The Impact of Speed

Website speed is far more important than a lot of people realise, due to its impacts on both user experience, and search engine rankings. A slow-loading website can be damaging to website traffic and user retention, leading to a reduced number of site visits and conversions.

This is why website speed must be understood, in order to address the issues that could arise if a site is loading slowly. Read on to find out more about why website speed is important, as well as how you can measure and improve it.

Why is website speed important?

On the most basic level, people don’t like waiting. This is true in many situations, but especially so when it comes to websites. If there’s one thing that can put someone off of your site straight away, it’s a slow load time. In fact, a delay of as little as a second can cause a bounce rate increase, therefore reducing conversions. This may not seem like a lot, but, in the long run, that can be a lot of clients going elsewhere, and a lot of sales missed out on.

Beyond the user experience considerations, it is worth taking into account how Google views slow-loading websites. When a site loads slowly, it performs poorly in terms of core web vitals, which include Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift. For information on what those are, have a look at our Core Web Vitals optimisation page. Good core web vitals scores are important as Google uses them to measure the quality of your site, which in turn influences where it ranks in searches.

How do I measure my website’s speed?

It is important to measure your website speed so you know if it could be causing you issues. There are tools available for you to measure your website speed, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, which allows you to gain an understanding of your site’s speed through an overview of the key metrics. Additionally, more detailed insights can be found through the use of paid plans on tools such as GTMetrix.

It is important to note that, while these tools are important for providing data on your website’s speed, the key consideration should always be user experience, so be sure to consider the data-driven results in the context of the specific goals that your website is looking to fulfil. For more on this, why not check out our article on Design vs Function?

How do I improve my website’s speed?

There are many factors that contribute to having a slower (or faster) loading website. It can often be worth considering the impact that working with an agency to enhance your site’s performance can have but, for now, here are a few practices to keep in mind…

Compress images and optimise media

Large file sizes can lead to longer load times, increasing the amount of time it takes for a page to appear. Considering this, it is important to look at the size of images, as evidence from Web Almanac found that, on average, over 40% of a website’s page weight is from images alone. By compressing images, their file sizes can be dramatically reduced, leading to faster load times. However, it is important to ensure that you do not compromise on their quality, as this can lead to your site looking unprofessional. One solution is to make sure that your images are in a newer format, such as WebP, as this can result in good compression rates without a loss of quality. This will allow for a faster running site that maintains a professional image for your users.

Use a content delivery network (CDN) and leverage caching

Without a CDN, some users can be submitting requests that have to travel to a server halfway around the world and back in order to deliver. This is much slower than fetching content from a local server. However, a CDN like the one offered by Cloudflare, which has data centres in 330 cities across the world, will allow for content to be served to the majority of the Internet-connected population in roughly 50 milliseconds. This means faster load times for your users, as does implementing caching to avoid users having to redownload resources that haven’t changed since their last visit to your site.

Reduce the impact of render blocking

CSS files are render blocking by default, meaning that no content will be displayed until the CSS has been, meaning that your site’s load times will be longer. Therefore, it is important to optimise your CSS files. This can include loading the most critical styles first, so that the page can render quickly, and deferring non-essential CSS until after the page has loaded. Another way to reduce the impact of render blocking is to load JavaScript asynchronously, so that it doesn’t prevent other elements from displaying. The combination of these actions will improve the load speeds of interactive content, which will improve usability and engagement.

Combine and minify CSS and JavaScript files

Unnecessary files, and unnecessary characters within those files, slow down load times for your users. Combining files means that there are fewer requests to the server, and minifying the content of those files reduces their size by removing unneeded spaces and comments. With a reduced file size, and a reduced number of files, users will be able to access your site quicker.

The benefit of partnering with an agency for website optimisation was mentioned previously, and if this is something that you’re interested in finding out more about, then feel free to get in touch and see what our team at This is Fever could do for you.