Why your website is slow (and how I fix it)

Most people won't wait for a slow website. They hit the back button and go to a competitor. Speed also feeds into how Google ranks your pages. The good news: most slow websites are slow for the same handful of reasons, and almost all of them can be fixed.

Check your site in two minutes

Open PageSpeed Insights, paste your website address and run the test on Mobile. Google looks at three numbers called Core Web Vitals:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): how long the main content takes to appear. Good is 2.5 seconds or less.
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint): how quickly the page reacts when someone taps or clicks. Good is 200 milliseconds or less.
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): how much the page jumps around while loading. Good is 0.1 or less.

If any of these show orange or red, your visitors are feeling it.

The 6 most common reasons a website is slow

1. Huge images

A photo straight from a phone or a stock site can be several megabytes. This is the number one problem I see. Images should be resized to the size they're shown at and saved in a modern format like WebP or AVIF.

2. Too many plugins or apps

Every WordPress plugin or Shopify app can add its own scripts and styles to every page, even pages that don't use it.

3. Heavy themes and page builders

All-in-one themes load code for hundreds of features you never use.

4. Third-party scripts

Chat widgets, trackers, pop-ups and embedded videos all load from other servers and compete for the visitor's bandwidth.

5. Fonts loading late

Several font families and weights, loaded from another site, can leave text invisible or cause the layout to jump.

6. Cheap hosting and no caching

If the server takes a long time to respond, everything after it is delayed too.

How I fix it

1. Images: convert to WebP, serve the right size for each screen with srcset, and lazy-load anything below the fold.
2. Code: remove unused plugins, apps and CSS, and defer scripts that aren't needed straight away.
3. Fonts: host them locally, load only the weights in use, and preload the main one.
4. Layout shift: give images and embeds fixed dimensions so nothing jumps.
5. Third parties: keep only what earns its place, and load chat widgets and videos only when they're needed.
6. Caching: turn on caching and compression, and use a CDN such as Cloudflare.

Animations don't have to slow a site down either. I build scroll animations with GSAP that animate only transform and opacity, and I respect the visitor's reduced-motion setting.

Quick wins you can do today

• Compress your biggest images with a free tool like Squoosh.
• Deactivate plugins or apps you don't use.
• Remove one tracking script you never look at.

A fast website feels trustworthy before anyone reads a word.

Want to know why your site is slow? Send me the link and I'll run it through a speed check and tell you what's holding it back.