Six fixes for a slow website

When a site feels slow, the platform usually gets the blame. In our experience it is almost never the platform. It is a handful of decisions made while building, and most of them take minutes to fix.

1. Images far bigger than they appear

A 4000-pixel photo shown at 800 pixels is the most common problem we see. Export images close to the size they appear, serve WebP or AVIF, and use responsive srcset so phones download phone-sized files.

2. A lazy-loaded hero image

Lazy loading is great below the fold and harmful above it. The main image a visitor sees first should load eagerly with high fetch priority, because it usually decides your Largest Contentful Paint.

3. Fonts that block the first paint

Load fewer weights, preconnect to the font host, and use font-display swap so text shows immediately in a fallback font instead of staying invisible.

4. Widgets that load before your content

Chat bubbles, heatmaps and tracking pixels compete with your page for the network. Load them after the page is interactive, or when the visitor scrolls, not in the head.

5. No reserved space for media

When images and embeds load without width and height, the page jumps as they arrive. Set dimensions or an aspect ratio on every image and embed to keep Cumulative Layout Shift near zero.

6. Long JavaScript tasks

Heavy scripts make clicks feel laggy, which shows up as a poor Interaction to Next Paint. Remove what you do not use, split what you do, and defer anything that is not needed for the first view.

Where to start

Run your homepage and your most important landing page through PageSpeed Insights and fix the items above in that order. If you would rather we did it, a website review covers speed alongside structure, SEO and conversion.