You just tried loading your website on your phone. It took 8 seconds. You watched the loading spinner. Then you got bored and almost clicked away.

If you're getting impatient with your own website, imagine how your customers feel.

Slow websites kill businesses. People leave. Google ranks you lower. You lose sales. Let's fix it.

How slow is too slow?

Under 2 seconds: Good. Most people will wait.

2-4 seconds: Okay. You're losing some people but not terrible.

4-6 seconds: Bad. You're losing lots of potential customers.

Over 6 seconds: Awful. Most people give up before your site even loads.

Test your site right now: Go to PageSpeed Insights, enter your URL, see your score.

If it's under 50, we need to talk. If it's under 30, we need to talk urgently.

The usual suspects (what's making your site slow)

Giant images

This is the #1 problem we see. Someone uploads a photo straight from their camera. It's 8MB. Your website tries to load this monster image.

That's like trying to fit an elephant through your door. It's gonna take a while.

The fix: Compress your images before uploading them. Use tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim. A photo that looks great on your website should be under 200KB, not 8MB.

Even better: Use modern image formats like WebP. They're smaller and look better. Your developer can set this up.

Too many plugins (WordPress sites especially)

Every plugin adds code. Code takes time to load. We've seen WordPress sites with 40+ plugins. Each one slowing things down a little bit.

It's like asking someone to carry 40 shopping bags. They're gonna move slowly.

The fix: Delete plugins you don't actually use. That slideshow plugin you tried once and forgot about? Gone. That SEO plugin that doesn't do anything? Gone.

Keep only the essential ones.

Bad hosting

You're paying $5/month for hosting because it was the cheapest option. You get what you pay for.

Cheap hosting means:

Slow servers
You're sharing resources with hundreds of other websites
If one of those websites gets traffic, yours slows down too

It's like living in a house where 50 people share one bathroom. You're gonna wait.

The fix: Upgrade your hosting. Good hosting for a business website costs $20-50/month. That's nothing compared to the customers you're losing from slow speeds.

We usually recommend Vercel, Netlify, or if you're on WordPress, WP Engine or Kinsta.

No caching

Every time someone visits your website, the server has to build the page from scratch. Fetch data from database, run code, generate HTML, send it to the browser.

That's slow.

Caching means saving a copy of the page so the next person gets the pre-built version instantly.

It's like meal prepping instead of cooking from scratch every single time you're hungry.

The fix: Turn on caching. If you're on WordPress, use a caching plugin like WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache. If you have a custom site, your developer needs to implement caching.

Videos playing automatically

Someone thought it would be cool to have a video background on the homepage. Now your website has to load a 20MB video file before people can see anything.

The fix: Remove auto-playing videos. Or if you absolutely must have one, make it way smaller (under 2MB) and highly compressed.

Better yet, use an optimized video service like YouTube or Vimeo and embed it.

Too much JavaScript

Modern websites love JavaScript. But too much makes your site slow and clunky.

Every fancy animation, every interactive widget, every tracking script adds more JavaScript that has to download and run.

The fix: Remove JavaScript you don't actually need. That fancy parallax scrolling effect? Looks cool but makes your site slower. Worth it? Probably not.

Your developer should minimize and bundle JavaScript properly.

Fonts loading slowly

You're using 5 different custom fonts because your designer wanted variety. Each font file has to download before text displays.

While fonts load, visitors see invisible text or ugly fallback fonts that jump around when the real fonts arrive.

The fix: Use 2 fonts maximum. Use system fonts when possible (they're already on people's devices). Or use Google Fonts which are optimized and cached.

Too many tracking scripts

You've got Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, heatmaps, chat widgets, email popups, and 12 other tracking things.

Each one slows down your site a little. Together they're killing performance.

The fix: Keep only the tracking that you actually use and check. If you haven't looked at your heatmap data in 6 months, remove it.

Quick wins you can do right now

These don't require a developer. You can do them yourself today.

1. Compress your images

Download TinyPNG or use their website. Run all your images through it. Upload the compressed versions.

Typical savings: 50-80% smaller files, looks exactly the same.

2. Delete unused plugins

Go through your WordPress plugins. Delete anything you're not actively using.

3. Enable a caching plugin

If you're on WordPress, install WP Rocket ($49/year, worth every penny). Turn it on. Your site will immediately get faster.

4. Remove auto-playing videos

Just do it. They're annoying anyway and everyone hates them.

5. Check your hosting

Log into your hosting account. See what plan you're on. If it's the $5/month plan, it's time to upgrade.

