Websites
How fast should a business website load
A business website should appear quickly enough that nobody waits, which on a phone means the first screen should be visible almost immediately. Anything slower costs visitors before the words are read.
Why speed is not a technical detail
Speed decides how many people stay long enough to read anything. A visitor on a phone gives a page a moment to appear and then leaves, and they rarely come back to try again.
Search engines read the same signal. A slow site sends a poor message before any of the words are considered.
What usually slows a site down
Images that are far larger than they need to be are the most common cause. The second is code that loads things the visitor never sees, such as tracking scripts and embedded media that arrive before the page itself.
Both are fixable without redesigning anything and the improvement is usually visible immediately.
How to judge your own site
Open the site on a phone away from wi-fi and count how long the first screen takes. If you find yourself waiting, visitors are leaving before the page appears.
After that a proper measurement tool will show what is causing the delay and which of those causes matter most.
What to fix first when the site is slow
Start with the images because they are almost always the largest thing on the page and the easiest to reduce without changing how the site looks.
Then deal with anything loading that the visitor never uses. Both changes can usually be made in a single pass and measured immediately after.
Questions buyers ask
How fast should a website load
Fast enough that nobody waits. On a phone the first screen should appear almost immediately.
What makes a website slow
Oversized images and code that loads things the visitor does not see are the usual causes.
Does speed affect how the site ranks
Yes. A slow site sends a poor signal to search engines before the content is even considered.
Where this fits
Where Monolith Media fits
Monolith Media runs Website development as one managed marketing service for established Australian businesses, measured to the enquiries it produces. The free check names the part worth fixing first before anything is quoted.
More on Websites
When to rebuild your website instead of fixing it
How to decide between repairing an existing website and rebuilding it, and the signs that point either way.
What to put on a service business website
The pages and sections a service business website actually needs, in order of how much they matter.
Signs your website is costing you enquiries
The signs a business website is losing enquiries it should be converting, and where those leaks usually sit.