Your website probably looks fine on the office computer. Your customers, though, are likely visiting on a phone, on mobile data, perhaps in a moving daladala. If the page takes too long to appear, many will give up before they see anything.
Speed also matters for search. Google measures how quickly pages load and respond for real visitors, and uses page experience as one of its signals.
Test it the way customers use it
Turn off Wi-Fi on your phone and open your site on mobile data. Then run it through Google's PageSpeed Insights, which reports how real visitors experience your page and what is slowing it down.
The usual culprits
1. Huge images
A photo straight from a modern phone can be several megabytes. On a website it rarely needs to be more than a small fraction of that. Resize images to the size they are displayed at and save them in modern formats such as WebP or AVIF.
2. Too many plugins and scripts
Every chat widget, slider, tracking pixel and plugin adds code the phone must download and run. Remove anything you do not use.
3. Cheap or distant hosting
Overloaded servers respond slowly. A good host with a content delivery network (CDN) serves your site from locations closer to visitors.
4. Video that plays automatically
Autoplaying background video looks impressive and eats mobile data. Use a still image on phones, or let people tap to play.
5. Fonts loaded from many places
Each custom font is another download. Use fewer weights and host them yourself.
Mobile-friendly is more than fast
- Text should be readable without zooming.
- Buttons should be easy to tap with a thumb, with space between them.
- Phone numbers and WhatsApp should open with one tap.
- Forms should be short and show the right keyboard for numbers and email.
Quick wins you can do this week
- Compress and resize the ten largest images on your site.
- Delete plugins and widgets you no longer use.
- Replace autoplay video with an image on mobile.
- Make your phone number a tappable link.
Every site we build is designed for phones first and tested on mobile data before launch. See our website service or our local SEO checklist.