Website performance: every second costs you money.

A website that loads in 1 second converts twice as well as one that loads in 3 seconds. A site that loads in 5 seconds? You've lost 75% of your visitors. Page speed isn't a tech detail, it's a business metric. Here's how to measure and improve it.

The Cost of Slowness

• 1-second delay = 7% fewer conversions
• 3-second load = 40% of visitors abandon
• 5-second load = 75% bounce rate

For an e-commerce site doing $1M annually, a 1-second speed improvement could add $70,000+ in revenue. It's not optional.

How to Measure Your Speed

Use Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). It scores on a scale of 0-100 and shows "Core Web Vitals", Google's key speed metrics. Aim for 80+.

The Quick Wins

• Compress images: 80% of site bloat is images. Resize before upload, use WebP format
• Enable caching: Tell browsers to save your CSS/JS locally so repeat visitors load faster
• Use a CDN: Serve images and static files from servers near your users
• Minify code: Remove unnecessary characters from CSS and JavaScript
• Lazy load: Don't load images until users scroll to them

The Long-Term Strategy

Picking the right hosting, using fast frameworks (not bloated page builders), removing unnecessary plugins, these compound over time. A site built for speed on day one stays fast for years.