Website speed: why it matters and free ways to fix it

Most visitors leave a site that takes more than a few seconds to load, and search engines rank slow sites lower. On mobile data, speed matters even more. The biggest culprit is almost always heavy images. Compressing images, loading them only when needed, and using free fast hosting fix the majority of speed problems at no cost.

Website speed is not a vanity metric. A slow site loses customers before they see your offer, and search engines push slow sites down the results. On mobile data — how most people here browse — it matters even more.

Why it costs you money

• Visitors leave if a page takes more than a few seconds — you paid (in effort) to get them, then lost them
• Search engines rank faster sites higher, so speed affects how many people find you
• On mobile data, a heavy site is slow and expensive for the visitor

The number one cause: heavy images

Nine times out of ten, a slow site is a site full of huge images straight from a phone or camera. A single photo can be several megabytes when it only needs to be a fraction of that. Compressing images is the single biggest free win available.

Free fixes that work

• Compress and correctly size every image before uploading
• Load images only as the visitor scrolls to them ("lazy loading")
• Use free fast hosting that serves your site from servers near each visitor
• Remove unused scripts and heavy add-ons you do not need