Most New Zealand business owners find out their website is slow from a customer, not from a report. Someone mentions it took ages to load, and the conversation moves on. Meanwhile the visitors who never said anything have already gone somewhere else.
These are the seven causes we find most often when we look at a slow site, roughly in order of how much damage they do.
1. Images straight off the camera
This is the single most common cause. A photo from a phone is often four or five megabytes. Displayed at the top of a page it might only need one hundred kilobytes. The browser downloads the whole file anyway.
The fix is to resize every image to the size it is shown at, save it in a modern format such as WebP, and serve a smaller version to phones. On a typical site this alone can halve load time.
2. Too many plugins
WordPress sites collect plugins. A slider here, a form there, a popup, a chat widget, a cookie banner, a booking tool. Each one adds code to every page, including pages that never use it.
The fix is an audit. Turn off anything you cannot name a use for, replace two plugins that do similar jobs with one, and check what is left is still maintained by its developer.
3. Cheap shared hosting
If your hosting costs three dollars a month, your site is sharing a server with hundreds of others. When one of them gets busy, yours slows down. You can see this as a server response time above about half a second before anything else has even started.
The fix is better hosting, and it is cheaper than most people expect. Hosting in or near New Zealand also cuts the round trip for local visitors.
4. No caching
Without caching, your server rebuilds the whole page from scratch for every single visitor. With caching it builds the page once and hands out copies.
The fix is a caching plugin or a setting with your host. On one Auckland site we moved server response from 613 milliseconds to 88 milliseconds by turning caching on properly. Nothing else changed.
5. Fonts that block the page
Custom fonts look good and they load from somewhere else before your text can appear. Until the font arrives, some browsers show nothing at all.
The fix is to host the font files on your own server, load only the weights you use, and tell the browser to show your text in a backup font while it waits.
6. Third-party scripts
Chat widgets, review carousels, booking embeds, analytics, ad pixels and social feeds all load code from other companies. Your page is only as fast as the slowest one.
The fix is to keep the ones that earn their place and delay the rest until after your page has drawn. A chat widget does not need to load before your phone number does.
7. Content that loads after the page
Some sites draw an empty frame first, then fetch the text and images with JavaScript. The visitor watches a blank screen or a spinner while that happens, even though the page technically loaded quickly.
The fix is to send the important content in the first response, especially the headline, the main image and the call to action.
Where to start
Run your site through Google PageSpeed Insights and read the mobile tab. If the main content takes longer than two and a half seconds to appear, work down this list in order. Images and hosting account for most of the problem on most sites.
If you would rather someone else look, send us your address and we will tell you which of these seven is slowing you down.
Frequently asked questions
How fast should my website be?
Aim for the main content to appear within two and a half seconds on a phone on mobile data. Google treats that as the threshold for a good experience.
How do I test my website speed?
Run your address through Google PageSpeed Insights. It is free. Read the mobile tab, not the desktop one, because most of your visitors are on a phone.
Does website speed affect Google rankings?
Yes, though less than people think. Speed is one of many ranking signals. It matters more for whether visitors stay long enough to contact you.
Will a faster website get me more enquiries?
Usually. People leave slow sites before they see anything. Removing that delay means more of the visitors you already pay for actually reach your contact page.