Too many plugins or scripts loading on every page.
- Cheap or overloaded hosting.
- No caching, so the server rebuilds every page from scratch for every visitor.
- Heavy extras, like auto-playing videos, sliders, chat widgets, and multiple tracking scripts.
The fixes that make the biggest difference
- Resize and compress images, and use modern formats like WebP.
- Use caching and a CDN (content delivery network) to serve pages faster.
- Remove plugins and scripts you don't need.
- Lazy-load images further down the page so they only load as visitors scroll.
- Choose quality hosting that's built for WordPress.
Start with images. On most small business sites I review, oversized images are the single biggest cause of slow load times, and they're one of the easiest things to fix.
Every site I build is set up for fast load times from the start, and I keep an eye on speed for the sites I manage so they stay quick as they grow.
