WHY MY WEBSITE IS SLOW, AND HOW TO FIX IT

A slow site loses visitors before they have read the first line, and Google ranks it lower. The good news: the causes are almost always the same.

1. Images

The first cause, by far. 3 MB photos straight out of the camera, displayed at 300 pixels. The fix: resize, convert to WebP, lazy-load what is off screen. Often 70% of the page weight gone.

2. Plugins and scripts

Every WordPress extension adds its files, loaded on every page even when it serves no purpose. A site with forty plugins loads a hundred files. We keep what is useful, remove the rest, load the rest after the content.

3. Fonts

Three Google Fonts families in six weights is half a second of waiting on mobile before the text shows. We self-host, keep two families, preload the main one.

4. Hosting

A €3-a-month shared host responds in 800 ms before even sending the page. A good French host responds in under 200 ms. It can be measured: it is the “server response time”.

5. Cache

Without cache, WordPress rebuilds every page on every visit. With it, it serves a ready copy. It is the easiest gain, provided it is configured correctly (a badly set cache breaks carts and forms).

6. The theme

“All-in-one” themes load animations, sliders and libraries you use nothing of. A dedicated design, written for your site, weighs five times less.

Where to start

Measure first. A free audit gives you the response time, the weight, the number of files and the Google mobile score in thirty seconds. Then, in order: images, caching, plugins, fonts. The first two take half a day and change everything. If you'd rather delegate with a written target, that's the Slow website service.

Frequently asked questions