Website Speed & Core Web Vitals: Why Slow Sites Lose Money
How speed affects SEO and sales, what Core Web Vitals mean, causes of slowness and how to fix them.
A slow site feels like a shop with the door stuck shut — visitors leave. Speed is invisible when good and costly when bad, hitting both sales and rankings.
Why speed matters and what Core Web Vitals are
Every second of delay lowers conversion (worse on mobile), and Google uses page experience as a ranking factor. Core Web Vitals: LCP (how fast the main content shows, target under 2.5s), INP (how fast the site responds to clicks), and CLS (layout stability — no jumping elements).
Causes and fixes
Heavy unoptimised images, bloated templates and plugins, no caching, render-blocking fonts/scripts and weak hosting slow sites down. Fix with modern image formats (WebP/AVIF), edge caching (CDN), self-hosted preloaded fonts, less code, and regular PageSpeed Insights checks.
At GH Company we build speed into the architecture from day one — edge caching, optimised images, lightweight code — not as an afterthought.
Frequently asked questions
Does speed affect Google rankings?
Yes — Google officially uses page experience (Core Web Vitals) as a ranking factor.
Top cause of slowness?
Usually heavy unoptimised images, then bloated templates and no caching.
How do I measure it?
With Google PageSpeed Insights; test without browser extensions for a real result.
Are templates slower?
Usually yes — full of unused code; an optimised bespoke site loads only what is needed.
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