Every extra second costs you customers. Work out how many.

The numbers no one argues with

The data is from Google, crossing billions of sessions ("Think with Google" report, 2018 and later updates). The drop-off curve by load time is brutal:

* The probability goes over 100% because 6s passes the attention threshold and Google penalises you in ranking on top of the direct drop-off.

Put another way: if your site takes 5s, for every 10 paid clicks or SEO visits, 9 leave without seeing anything. That's not exaggeration — it's already the technical factor that quietly costs small businesses the most money.

How to measure yours right now

Three free tools worth it:

• PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) — drop your URL in, switch to "Mobile", look at the big number. If it's green (>90) you're sorted. Yellow (50-89) needs work. Red (<50) is bleeding.
• WebPageTest (webpagetest.org) — more detailed, lets you choose "Madrid" or "Barcelona" as the test point. More realistic for Spanish users.
• GTmetrix (gtmetrix.com) — visual, easy for non-technical readers. The "Waterfall" view shows exactly which file is slow.

The metrics that really matter (Core Web Vitals):

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — when the big element appears. Target: <2.5s
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — how long it takes to respond to a click. Target: <200ms
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — how much the page shifts while loading. Target: <0.1

Google has used these three metrics as a ranking factor since 2021. Slow sites rank lower in Google on top of losing visits while loading.

Calculate your monthly loss

Real example from a beauty salon in Almuñécar we worked with (before we optimised):

At an average ticket of €35, that's ~€3,250/month they were letting walk away because of a website that was too slow. Six months after optimisation, with the same ads and same SEO, the figure is verified in their own Google Analytics.

The 5 fixes that add up most

1 · Images (the big villain)

80% of slow sites are slow because of heavy images. An uncompressed camera JPG weighs 4-8 MB. A whole site should weigh <1.5 MB.

• Compress with TinyPNG or Squoosh before uploading
• Use WebP format (25-35% lighter than JPG at the same quality)
• Never upload images bigger than where they'll display (if the container is 800px, don't upload 4000px)
• Enable lazy loading (loading="lazy" on each <img>) — images below the fold only load on scroll

2 · Decent hosting

Lots of small businesses are on cheapo shared hosting (€2/month) that crams 500 sites onto the same server. Move up to €8-12/month on Hostinger, SiteGround or Raiola with a Spanish server, SSD and HTTP/2. You'll feel the difference inside 48h.

3 · Bin the WordPress plugins you don't use

Slow WordPress is usually WordPress with 27 plugins. Uninstall the ones you don't use (don't deactivate — delete). Each plugin loads CSS and JS on every page. Plugins that are usually surplus: old sliders, counters, heavy "builders", duplicated SEO, redundant security.

4 · CDN and caching

A CDN (Cloudflare free, for example) serves your site from the closest server to the visitor. For a site with foreign visitors (expats searching for an estate agent in Almuñécar from Belgium) it changes the experience completely.

5 · Fewer third-party scripts

Every "Tidio chat", every "Meta pixel", every "ugly cookie banner", every Google Fonts typeface adds weight. List what you've got and remove what doesn't earn you measurable revenue. Rule: if you can't say what it's for, it's out.

What if my website is really old?

Sometimes, optimising a 2017 site built on an old page builder is like fitting new tyres to a car with a blown engine. If yours:

• Is from before 2020
• Isn't responsive, or is but works badly on mobile
• Has PageSpeed <40 on mobile
• Uses Flash, old jQuery, heavy libraries

...it's cheaper to rebuild from scratch in modern HTML/CSS than to patch it. And with clean code, monthly maintenance drops from €60-80 to €0-15. We've seen this play out hundreds of times.

What you gain when it's fast

• More conversions — less drop-off, more clicks on the button
• Better SEO — Google ranks fast sites higher
• Lower ad cost — if you use Google Ads, a fast site automatically lowers your CPC
• Better brand image — fast sites feel professional
• Smaller hosting bill — paradox: light sites use fewer resources and you can sometimes downgrade your plan

In one minute

1. Open pagespeed.web.dev, drop your URL in, look at the mobile number
2. If it's red, your business is losing money today
3. 80% of the time it's heavy images and useless plugins
4. An afternoon of clean-up can take you from 6s to 1.5s
5. If the site is really old, rebuilding is cheaper than patching

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Want us to measure yours? We'll send you a free speed report with the three priority fixes for your specific case. No commitment and no "and the quote is below".