{"id":1027,"date":"2026-10-02T10:35:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T10:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/?p=1027"},"modified":"2026-10-02T10:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T10:35:12","slug":"how-to-speed-up-your-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/how-to-speed-up-your-website\/","title":{"rendered":"Website Speed: How to Test It and How to Make Your Site Load Faster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Website speed<\/strong> is how quickly a page loads and becomes usable. A slow website annoys visitors, lowers conversion and can hurt search rankings. For a user speed is not \u201cseconds in a report\u201d but a feeling: the content has appeared, the button can be pressed and the page does not jump under the finger. One thing matters: a fast website is not only about comfort, it directly affects the money you invest in advertising and SEO.<\/p>\n<h2>Why website speed matters<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Conversion.<\/strong> The longer a page loads, the more people leave without waiting for the form or the button.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bounce.<\/strong> A slow page on mobile internet is often closed before the first screen appears.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Search results.<\/strong> Page speed and usability metrics are among the signals Google takes into account.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Advertising.<\/strong> Paid traffic to a slow page is lost right at the entrance, so the budget is wasted.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Brand impression.<\/strong> A slow website feels unreliable.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What Core Web Vitals are<\/h2>\n<p>Core Web Vitals are a set of Google metrics that evaluate how a user perceives a page. The three main ones are:<\/p>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Metric<\/th>\n<th>What it measures<\/th>\n<th>Good value<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)<\/td>\n<td>How quickly the largest content element appears<\/td>\n<td>up to 2.5 s<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>INP (Interaction to Next Paint)<\/td>\n<td>How quickly the page responds to user actions<\/td>\n<td>up to 200 ms<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)<\/td>\n<td>How much the page jumps while loading<\/td>\n<td>up to 0.1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>These are the benchmarks Google considers good. Look at them separately for the mobile and desktop versions: results on a phone are usually worse.<\/p>\n<h2>How to test website speed<\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Run PageSpeed Insights.<\/strong> Google\u2019s free tool shows the metrics for mobile and desktop and hints on how to fix them.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Open the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console.<\/strong> It shows how many pages of your site fall into \u201cgood\u201d, \u201cneeds improvement\u201d and \u201cpoor\u201d based on real user data.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Use Lighthouse in Chrome.<\/strong> The built-in audit shows problems right in the browser.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Check on a real phone.<\/strong> Open the website over mobile internet, not only over Wi-Fi.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Check key pages.<\/strong> Not only the home page: service pages, articles, the cart and request forms.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Compare lab and real data.<\/strong> A test shows the potential, while user data shows how the page is actually seen.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>What most often slows a website down<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Heavy images.<\/strong> Large uncompressed files in outdated formats.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Many scripts and plugins.<\/strong> Each one adds requests and delays, especially on WordPress.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Weak hosting.<\/strong> A slow server response affects the entire site.<\/li>\n<li><strong>No caching.<\/strong> The page is rebuilt every time.<\/li>\n<li><strong>External widgets and fonts.<\/strong> Chats, videos, pixel codes, endless rows of styles.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Unoptimized code and theme.<\/strong> Extra libraries loaded on every page.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>How to speed up a website<\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Compress images.<\/strong> Use modern formats (for example, WebP) and fit the size to the place on the page.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Turn on lazy loading.<\/strong> Images and videos below the first screen load only when the user gets to them.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Set up caching.<\/strong> Ready pages are served faster than they are created on the fly.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Minify and combine CSS and JavaScript.<\/strong> Remove the unnecessary and defer what is not needed on the first screen.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Remove extra plugins and third-party scripts.<\/strong> Keep only those that bring value.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Use a CDN.<\/strong> Files are served from the server closest to the user.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Choose good hosting.<\/strong> It determines the base response speed.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Optimize fonts.<\/strong> Fewer font styles and correct loading reduce delays and layout jumps.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>We do all of this within our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/services\/web-design\/website-speed-optimization\/\">website speed<\/a> service, and the technical basics for search are described on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/services\/seo\/technical-seo\/\">technical SEO<\/a> page. For WordPress projects we have a separate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/services\/web-design\/wordpress-development\/\">WordPress development<\/a> service.<\/p>\n<h2>Where to start<\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Measure the current state.<\/strong> Record the metrics of key pages on phone and desktop.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Find the biggest impact.<\/strong> Usually it is images and third-party scripts.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fix the most important.<\/strong> Start with pages that bring leads.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Measure again.<\/strong> Check whether the metrics improved, and only then move on.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Speed is part of the mobile convenience we wrote about in the article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/mobile-adaptation-why-it-is-no-longer-an-advantage-but-a-necessity\/\">\u201cMobile adaptation\u201d<\/a>, and one of the components of modern search promotion that we covered in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/seo-in-2026-new-rules-and-how-to-get-your-website-to-the-top\/\">\u201cSEO in 2026\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Website speed affects leads, sales and search rankings. We explain how to test loading speed, what Core Web Vitals are, what speed depends on and what makes a site faster first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1028,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions\/1028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonebly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}