Stuff that needs a developer

These are more technical but make a huge difference.

Lazy loading images

Instead of loading every image when the page loads, only load images as people scroll down to see them.

Big performance boost, especially on image-heavy pages.

Minify CSS and JavaScript

Remove all the extra spaces and comments from your code. Makes files smaller and faster to download.

Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

Store your images and files on servers all around the world. When someone visits from Singapore, they get files from the Singapore server. Fast.

When someone visits from New York, they get files from the New York server. Also fast.

Optimize database queries

If your site makes a lot of database calls, optimizing them can make a huge difference.

This is especially important for custom web apps with lots of data.

Implement proper code splitting

Load only the code needed for the current page. Don't make people download code for pages they haven't even visited yet.

Upgrade to modern tech

If your website is built on old technology, sometimes the best fix is rebuilding it with modern, faster tools.

Modern web apps built with Next.js, React, or similar frameworks are significantly faster than old PHP or WordPress sites.

The mobile problem

Most people visit your site on their phones. Phones have slower internet than your office WiFi.

A site that loads fast on your computer might be painfully slow on someone's phone on a bus.

Test on mobile: Use your phone on 4G (not WiFi) to test your site. That's the real experience most visitors get.

Fix mobile-specific issues:

Even smaller images for mobile screens
Simpler layout with less stuff
Remove features that don't work well on mobile anyway

What good performance looks like

We built a site for a client last year. Before we started, their old site:

Loaded in 9 seconds on mobile
PageSpeed score of 28
Bounce rate of 68% (people left immediately)

After we rebuilt it:

Loads in 1.8 seconds on mobile
PageSpeed score of 94
Bounce rate dropped to 32%

Their conversions went up 47%. Same business, same offers, just faster website.

Speed matters.

Don't obsess over perfect scores

PageSpeed Insights will give you scores. Don't kill yourself trying to get 100.

90+: Excellent, you're good

70-89: Pretty good, might have some easy wins to grab

50-69: Needs work, you're losing customers

Under 50: Fix this now, it's hurting your business

Diminishing returns kick in at higher scores. Going from 40 to 80 is huge. Going from 90 to 95 barely matters.

When to rebuild vs when to optimize

Optimize your current site when:

It's built on decent technology
The issues are fixable (images, plugins, hosting)
You don't have budget for a rebuild

Rebuild when:

Your site is on really old technology
It's a mess of hacks and workarounds
Optimizing would cost almost as much as rebuilding
You need new features anyway

A rebuild costs more upfront but might be the right long-term move.

How much should this cost?

DIY optimizations: Free to $50 for tools

Hiring someone to optimize: $500-2,000 for basic optimization, $2,000-5,000 for comprehensive work

Rebuilding for performance: $15,000-50,000 depending on complexity

Start with the cheap/free stuff. If that doesn't get you fast enough, invest more.

The business case for speed

Here's why this matters in dollars:

Every 1 second delay = 7% fewer conversions

If your site makes $100,000/year and you speed it up by 3 seconds, that's potentially 21% more revenue. That's $21,000/year.

Spending $2,000 to optimize suddenly seems like a bargain.

Test, don't guess

Before changing anything, measure your current speed. Use:

Google PageSpeed Insights
GTmetrix
WebPageTest

Make changes. Test again. See if it actually got faster.

Don't just do stuff because someone said to. Measure. Change. Measure again.

Common myths

"My site is fine, it loads fast for me."

Of course it does. You've visited it 100 times, it's cached in your browser, you probably have fast internet.

Test it like a first-time visitor on a phone. That's reality.

"People don't care about speed that much."

Yes they do. Studies show 53% of mobile users leave if a site takes over 3 seconds. They absolutely care.

"Speed doesn't affect SEO."

It does. Google literally uses page speed as a ranking factor. Slow sites rank lower.

"I'll fix it later."

Every day your site is slow, you're losing customers and money. Fix it now.

Get help if you need it

If this all sounds overwhelming, that's okay. This is technical stuff.

Talk to us and we'll:

Test your site and tell you exactly what's slow
Give you a list of issues prioritized by impact
Tell you what you can fix yourself and what needs a developer
Give you an honest quote if you want us to fix it

We've sped up hundreds of websites. We know what actually works and what's a waste of time.

Your website should work for your business, not against it.

About &7: We build fast, modern websites and web applications for Singapore businesses. Performance isn't an afterthought for us. It's built in from the start.