Most people won’t tell you they left your site because it was slow. They just leave. Google has found that as load time goes from one second to three, the chance someone bounces jumps by about 32%. That’s a lot of customers walking out the door before they even see what you offer.
Speed also affects where you rank. Core Web Vitals are part of how Google decides what to show, so a slow site is a double hit: fewer people stick around, and fewer find you in the first place.
What actually slows a site down
It’s usually a few familiar culprits. Huge unoptimised images. A pile of plugins and third-party scripts, each adding weight. A page that loads everything up front instead of only what’s needed. Hosting that’s cheap but slow.
The good news is these are fixable, and you don’t need a full rebuild to make a real dent.
Where to start
Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights and look at the “real-world” numbers, not just the lab score. Compress your images. Cut the scripts you don’t need. If your site is built on a stack that can’t get fast no matter what you do, that’s worth a longer conversation.
If you’d rather not dig into any of that, it’s the kind of thing we sort out as part of an SEO and performance pass. Either way, don’t let a slow site keep costing you quietly.
