A slow site is a closed door

Nobody has ever left a website because it loaded too quickly. The reverse is one of the most reliably measured effects in the industry: as load time climbs, the share of people who stay falls, and it falls fastest in the first few seconds.

The reason is not impatience. It is uncertainty. A blank screen gives no signal that anything is coming, and the cheapest response available to the visitor is to leave.

Where the weight usually is

• Images exported at full camera resolution and scaled down in the browser.
• Fonts loaded from three different services, each blocking the first paint.
• Tracking, chat widgets and pop-up tools, each added for a reason and none removed.
• A page builder shipping styling for components the page never uses.

The mobile point

Most local traffic is on a phone, often on a poor connection, frequently one-handed and in a hurry. A site that is fast on a laptop over office broadband tells you almost nothing about the experience the majority of your visitors are having.

Speed is not a project. It is the consequence of not adding things carelessly.