Ways to optimize your website’s loading time  - why it’s so important for your business

In our last article, we addressed the topic of mobile optimization for your website. But your website looking good on mobile devices is not the only thing to keep in mind: How fast the site loads is just as important. Google discovered very early that page loading speed has a huge impact on the user experience and made it a ranking factor. Sites that load too slowly are consequently downgraded in the ranking. User experience is getting more and more relevant, especially with Google's Core Web Vitals update.

With Google striving to provide its users with the best possible results and experience, you might be asking if this is relevant for your business. The answer is simple: yes, if you want to keep your rankings and retain visitors. Google now measures how users perceive the interaction with each page and compares it to others. Because page speed directly affects user behavior, it’s essential for every business owner to evaluate and optimize it.

What is page speed?

Page speed refers to how quickly a web page loads. While developers might define it as when the full source code is loaded, users care more about when the content becomes visible and usable. That’s why Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is so important—this is the moment the main content becomes visible. An ideal LCP time is under 2.5 seconds.

To understand how page speed affects bounce rates:

• Bounce rate increases 32% when loading time goes from 1 to 3 seconds
  
  
• Bounce rate increases 90% when loading time goes from 1 to 5 seconds
  
  
• Bounce rate increases 106% at a 6-second loading time
  
  

Measure your website’s speed and identify issues

Start by testing your site’s speed. Use free tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze your site for both desktop and mobile. You’ll get a performance score and suggestions for improvement. If your speed is low, consider whether your site is too large (lots of subpages, large media files), or if you’re overloading it with HTTP requests (calls to the server for images, scripts, etc.).

8 Tips to Improve Your Site Speed

1. Clean up your code: Remove unnecessary scripts and streamline your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
   
   
2. Optimize image sizes: Don’t upload oversized images. Use formats like WebP and compress them for better performance.
   
   
3. Use compression: Enable gzip compression to reduce the file sizes of your code (HTML, CSS, JS).
   
   
4. Enable browser caching: Allow returning visitors to load pages faster by caching static resources.
   
   
5. Use performance-enhancing plugins: CMS platforms like WordPress offer plugins such as WP Rocket and W3 Total Cache to automate optimizations.
   
   
6. Reduce HTTP requests: Use CSS sprites for images and limit the number of redirects and broken links.
   
   
7. Choose the right hosting provider: Make sure your web host offers solid performance and isn’t overloading servers.
   
   
8. Check your server: If speed is still an issue, your hosting server might be outdated and need replacing.
   
   

Why this matters for your business

As Google now prioritizes mobile-first indexing, your site’s mobile speed is critical. A fast website:

• Improves user experience
  
  
• Reduces bounce rates
  
  
• Boosts search rankings
  
  
• Encourages longer visits and conversions
  
  

Optimizing your website’s speed is one of the most effective and affordable ways to enhance your SEO and user experience. You don’t need to be perfect—you just need to be better than your competitors.