How to speed up a slow small business website

Measure before you change anything

Guessing wastes time. Start with Google's free PageSpeed Insights. Enter the address of a page and it reports on both mobile and desktop.

Test more than the home page. Try your busiest pages too, such as a service page, a product page or your contact page.

The report has two parts, and they answer different questions:

• Real-user data shows how the page performed for actual Chrome users over the previous 28 days. This is what your visitors really experienced. Small sites may not have enough visitors to show it, in which case you may see whole-site data or none.
• Lab data is a simulated test run on the spot. The mobile test imitates a mid-range phone on a mobile network. It gives a performance score from 0 to 100 and a list of suggestions.

A score of 90 or more is rated good, 50 to 89 needs improvement, and below 50 is poor. The score is useful for spotting problems, but don't chase 100. Real-user results matter more.

Write down your results before you change anything, so you can tell whether a fix helped.

What Core Web Vitals mean

Core Web Vitals are three measures Google uses to describe how a page feels to use. Google assesses each one at the 75th percentile of visits, so most visitors need a good experience for the page to pass.

INP replaced an older measure, First Input Delay, on 12 March 2024. Older articles that mention FID are out of date.

As a rough guide, a slow LCP usually points to images, hosting or render-blocking files. A poor INP usually points to heavy scripts. A poor CLS usually points to images without set sizes, late-loading ads or widgets, or fonts swapping in.

Fix images first

Oversized images are the most common cause of a slow small business site. A photo straight off a phone can be several megabytes and thousands of pixels wide, then shown in a box a few hundred pixels across.

1. Resize before you upload. Make the image no wider than the largest size it will actually be shown at. 2. Use modern formats. WebP and AVIF generally compress better than JPEG and PNG, and all modern browsers support them. Many platforms and image plugins convert automatically. 3. Serve different sizes to different screens. Responsive images let a phone download a small version and a large monitor a large one. Most website builders and current WordPress themes do this for you. On a custom site, ask your developer whether images use `srcset` and `sizes`. 4. Lazy-load images further down the page, but not the main one. Images below the fold can wait until the visitor scrolls. Your hero image or main product photo should load straight away, because it is often what LCP measures. 5. Give images set dimensions so the browser reserves space for them. This stops the page jumping as they load.

Cut back plugins, apps and scripts

Every plugin, app, chat widget, tracking pixel and embedded video adds work for the visitor's browser. Third-party scripts are a common cause of slow responses to taps and clicks.

• List everything that loads. Check your plugins or apps list, and any code added through a tag manager or your site's header settings.
• Remove what nobody uses. Old analytics tags, abandoned marketing pixels, sliders and duplicate features are common. On WordPress, delete unused plugins rather than just deactivating them. That also helps security, as the website security checklist explains.
• Ask whether each one earns its place. A live chat or AI chatbot can be worth the cost if customers use it. If you're considering one, check these things first, including how it affects the page.
• Load the rest later where you can. A developer can set non-essential scripts to load after the main content.
• Limit who can add code. Tag managers make it easy for anyone with access to add scripts that slow the site.

On Shopify, apps and theme code both affect speed, and Shopify provides web performance reports in the admin.

Hosting, caching and a CDN

If the server itself is slow, nothing else fully fixes it.

• Caching stores ready-made copies of your pages so the server doesn't rebuild each one for every visitor. Many hosts include it. On WordPress it is often a plugin or a host setting.
• A content delivery network (CDN) keeps copies of your images and files on servers closer to your visitors. Many hosts and website platforms include one, so check whether yours is already switched on.
• Cheap shared hosting can be slow when other sites on the same server are busy. If PageSpeed Insights repeatedly flags a slow server response after you've added caching, it may be time for better hosting.
• Pick a host with servers near your customers. For an Australian audience, a host or CDN with Australian locations helps.

Go easy on fonts

Each font and each weight (regular, bold, italic) is another file to download. Two families are usually plenty.

• Use system fonts for body text where your design allows.
• Ask your developer to use WOFF2 font files and a sensible `font-display` setting, which controls what visitors see while a font loads.
• Replace icon fonts with SVG icons where you can.

Make it a habit

Re-test your key pages after each change, and again after adding a new plugin, app or theme. If your site is in Google Search Console, its Core Web Vitals report shows how your pages perform for real visitors.

Speed is also worth checking after a security clean-up. A site that suddenly slows down for no clear reason can be a sign of unwanted code; see what to do if your website is hacked.

If you'd rather someone else worked through the list, a web developer or managed IT provider such as NovaSoft can run the tests and make the changes with you.

Common questions

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