Page speed

Visitors do not wait. A slow page loses some of them before they have seen the headline, so every pound spent on ads or outreach that sends traffic there is partly wasted. Speed is also part of how Google judges page experience, so a slow page can be penalised in search as well. Mobile matters most, because phones have slower connections and weaker processors than an office laptop.

• Measure first with a free tool such as Google PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse, on mobile, before changing anything.
• Fix the biggest cost first. Oversized images are the usual culprit, so resize and compress them and use modern formats.
• Remove or defer scripts that are not needed for what the visitor sees first, such as chat widgets and extra tracking tags.
• Serve static files from a CDN, a network of servers that delivers files from a location near each visitor.
• Measure again after each change, and test the pages that earn money first, such as the home page, pricing and landing pages.

Page speed is not one number. It is a set of moments in a visit: when the first content appears, when the main content is visible, when the page responds to a tap, and whether things jump around while loading. Google groups these into Core Web Vitals. Largest Contentful Paint measures when the main content appears, and Google's published guidance treats 2.5 seconds or less as good. Interaction to Next Paint measures how fast the page reacts to input. Cumulative Layout Shift measures visual stability.

• Testing only on a fast office connection.
• Adding tools, tags and widgets one at a time until the page slows to a crawl.