Do you have a business website that is not generating the enquiries or the sales you expected?
You might be getting visitors, but they’re not converting? Are you noticing that most of your visitors are not filling out contact forms, placing orders or calling you to make a booking?
There’s a lot of reasons why the site isn’t generasting the enquriies or sales you had hoped for. But here at Site Design Squad we’ve noticed that one of the most overlooked issues is website speed.
Before coming to us, a lot of our clients will have paid to have their website copy rewritten, updated their call to actions, redesigned pages, experimented with diferent contact form questions. Some have increased their ad spending in the hope that more traffic will equal more sales.
But despite all that, the results often stay the same.
The problem is, none of those changes matter when a potential customer leaves your website before it’s even loaded. Slow websites cause friction from the first interaction. They create a bad impression. Customers expect websites to load quickly, and if they’re left waiting they’ll go back to Google and click on your competitor.
These visitors rarely leave feedback, so website owners often don’t realise there’s a technical issue. They assume the problem is their pricing, messaging, or the offer, when in reality potential customers are abandoning the site before they’ve had a chance to engage with any of it.
Speed is not just technical, it is money
It’s easy to think that website speed is something only developers and IT specialists need to worry about. You might think it’s a job for your web host, and if their servers are good, then your website will load quickly. As afterall, when business owners look at their website’s they concerned about the design, content and getting more conversions. They’re not really interested in the page load times.
But in reality, website speed isn’t a technical issue. It is a business issue. It can very quickly see profit margins drop and even impact on your Google rankings.
Imagine you’re a customer. You notice you have a watrleak, you feel frustrated. You open your phone, Google “plumber in Burnham-on-Sea”, you click the first link that comes up.. And now you’re just sat there waiting, and waiting.. For a site to load whilst you’re watching the water go all over your floor. You don’t have time to sit and wait. You go back, you click the next link down, and that page loads. You see a phone number, you ring, and someone answers.
The outcome? You’re relieved as someone’s coming to fix the leak. The first plumber lost a customer as their site didn’t load, and the second plumber has a new customer.
People are impatient, especially on a mobile. They’re watching TV, on a work break, on the bus, trying to get something urgently fixed. They don’t have time to wait 5, or 10 seconds for your site to load.
Google Research found that 53% of mobile visitors will leave a website that takes more than three seconds to load.
Even smaller delays can have a significant impact. The Milliseconds Make Millions study found that even just a 0.1 second improvement on how long it takes for a mobile website to load, saw a 9.1% increase in visitors adding items to basket on a retail site. Retail customers also spent 9.2% more on the website.
Test your own site in two minutes
The good news is that website speed is one of the few factors you can easily test for, and improve.
So how do you actually test for it? Many business owners assume their website is performing well because it loads fine on their own device. But reality can be very different for visitors using slower connections, older phones, and different mobile networks.
That’s why we created our website speed testing tool. You just drop your details in, and within a few minutes you’ll be emailed the results. The tool checks your website’s performance and highlights potential issues that could be affecting user experience, search visibility, and conversions.
Whether you’re running a small business website, an online shop, or a service-based business, it’s a quick way to see if speed could be holding your site back.
Go here to use our free speed testing tool.
There’s also two other tools that you could use to test your websites performance:
- Google PageSpeed Insights. : Google’s free tool which analyses your website and provides performance scores for both mobile and desktop devices, along with recommendations for improving speed.
- GTmetrix. This shows you how long your page takes to load and where the hold-ups are. There are limitations for unregistered users such as only testing from one location, so we recommend you register if you wish to try this tool out.
Both of these tools will give you a scoring, and details on how you can improve. But don’t worry about getting a perfect score. ocus on whether your website is fast enough to give visitors a smooth experience. Even slight improvements in speed can lead to customers staying on your website longer, more enquiries, and ultimately more sales.
Aslo don’t worry about understanding every line of the report. The main thing to look at is the overall score and the loading time. If the time is high, there is room to improve.
