Most slow business websites are slow for one of four reasons: photos uploaded straight off a camera or phone at full size, a site builder or plugins loading things the page never uses, an old or heavy theme, or cheap hosting. It matters because the people most likely to call, someone with a leak or a broken AC on their phone, are the least patient, and they leave a slow page for the next search result. Test yours properly first, because the cause decides the fix.
This is reason 6 in why your website isn't generating leads.
Test it the way your customers see it
Your computer on office Wi-Fi, with the site already in its cache, is the fastest your site will ever look. Instead:
- Take your phone off Wi-Fi.
- Open a private browser tab so nothing is cached.
- Type your address and count until you can read the headline and tap the phone number.
If you are waiting, so is every visitor. For a number, run your homepage through Google's free PageSpeed Insights on the mobile setting; it also lists what is slowing it down.
Cause 1 — Photos at full size
A photo straight from a modern phone can be several megabytes. A page with ten of them is enormous on a phone connection. This is the most common cause and the easiest fix: resize photos to the size they are shown at and save them in a modern format. Many builders do this automatically if the setting is on.
Cause 2 — Things the page never uses
Plugins, chat widgets, tracking scripts, sliders, social feeds and font libraries each add weight, and many sites carry ones nobody remembers adding. Remove anything that does not earn its place. A chat box nobody answers and a slider nobody watches are worth less than the seconds they cost.
Cause 3 — An old or heavy theme
Some themes load a large framework on every page whether it is needed or not, and older ones were built before phones mattered. If the theme is the cause, no amount of photo resizing will make the site fast. This is the cause that most often means rebuilding rather than fixing.
Cause 4 — Hosting
The cheapest shared hosting can be slow to respond before the page even starts loading. If PageSpeed reports a slow server response and the page itself is light, better hosting helps. If the page is heavy, fix the page first.
Which ones you can fix
Causes 1, 2 and 4 are usually fixable on the site you have. Cause 3 usually is not, and when it combines with a site that is also hard to edit or not built for phones, starting over costs less than untangling it.
Have it checked
The free website audit checks the rest of the site automatically, and includes Google's mobile speed score. To see which of the four causes you have, run the same test at pagespeed.web.dev and read its list of suggestions. For a plumber or an HVAC company, where callers are in a hurry, speed is worth checking first.