How fast should a small business website load?

A slow page loses visitors before they’ve seen anything. Many of your customers will find you on a phone, often while they’re in a hurry, and the Google figure above shows how many give up after three seconds.

Speed is also linked to more enquiries. In Portent’s 2022 study (opens in a new tab) of 20 websites, B2B lead-generation sites that loaded in 1 second had a conversion rate 3 times higher than sites that loaded in 5 seconds, and 5 times higher than sites that loaded in 10 seconds. Those were business-to-business sites, not local service businesses, but any business that wants visitors to get in touch is working toward the same thing.

A mobile site that was 0.1 seconds faster was linked to an 8.3% improvement in bounce rate on lead-generation information pages, in a study of 37 brands (Deloitte for Google, Milliseconds Make Millions, 2020 (opens in a new tab)). The study shows a link, not proof of cause, but it suggests that even small gains count.

Google’s Web Vitals guidance (opens in a new tab) sets a “good” threshold for each Core Web Vital:

Google recommends measuring these at the 75th percentile of page loads, separately for mobile and desktop. In plain terms, at least three out of every four visits should meet the target.

Yes, but only somewhat. Google’s page experience documentation (opens in a new tab) says Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems. It also says that good results don’t guarantee top rankings, and that Google always tries to show the most relevant content, even if the page experience is poor. Speed helps your visitors first and your rankings second.

1. Open PageSpeed Insights (opens in a new tab), paste your page’s address and run the test.
2. Look at the mobile results first, since that’s how many local customers will see your site.
3. Check the real-visitor section at the top. If your site gets enough traffic, it shows how fast the page loads for real Chrome users. Many small sites don’t have enough visitors for this, and then you only see the lab test.
4. Read the lab test below it. It gives a Performance score and lists what to fix.
5. Test your homepage and your most important service page. Then open the site on your own phone using mobile data, not Wi-Fi.

• Large photos uploaded straight from a phone or camera.
• Page builders and themes that load code for features you don’t use.
• Too many plugins and third-party scripts, such as chat widgets, trackers, review widgets and social feeds.
• Fonts loaded from several places, in many weights.
• Autoplay video or heavy animation on the first screen.
• Slow hosting, especially without a content delivery network. A content delivery network (CDN) is a group of servers that delivers your site’s files from a location near each visitor.

1. Resize and compress images, and use modern formats such as WebP or AVIF.
2. Remove the plugins, widgets and scripts you don’t need.
3. Lazy-load images further down the page, so they load only when the visitor scrolls to them. Don’t lazy-load the main image at the top.
4. Use fewer fonts and font weights, and host them with the site.
5. Keep the first screen simple: a headline, one image and a call button.
6. Use hosting that includes a CDN.

Re-test after each change, so you know what helped.

No. Google’s own documentation warns that “trying to get a perfect score just for SEO reasons may not be the best use of your time.” Once real visitors get good results on all three Core Web Vitals, your time is better spent on the content: accurate details, real reviews and clear descriptions of your services.

No. Speed gets visitors onto the page, and the content has to convince them. 62% of consumers would avoid using a business if they found incorrect information online (BrightLocal, Local Business Discovery & Trust Report 2023 (opens in a new tab)). Our guide What should a local business website include? covers what belongs on the page.