Insights · Performance
Why Your Website Is Slow (and What to Do About It)
Slow websites usually have a handful of common causes. Here are the most frequent ones, and how to start fixing them.
A slow website frustrates visitors, and many will leave before the page appears. The good news is that slow sites usually suffer from a small number of common problems.
1. Images that are far too large
The most frequent cause by a distance. A photograph straight from a phone can be many megabytes. Resizing images to the size they are shown, and using modern compressed formats, often makes the biggest single improvement.
2. Too many scripts and plug-ins
Every chat widget, tracking tool, slider and plug-in adds code the visitor’s browser must download and run. Remove what you do not use, and question what you do.
3. Slow or overloaded hosting
Cheap shared hosting can respond slowly, particularly at busy times. If your server takes a long time to start responding, no amount of page tuning will fully compensate.
4. Heavy page design
Auto-playing videos, large animations and elaborate effects look impressive in a demo but can punish mobile visitors on weaker connections.
5. No caching
Without caching, your site rebuilds the same page for every visitor. Proper caching serves ready-made pages quickly.
6. Testing only on a fast computer
Most visitors arrive on phones, often on mobile networks. A site that feels fine on your office computer can feel sluggish on a mid-range phone.
How to start
- Test the page on a phone, not just a computer
- Run a free speed test and read the top recommendations
- Fix images first
- Remove unused plug-ins and scripts
- Check your hosting if the server itself is slow to respond
Need help?
If you would like someone to find the exact causes and fix them, our performance optimisation service measures before and after so you can see what changed.