How do I check my website speed?

Use Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) — it's free, measures Core Web Vitals, and gives specific recommendations. Run your homepage and one or two inner pages. Aim for a score above 80 on mobile. GTmetrix is a good second check — it shows a waterfall chart of every resource loading.

What slows down a website the most?

The biggest culprits are uncompressed images (the most common issue on small business sites), slow hosting servers (cheap shared hosting), unminified JavaScript and CSS, and too many third-party scripts (chat widgets, analytics, social buttons). Fix images first — they account for the most speed improvement in most cases.

Does website speed affect Google rankings?

Yes — Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP) are a ranking factor. Google favours fast pages, particularly on mobile. More importantly, slow pages have higher bounce rates — users leave before the page loads. A 1-second improvement in load time can increase conversions by 2–7% on most small business sites.

How to Speed Up Your Website (Step-by-Step)

Short answer

The fastest wins for most small business websites are: compress your images (WebP format, under 150KB), switch to faster hosting, and remove unnecessary third-party scripts. These three changes typically cut load time in half.

Step 1: Compress your images

Images are the single biggest cause of slow websites. Every image on your site should be:

Format: WebP (smaller than JPG/PNG at the same quality)
Size: under 150KB for most images; under 50KB for thumbnails
Dimensions: sized to how it appears on screen — don't upload a 3000px wide photo for a 600px column

Free tools:

Squoosh — drag in an image, export as WebP in 30 seconds
TinyPNG — batch compress JPGs and PNGs
Cloudflare Images — automatically serves WebP to browsers that support it (Cloudflare free plan)

Step 2: Upgrade your hosting

Cheap shared hosting (under $5/month plans) puts thousands of sites on one server. When traffic spikes, your site slows. Switching to:

Managed WordPress hosting (WP Engine, Kinsta) — significantly faster for WordPress sites
Cloudflare Pages / Vercel — instant global CDN for static sites (free tier)
A VPS (DigitalOcean, Vultr) — more control, dedicated resources

Even moving from slow shared hosting to a faster shared plan at a reputable host makes a measurable difference.

Step 3: Remove unnecessary scripts

Every third-party script (chat widget, social sharing buttons, analytics, fonts) adds load time. Audit what's running:

Open Chrome DevTools → Network tab → reload the page
Filter by "JS" — look for scripts from domains you don't recognise
Remove anything you're not actively using

Google Fonts alone can add 300–500ms if loaded incorrectly. Self-host fonts or use display=swap in the font URL.

Step 4: Enable caching

Caching stores static versions of your pages so the server doesn't rebuild them for every visitor.

Cloudflare (free) — enables browser and CDN caching with one DNS change. Free plan covers most small business sites
WordPress: install WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache (both free)
Squarespace/Wix/Shopify: caching is handled automatically — nothing to do

Step 5: Minify CSS and JavaScript

Minification removes whitespace and comments from code files, reducing their size.

WordPress: Autoptimize plugin (free) handles this automatically
Custom sites: build tools (Vite, webpack) minify automatically in production mode
Website builders (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify): done automatically — skip this step

Step 6: Use lazy loading for images

Lazy loading means images below the fold only load as the user scrolls to them — reducing initial page weight.

HTML: add loading="lazy" to <img> tags
WordPress: enabled by default since WordPress 5.5
Website builders: enabled automatically on most platforms

How to measure improvement

Run PageSpeed Insights before and after each change. Key metrics to watch:

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — under 2.5 seconds is good; under 4 seconds is acceptable
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — under 0.1 (layout stability)
INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — under 200ms