Look, I know you’ve heard “speed matters” a thousand times. It’s in every SEO article, every web dev course, every client meeting where someone brings up Google rankings. But here’s the thing—most people drastically underestimate how much it matters.
The Numbers That Actually Changed My Mind
I used to think speed was a “nice to have.” Then I ran proper tests.
One client—a small e-commerce site selling handmade jewelry—had a 5.2 second load time on mobile. Not terrible by some standards. After optimization (lazy loading, image compression, moved to better hosting, dumped 4 unnecessary plugins), we got it down to 1.8 seconds.
Results over 90 days:
- Bounce rate dropped from 67% to 41%
- Average session duration went from 1:23 to 2:47
- Conversion rate: 1.2% → 2.1%
That last one? Nearly doubled their sales. From speed improvements. On a site that “wasn’t even that slow.”
Why Users Are Less Patient Than You Think
There’s this stat floating around that 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load. I thought that was marketing fluff until I actually watched session recordings.
People don’t wait. They really, truly don’t wait.
I installed Hotjar on a client’s site that was averaging 4.1 seconds load time. Watched maybe 50 recordings. The pattern was brutal: user clicks link, sees white screen or partial load, taps back button, gone. The whole interaction took 2-3 seconds. They didn’t even see the content.
And here’s what nobody mentions: users don’t consciously think “this site is slow.” They just feel frustrated and leave. They don’t know why they bounced. They won’t tell you in a survey. They’re just… gone.
Google Actually Cares (More Than They Used To)
Core Web Vitals became a ranking factor in 2021. But honestly? I didn’t take it seriously until mid-2023 when I saw it affect rankings firsthand.
Had a client’s site ranking position 4-6 for their main keyword. Good content, decent backlinks, nothing special but solid. Their competitor had similar content but significantly better Core Web Vitals—specifically LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) under 2.5 seconds while my client was at 4.2 seconds.
We fixed the speed issues. Over about 8 weeks, rankings improved to position 2-3. Was it only speed? No, probably not. But the timing was suspicious. And I’ve seen similar patterns across multiple sites since then.
The three metrics Google actually measures:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): How fast your main content loads. Under 2.5s is good.
- FID (First Input Delay): How quickly your site responds to clicks. Under 100ms is good.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): How much stuff jumps around while loading. Under 0.1 is good.
That last one—CLS—is the sneaky killer. Ever tried to click a button and the page shifted so you clicked an ad instead? That’s CLS. Google hates it. Users hate it more.
The Hidden Costs Nobody Calculates
Slow sites cost money in ways that don’t show up in analytics.
Server costs: Slow sites typically mean bloated code, unoptimized images, too many database queries. You’re paying for server resources to deliver inefficiency. One client was on a £150/month hosting plan. After optimization, they moved to £40/month hosting with better performance. The site was just doing less unnecessary work.
Support tickets: “Your site isn’t working” often means “your site is slow and I gave up.” I’ve seen support ticket volume drop 30% after speed improvements. People just… stopped complaining. Because the thing worked.
Developer time: Slow, bloated codebases are harder to work with. Every change takes longer. Every debug session drags. I once inherited a site with 47 plugins, 12MB page weight, and an 8-second load time. Simple text changes took 3x longer than they should because the admin panel was also glacial.
What Actually Makes Sites Slow
After optimizing dozens of sites, here’s where the problems usually are:
Images (90% of the time): Someone uploaded a 4MB photo from their phone directly to WordPress. Or worse, they did it 50 times across the site. The fix is simple—compress everything, use WebP format, implement lazy loading—but people just… don’t.
Too many plugins/scripts: Every WordPress plugin adds JavaScript and CSS. Every third-party widget loads external resources. One client had 8 different analytics and tracking scripts. Did they use all that data? No. But their site was loading JavaScript from 14 different domains.
Cheap hosting: I know everyone wants to save money. But there’s a real difference between a £5/month shared hosting plan and a £20/month VPS. The shared hosting might work fine until you get 50 concurrent visitors, then everything falls over. Seen it happen during product launches, sales events, that time someone’s blog post went mildly viral.
No caching: Every time someone visits your uncached WordPress site, the server queries the database, runs PHP, generates HTML, and sends it. For content that changes maybe once a week. Basic page caching cuts load time in half with essentially zero effort.
Render-blocking resources: Your browser can’t paint the page until it’s loaded all the CSS and JavaScript in the <head>. Put non-critical stuff below the fold, defer JavaScript loading, inline critical CSS. Sounds complicated but there are plugins that handle it.
The Quick Wins (Start Here)
If you do nothing else, do these four things:
1. Compress your images Install ShortPixel or Imagify on WordPress. For other platforms, run everything through Squoosh before uploading. This alone fixed 60% of speed issues on sites I’ve worked on.
2. Enable caching WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache for WordPress. Whatever your platform offers. If someone’s visiting the same page twice, they shouldn’t wait twice.
3. Use a CDN Cloudflare has a free tier that’s genuinely good. Your static assets get served from the closest data center to your visitor instead of wherever your server lives.
4. Audit your plugins/scripts Go through every plugin, every analytics script, every third-party embed. Ask: “Do we actually use this?” If the answer is “I think so” or “we might someday,” uninstall it.
How to Test (and What Numbers to Aim For)
Tools I actually use:
- Google PageSpeed Insights: Free, tells you Core Web Vitals, gives specific recommendations
- GTmetrix: More detailed, shows waterfall of what’s loading when
- WebPageTest: Advanced, lets you test from different locations and devices
Numbers to aim for:
- Under 3 seconds load time (good)
- Under 2 seconds (great)
- Under 1 second (you’re showing off)
Be realistic though. A complex e-commerce site with lots of product images won’t load as fast as a simple blog. A 2.5-second load time on a shop with 500 products is solid work.
The Honest Truth
Speed optimization isn’t glamorous. Nobody’s going to give you an award for shaving 800ms off your LCP. Your clients probably won’t notice consciously.
But the metrics don’t lie. Faster sites convert better, rank better, cost less to run, and frustrate fewer people. Every site I’ve properly optimized has seen measurable improvements in something that matters—traffic, conversions, bounce rate, server costs.
Is it the only thing that matters? Obviously not. A fast site with rubbish content is still a rubbish site. But between two equally good sites, the faster one wins. Every time.
So yeah. Speed matters more than you think. It’s just that nobody’s watching stopwatches. They’re watching whether people stay or leave.