Why a slow website costs you customers and rankings

Visitors are ruthless: more than half drop off if a page takes longer than three seconds to load. Google is just as strict — speed is an official ranking factor. A slow website therefore costs you twice: fewer visitors and less conversion from the visitors who remain.

The maths

Every extra second of load time costs an average of 7% conversion. With 1,000 visitors per month, that adds up.

Say your website has 1,000 visitors per month and 3% request a quote. That's 30 leads. Make your site two seconds faster and your conversion rises towards 4% — that's 10 extra enquiries per month, without spending a single extra euro on marketing. Speed is the cheapest growth measure there is.

How Google looks at speed

Google uses Core Web Vitals to measure how fast your page loads (LCP), how quickly it responds (INP) and how stable the layout is (CLS). Sites that score green here gain a measurable advantage in search results — especially on keywords where competitors are close together.

The five biggest culprits

• Oversized images — a 4 MB photo straight from your phone is conversion killer number one.
• Plugin overload — every plugin adds scripts; twenty plugins means twenty brakes.
• Cheap shared hosting — a €2-per-month server feels exactly like that.
• External scripts — chatbots, trackers and pixels piling on top of each other.
• No caching or compression — pure profit that often goes untouched.

How to fix it

Measure first: Google PageSpeed Insights gives you a free report per page. After that, the order is almost always the same: optimise images, trim scripts, enable caching and choose serious hosting. For many WordPress sites, honestly, a clean rebuild is the fastest route to green.

Every website I build loads in under a second. Want to know how your site scores? Send me your domain — you'll get an honest analysis within one business day. Or read more about my approach to SEO & speed.