Page speed affects two things that matter enormously to a business website: where it ranks in search results, and how many visitors actually stick around once they arrive. Both suffer quietly and gradually when a site slows down.
Google Measures Speed Directly
Core Web Vitals — a set of specific loading and responsiveness metrics — are a confirmed part of Google's ranking system, meaning a slow site can be outranked by a faster competitor even with weaker content.
Visitors Leave Before the Page Even Loads
Research consistently shows a significant jump in visitors leaving a site for every additional second of load time beyond about two to three seconds, meaning slow pages lose potential customers before they ever see your content.
What Usually Causes a Slow Site
Unoptimized, oversized images are the most common culprit, followed by excessive third-party scripts, unoptimized fonts, and hosting that isn't suited to the site's traffic level.
- Optimize oversized images, since they're the most common cause of a slow site.
- Reduce third-party scripts and unoptimized fonts that add unnecessary load time.
- Choose hosting suited to your actual traffic level.
- Monitor Core Web Vitals, since Google factors them directly into rankings.
We audit and optimize image sizes, code, and hosting for every site we build or take over, since page speed affects both rankings and the number of visitors who actually convert.