Page speed affects both rankings and conversion, and most business sites can halve their load time in a day of focused work.
The highest-impact fixes
Almost always in this order.
- Compress and correctly size images, and serve modern formats.
- Remove unused third-party scripts, especially old tracking tags.
- Defer non-critical JavaScript.
- Serve fonts locally with a swap fallback.
- Enable caching and a content delivery network.
Measure on the right device
Test on a mid-range phone over mobile data. A fast laptop on office wifi hides the problem your actual customers experience.
The usual culprits
Slow service business sites almost always suffer from the same few issues.
- Huge, uncompressed images.
- Too many plugins or third-party scripts.
- Cheap, overloaded hosting.
- Heavy page builders with bloated code.
Measure on mobile
Test on a real phone over mobile data, not just your office Wi-Fi. That's how most of your customers experience your site.
The takeaway
Images and third-party scripts cause most slowness. Fix those two and test on a real phone.