Make the page lighter before making it flashier

Why speed matters for a service business

A customer looking for a handyman on their phone isn’t going to wait. If your page shows a blank white screen while it loads, a good share of people will hit the back button and tap the next result. They never see your work, your reviews or your phone number.

Google measures this too. It publishes a set of targets called Core Web Vitals and uses them as part of how it evaluates pages. You don’t need to understand the technical details, but the main targets are useful to know:

• Loading: the biggest thing on the screen, usually the main photo or headline, should appear within 2.5 seconds.
• Responsiveness: when someone taps a button, the page should react within 200 milliseconds, about a fifth of a second.
• Stability: things shouldn’t jump around while the page loads. You know the feeling: you go to tap a link and an ad pushes it down.

Images are usually the problem

On most small-business sites I look at, the single biggest cause of slow loading is photos uploaded straight from a phone or a camera. A modern phone photo can be 3 to 5 megabytes. Put ten of those on a page, and a customer on cell signal is downloading a small movie just to see your homepage.

• Resize photos to the size they actually show on screen. About 1,600 pixels wide is plenty for a full-width photo.
• Use modern formats like WebP or AVIF if your website builder supports them. They are much smaller at the same quality.
• Let images further down the page load only when someone scrolls to them. Most builders have a setting for this.

Fonts, add-ons and effects

The next most common causes are things added to make the site look fancier:

• Several different fonts, each loaded from another company’s server.
• Chat widgets, pop-ups and review badges, each pulling in its own code.
• Background videos and sliders that rotate through big photos.
• Animations that play on every scroll.

Each one adds weight and delay. Some are worth it. Most aren’t. Ask of each one: does this help a customer decide to call? If the answer is no or “maybe,” remove it and see if anyone notices. Usually nobody does, except your faster page.

Measure it the same way every time

You can test any page for free with Google’s PageSpeed Insights at pagespeed.web.dev. Paste in your address and look at the mobile results. They are the ones that matter most.

Two warnings. First, scores bounce around a little from test to test, so don’t panic over a few points. Run it a couple of times. Second, don’t chase a perfect 100. A page that loads quickly on an ordinary phone and works well is the goal. The score is just a way to find the biggest problem.

The most honest test is still the simple one: load your site on your own phone with Wi-Fi off, out where you actually work. My passenger-seat check walks through it.

Hosting matters less than you think

People often blame the web host for a slow site. Sometimes that is fair, but more often the site itself is heavy. A light site on ordinary hosting will usually beat a heavy site on expensive hosting. Fix the page first, then look at the host if it is still slow.

The sites I build are static pages served from a global network, with resized images and only the fonts and code each page needs. That is how they stay quick on a phone without anything fancy.

Questions to ask whoever runs your site

If someone else manages your website, you don’t need to fix speed yourself. Ask them:

• Are photos resized automatically when they are uploaded?
• How many outside scripts and fonts does the homepage load, and do we need all of them?
• What does the homepage score on mobile in PageSpeed Insights, and what is the biggest fix?
• Will you check speed again after the next round of changes?

A good web person will have quick, plain answers. If the answers are vague, that is worth knowing too.

Where to start this week

Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights. Under the suggestions, look for anything about image sizes or formats. If you see it, that is your first fix. Then remove one add-on you can live without. Test again. Small, boring changes like these usually beat a full redesign.