Why sites get slow in the first place
So how do websites actually get slowed down in the first place? What causes it? A lot of our clients presume that because of today’s technology and internet speeds, their website should load fast. But that isn’t the case.
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We’ve optimised a few thousand websites over the last ten years. We’ve come across hundreds of issues that slow sites down. But these are some of the most common ones, that happen on almost every websit we audit.
Oversized Images
Large images are one of the most common causes of slow websites, which is why image optimisation is included as part of our Speed Optimisation Service.
Smartphones and cameras take incredibly high-quality photos, and the files they output are at least severeal megabytes in size. While these photos look great, if you were to upload those files directly to a website you can can dramatically increase load times.
Every person visiting your website has to download all of those images. The larger the file, the longer it takes to download. Especially for those using mobile internet, which can be unreliable even in 5G areas.
The good news is, this can be fixed.
As part of our speed optimisation service, we setup an image optimizer that will automatically convert suitable images to the WebP format, a modern image format developed by Google. WebP images are significantly smaller than traditional JPEG and PNG files while maintaining excellent visual quality. In many cases, this can reduce image file sizes by 25% to 50% or more, helping pages load faster without compromising how your website looks.
The best part is that it’s completely invisible to your customers. Your images still look sharp and professional, but they load much more efficiently.
It’s a simple change, but often one of the quickest wins when improving website speed.
Unoptimised Plugins
A lot of folks think that having too many plugins on your WordPress website is what slows it down. And whilst having a lot of plugins can have an impact on things, it’s usually the case that it is more about the quality of the plugins rather than quantity.
Not all plugins are created equal.
Poorly coded, outdated, or unnecessary plugins can significantly impact your website’s performance. Some load large amounts of code on every page, while others make repeated requests to external services, slowing everything down for your visitors.
The problem often develops gradually. New plugins get installed to solve specific issues, old ones are left active “just in case”, and before long the website is doing far more work than it needs to.
As part of our speed optimisation service, we review the plugins installed on your website and identify those that may be affecting performance. Sometimes the solution is removing an unused plugin, replacing it with a more efficient alternative, or adjusting how it loads on the site.
The goal isn’t to have fewer plugins. It’s to make sure every plugin is earning its place and isn’t slowing your website down unnecessarily.
Cheap or Overcrowded Web Hosting
Your website can be perfectly designed and fully optimised, but if it’s running on poor-quality hosting, it will still struggle to perform.
Think of web hosting as the engine room behind your website. Every time someone visits your site, the server has to process their request and deliver the page to their device. If that server is struggling, your website will too.
Unfortunately, this is where many budget hosting providers can fall short. To keep costs low, they often place hundreds, or even thousands, of websites on the same servers. It’s great for the hosting companies profit, but not great for the businesses using it. When too many websites are competing for the same resources, performance can suffer.
That’s why at Site Design Squad we host our clients’ websites on high-performance servers that are specifically configured for speed, security and reliability. Rather than cramming as many websites as possible onto a server, we carefully manage resources to ensure every website has the power it needs to perform at its best.
Our hosting platform is built for modern websites, using high-performance hardware and a carefully managed environment to keep your website running quickly and reliably. We proactively maintain our servers and monitor performance, helping ensure your visitors get a fast, consistent experience whenever they visit your site.
Looking for a website that’s fast from day one? Our Monthly Website Design Plans include premium hosting, ongoing maintenance and performance optimisation, so you don’t have to worry about the technical side. We take care of the website, giving you more time to focus on your business. Check out our plans.
Don’t Let Your Website Be the Bottleneck
You’ve already done the hard part.
You’ve built the website. Written the content. Created the services. Invested in marketing.
The last thing you want is for a slow-loading website to stop potential customers from seeing any of it.
Website speed isn’t the most exciting part of running a business, but it can have a surprisingly large impact on how many visitors become enquiries and how many enquiries become customers.
And unlike many business challenges, it’s often fixable.
Ready to stop losing visitors to a slow website? Get in touch and let’s see how much faster your site could be.
