How to improve website speed: a practical guide for business owners
Why slow websites cost you enquiries, how to test your speed and the fixes that make the biggest difference.
Why speed matters
Slow pages lose visitors before they see your offer. Speed is also part of Google’s page experience signals, so it affects how your pages compete in search.
How to test
Use Google PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile result. Ignore the score at first and look at the specific issues it lists.
The usual suspects
- Images: photos uploaded straight from a camera, several megabytes each
- Plugins and scripts: sliders, chat widgets, pop-ups and old tracking codes
- Hosting: cheap shared hosting a long way from your customers
- Fonts: several font families loaded from third parties
Fixes in order of impact
- Resize and compress images, and use modern formats like WebP
- Remove plugins and scripts you don’t need
- Lazy-load images below the first screen
- Move to quality hosting with a content delivery network
- Self-host fonts and limit the number of weights
When to rebuild
If you’ve done all of the above and your site is still slow, the theme or platform is likely the problem. That’s when a rebuild on a modern stack is worth it.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good website load time?
Aim for your main content to appear within about 2.5 seconds on mobile, which matches Google’s ‘good’ threshold for Largest Contentful Paint.
Does website speed affect SEO?
Yes, as part of page experience. More importantly, slow sites lose visitors and enquiries.
Why is my website slow on mobile?
Mobile devices and networks are slower, so heavy images, scripts and fonts hurt more.
