Why is my website slow, and how do I speed it up?

Short answer · updated 2026-09-30

Large images, slow hosting and too many add-on scripts are the usual causes.

Test your home page with Google’s free PageSpeed Insights, which names what’s slowing it down.
Google’s target is for the main content to show within 2.5 seconds. Start with the photo at the top of the page, which is often what Google times.

Test it first

Paste your address into PageSpeed Insights at pagespeed.web.dev and read the phone result. It shows two things. One is a test run on the spot.
The other is how fast the page was for real Chrome users over the last 28 days.

Google’s three targets, called Core Web Vitals, are:

the main content appears within 2.5 seconds (Largest Contentful Paint)
the page responds to a tap or click within 0.2 seconds (Interaction to Next Paint)
the layout barely shifts while it loads, a score of 0.1 or less (Cumulative Layout Shift)

Then open the site on your own phone, on mobile data rather than wifi.

Large images. Resize each photo to the size it’s shown at, compress it, and use a modern format such as WebP.
Load images further down the page only when a visitor scrolls to them.
Slow hosting. PageSpeed Insights reports how long your server takes to answer. Google calls 0.8 seconds or less good, and more than 1.8 seconds poor.
If yours is slow, the host is the problem.
Add-on scripts. Chat widgets, trackers, social feeds and embedded maps each add weight.
Google’s advice is to remove any that add no clear value, and load the rest later.
Unused plugins. On WordPress, each plugin can add its own files to every page. Delete the ones you don’t use.

Google’s 2016 research found 53% of mobile visits were abandoned when a page took over three seconds to load. That data is old.
A 2020 study by Deloitte for Google found that a 0.1-second speed gain moved more visitors through to a purchase.

Aim for the three Core Web Vitals targets rather than a score. The score comes from one test and can change from run to run.

The real-user results show what your visitors actually got.

Mobile data is usually slower than home broadband, and phones have less processing power than laptops.

Heavy images and scripts show up most on a phone. Test on mobile data to see what customers see.

Only if the server is the slow part. Check the server response time in PageSpeed Insights first.

If images or scripts are the problem, a new host won’t fix them.

Google includes Core Web Vitals in its page experience guidance. Relevant content still matters more.

A slow page loses visitors wherever it ranks, so it’s worth fixing either way.

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