Why Your Website Is Slow (And What Actually Fixes It)

Page speed complaints almost always trace back to one of five causes: unoptimised images, render-blocking scripts, too many third-party embeds, no caching strategy, or a hosting plan that can't keep up with traffic.

Images are the most common offender. A single unoptimised hero image can add two to three seconds to load time on mobile. Serving modern formats like WebP or AVIF, at the right dimensions, usually fixes this in one pass.

Third-party scripts - chat widgets, analytics, ad pixels - each add their own network request and execution time. Audit what's actually driving value and remove the rest.

Framework choice matters too. Server-rendered frameworks like Next.js ship less JavaScript to the browser for the initial paint, which directly improves Largest Contentful Paint and Time to Interactive scores.

Finally, hosting matters more than most businesses assume. A shared hosting plan built for a five-page brochure site will struggle under real traffic. Match your hosting tier to your actual visitor load.