Why your website is slow on phones (and how to fix it)

Your website might feel fine on the office computer and still take 10 seconds or more to open on a customer’s phone. That matters: on a phone, people don’t wait. If your page is still blank after a few seconds, many will go back to Google and call the next business on the list.

When we test small business websites, the same few problems come up again and again. The good news: most are quick to fix and don’t require a new website.

First, test your own site (free, 2 minutes)

1. Open Google PageSpeed Insights and paste your website address.
2. Look at the Mobile tab first. The score (0–100) is a rough guide; the useful number is “Largest Contentful Paint”: how long until the main part of the page appears. Under about 2.5 seconds is good.
3. Scroll down to “Diagnose performance issues”: it lists what’s slowing the page down, often naming the exact files.

1. Photos that are far too big

This is the most common problem by far. A photo straight from a phone or camera can be 3–8 MB, and designs exported from tools like Canva are often saved as PNG files of around 1 MB each. A website photo rarely needs to be more than 100–300 KB.

On sites we’ve tested, a handful of PNG pictures of around 1 MB each often make up most of the page’s weight. Saved as normal web images (JPEG or WebP), they’d look the same at a fraction of the size.

Fix: resize photos to the size they’re shown at (usually 1,600–2,000 pixels wide at most), save them as JPEG or WebP, and compress them. You can do it in your browser with our free image compressor.

2. A background video at the top of the page

Video headers look impressive on a big screen, but on a phone the whole video has to download before the page feels ready. We’ve tested homepages that downloaded more than 15 MB, mostly video, where the main picture took well over 20 seconds to appear in Google’s phone test.

Fix: show a still photo on phones (and keep the video for desktop if you love it), or use a much shorter, smaller video file.

3. Too many add-ons on every page

Chat bubbles, review widgets, booking scripts, spam checks (like reCAPTCHA), tracking codes and social feeds each add their own files. One or two are fine; eight of them on every page add up, especially when they load before your own content.

Fix: remove what you don’t use, and load the rest only on the pages that need them (for example, the spam check only on the contact page).

4. Cheap or overloaded hosting, with no caching

If the server takes a second or more just to start answering, everything else waits. On WordPress, a missing page cache makes the server rebuild every page for every visitor.

Fix: turn on page caching (most good hosts include a caching plugin, such as LiteSpeed Cache), and consider better hosting if the server is still slow.

5. Big fonts and icon packs

Some themes load several font families in many weights, plus a full icon library of hundreds of icons when the page uses five. We regularly see icon files of several hundred KB loaded for a handful of icons.

Fix: keep to one or two font families and only the weights you use, and load icons as small images or only the icons you need.

6. An old theme or too many plugins

Older WordPress themes and page builders can add a lot of code that today’s sites don’t need. Every plugin is also code that runs, and sometimes slows things down or breaks after updates.

Fix: update WordPress, the theme and plugins, deactivate and delete what you don’t use, and test again after each change.

Why it’s worth it

• More calls and messages: fewer people give up before your page appears.
• Better on Google: page experience, including speed on phones, is one of the things Google looks at.
• Cheaper ads: if you pay for clicks, a slow page wastes the money you paid for each visitor.

Want us to look at your site?

Our website check-up ($49) gives you a clear one-page report: speed on phones, the exact files slowing you down, security, Google basics and what to fix first. If you’d rather we fix it, our speed & SEO service does the work for you. Or start with the free 25-point website checklist.