Most people will only give a website a few seconds before giving up, especially on a phone. Speed also plays a part in how Google ranks pages, so a slow site can cost you visitors before they've even arrived.
How to check your site's speed
Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool is a good place to start. Enter your web address and it'll score your site on mobile and desktop, and list what's slowing it down. Focus on the mobile score, as that's where most visitors are, and look at the Core Web Vitals section, which shows how real visitors experience your site.
The most common causes
Oversized images
This is the big one. Photos straight off a camera or phone can be several megabytes each, when a few hundred kilobytes would look just as good on screen. Modern formats like WebP, and serving smaller versions to phones, make a big difference.
Too many plugins
On WordPress especially, every plugin can add its own scripts and styles to every page, whether that page uses them or not. A few dozen plugins can quietly add up to a lot of extra weight.
Page builders
Tools like Divi and Elementor make it easy to drag a layout together, but they tend to produce bloated code. Even a simple page can end up loading far more than it needs to.
Cheap or overloaded hosting
Budget shared hosting puts lots of sites on one server. If the other sites are busy, yours slows down. Hosting is rarely the only problem, but a slow server makes everything else worse.
Third-party scripts
Chat widgets, social feeds, tracking pixels, embedded videos and cookie banners all load code from other companies' servers. Each one adds a little delay, and some add a lot.
No caching
Without caching, the server builds every page from scratch for every visitor. Caching keeps a ready-made copy, so pages can be served almost instantly.
What you can do yourself
Resize and compress images before uploading them
Remove plugins you're not using
Replace embedded social feeds with a simple link
Check whether your host offers caching, and switch it on
When it needs a developer
If you've tried the quick wins and the site's still slow, the problem is usually deeper: a heavy theme, a page builder, or a site that's grown messy over the years. At that point it's often a choice between fixing what's there and rebuilding it properly.
I can audit your site to find what's slowing it down and fix the biggest issues first. Take a look at my WordPress development and website hosting services, or get in touch and tell me which site you're worried about.
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