You click a website, the screen stays white, the content appears in pieces and the buttons move around. How many seconds do you wait before going back? Your clients wait even less. Speed is one of the most underrated characteristics of a website, and one of the ones that most influence sales.
Why speed matters
- Conversion: every second of waiting increases the chance visitors give up.
- Google: page experience, which includes loading, is considered in rankings.
- Ads: fast pages tend to perform better and make better use of every paid click.
- Phones: on mobile connections, heavy websites suffer even more.
How to measure speed
The best-known tool is Google’s PageSpeed Insights. Just enter the website address to see a score for mobile and desktop and a list of improvements. It also shows the page experience metrics:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): how long the main element on the screen takes to appear.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): how long the website takes to respond to taps and clicks.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): whether elements “jump” around while the page loads.
Always test the mobile version, which is usually the slowest.
Villain number 1: heavy images
Photos straight from the camera or phone can be much larger than necessary. To fix it:
- Resize to the size the image appears on the website.
- Compress before uploading.
- Use modern formats, like WebP, when possible.
- Use lazy loading for images further down the page.
Other common causes of slowness
- Too many plugins: on platforms like WordPress, each plugin adds code.
- Heavy themes: templates full of effects the website doesn’t even use.
- Third-party scripts: chats, pixels and widgets loading at the same time.
- Weak hosting: a slow server to respond.
- Videos embedded at the top: they load lots of data right away.
- Too many fonts: many font families and weights.
Checklist for a faster website
- Optimize every image.
- Remove unused plugins, scripts and fonts.
- Enable caching and compression on the server.
- Use quality hosting.
- Set image width and height to keep the page from “jumping”.
- Load videos only when the visitor clicks.
- Test again in PageSpeed Insights after each change.
Is a perfect score mandatory?
No. The score is a guide, not a goal in itself. The aim is for the website to open fast for real visitors and for the experience metrics to be at a good level. Sometimes, a feature that matters for sales, like a chat, is worth a small speed cost.
Speed starts with the project
It is much easier to build a lightweight website from the start than to try to speed up a heavy one later. Custom websites, with clean code and optimized images, usually load faster than generic templates full of features.
Example: diagnosing a slow website
A store had a home page that took long to appear on phones. The analysis showed three main causes: a very heavy cover photo, a video autoplaying at the top and several scripts from tools that were no longer used. The fixes were simple: compress and resize the image, replace the video with an image and a play button and remove the old scripts. The page started opening much faster, without changing anything in the design.
Optimization priorities
- Main image at the top: it is the first large element visitors see.
- Images on the rest of the page: resize them and use lazy loading.
- Third-party scripts: keep only the essential ones.
- Fonts: use few variations.
- Server: caching, compression and adequate hosting.
Speed in online stores
In stores, speed directly influences sales. Category pages with many photos, filters and recommendations can become heavy. Use optimized thumbnails, load more products as the client scrolls and test the speed of the cart and checkout, which are the most critical steps.
Quick glossary
- Cache: a stored copy of parts of the website so it loads faster on later visits.
- Compression: reducing the size of files sent to the browser.
- Lazy loading: loading images only when they are about to appear.
- WebP: a modern, lighter image format.
- CDN: a network of servers that delivers files from locations closer to the visitor.
Conclusion
Speed is part of the experience and of the sale. Measure with PageSpeed Insights, tackle images first, remove what isn’t used and choose good hosting. A fast website makes better use of every visit, every ad and every position earned on Google.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good PageSpeed score?
The higher the better, but what matters most is that the experience metrics (LCP, INP and CLS) are at a good level, especially on mobile.
Does changing hosting make the website faster?
It can help, especially if the current server is slow. But heavy images and code need to be fixed too.
Are Evollue websites fast?
Yes. Projects are built with lightweight code and optimized images, designed for phones from the start.
