Your slow website is costing you sales right now (here's how to fix it for free)

THIS WEEK: Most small business websites are too slow, and most business owners have no idea. We show you exactly how to test your site speed using free tools, what the numbers actually mean, and the two quickest fixes that will make the biggest difference, no developer needed.

Here is a number worth sitting with: a one-second delay in page load time reduces conversions by 7%.

For a business turning over £100,000 a year online, that one second is costing you £7,000. Not in theory. Right now, today, every time someone lands on your site and waits.

It gets worse. Pages that load in one second convert at three times the rate of pages that load in five seconds. 47% of users expect a page to load in two seconds or less. When a mobile page takes more than three seconds to load, the bounce rate increases by 32%. And 53% of mobile users abandon a site entirely if it has not loaded within three seconds.

Mobile is not a footnote. Over 60% of all website traffic comes from mobile devices. If your site is slow on a phone, you are turning away the majority of your visitors before they have seen a single thing you offer.

The UK business community collectively treats website speed like something that only matters to big companies or tech people. It does not. It matters to anyone who has a website and wants it to do something useful. Speed is also a Google ranking factor, which means a slow site is not just losing you conversions, it is losing you traffic in the first place.

The good news is that most slow websites have the same handful of problems, and those problems can be identified for free in about three minutes.

Three free tools. Used in order, they tell you how fast your site is, why it is slow, and how to fix the biggest single cause of slowness on most sites.

TOOL 1: Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) What it does: Gives your website a speed score and tells you exactly what is wrong.

PageSpeed Insights is completely free, requires no sign-up, and takes about 30 seconds to run. You enter your URL, click Analyse, and Google gives you a score out of 100 for both mobile and desktop. Anything above 90 is good. 50 to 89 needs work. Below 50 is a problem that is actively costing you.

The score is built from Google's Core Web Vitals, which are the three metrics Google uses to measure real user experience on your site. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how quickly the main content on a page loads. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures how fast your page responds when someone clicks or taps something. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures whether your page jumps around as it loads, which is infuriating on mobile. Google uses these metrics as a ranking factor.

Below your score, PageSpeed gives you a prioritised list of what to fix. It tells you exactly what is slowing your site down and estimates how much time each fix would save. The most important items are listed first.

How to use it right now:

That is your fix list. You now know what is wrong. The next tool tells you more.

TOOL 2: GTmetrix (gtmetrix.com) What it does: A more detailed breakdown of what is slowing your site down.

GTmetrix has a free plan that lets you run tests against your website and get a detailed report showing exactly which files are slow, how long each element takes to load, and a visual waterfall chart showing the order in which everything on your page loads.

Where PageSpeed Insights gives you a score and a fix list, GTmetrix shows you the specifics. You can see which images are too large, which scripts are blocking the page from loading, and which third-party tools (live chat widgets, analytics scripts, cookie banners) are adding the most load time.

The free plan has a limit of 20 tests per month without an account, which is more than enough for most small business owners doing a periodic audit. Creating a free account gives you more tests and saves your reports so you can track improvement over time.

What to look for in your GTmetrix report:

The Performance score and the Structure score are shown at the top. Work through the issues listed under Structure first. These are the fixes that will make the most difference to real users. Pay particular attention to anything flagged as "Defer render-blocking resources" or "Serve scaled images" — these two issues appear on the vast majority of small business websites and both are fixable without a developer.

Limitation to know: The free plan tests from a Canadian server by default. If your audience is UK-based, the test speed may differ slightly from what your actual visitors experience. Paid plans let you choose the test location. For a diagnostic check, the free plan is fine.

TOOL 3: TinyPNG (tinypng.com) What it does: Compresses your images without any visible quality loss.

Images account for more than 50% of the total weight of the average webpage. They are the single biggest cause of slow load times on most small business sites, and they are almost always the easiest thing to fix.

TinyPNG compresses JPEG, PNG, and WebP images using intelligent compression that reduces file sizes by an average of 75% without any visible quality loss. It is free for up to 20 images at a time, with each image up to 5MB. No sign-up required for basic use.

If your PageSpeed or GTmetrix report flags oversized images, this is where you fix them. Download the original images from your site, run them through TinyPNG, and re-upload the compressed versions. That is it. No technical knowledge required.

How to use it:

If you are on WordPress, TinyPNG also has a free plugin that automatically compresses new images when you upload them, and lets you bulk-compress your existing library. The free WordPress plugin gives you 500 compressions per calendar month.

The numbers behind why this matters: Images are responsible for over 50% of a typical webpage's total weight. Compressing them can reduce your page size by hundreds of kilobytes or more. That directly translates to faster load times, better PageSpeed scores, and more visitors who actually stay long enough to buy something.

The 20-Minute Speed Audit

Here is how to run a complete speed audit on your own website using these three tools:

Minutes 1-5: Run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights. Note your mobile score and screenshot the top three "Opportunities." Then run your most important page — your main service or product page — through it as well. Most business owners only check their homepage and miss the pages that actually convert.

Minutes 6-12: Run the same pages through GTmetrix. Look at the Structure issues listed in the report. Identify whether images, scripts, or third-party tools are the main problem.

Minutes 13-20: If images are flagged as a problem (and they usually are), download the largest ones from your site, run them through TinyPNG, and re-upload the compressed versions. On most WordPress sites this takes about five minutes per page.

You will not fix everything in 20 minutes. But you will know exactly what is wrong and have made a start on the single most common issue. Run PageSpeed Insights again after you have compressed your images and you will see the score move.

Go to pagespeed.web.dev, enter your URL, and check your mobile score. Just that. Takes 60 seconds.

If it is below 50, your website is actively damaging your business on mobile and you need to take this seriously. If it is between 50 and 89, you have work to do but you are not in crisis. If it is 90 or above, you are doing well and the tools above will help you maintain it.

Most small business websites score somewhere between 20 and 60 on mobile. If yours is in that range, the image compression fix alone will typically push it up by 10 to 20 points.

NEED HELP? In over your head? No idea where to start? I can help fix these issues.

Google Search Console (search.google.com/search-console) - Free tool from Google that shows how your site is performing in search results, including a Core Web Vitals report showing which pages are failing Google's speed benchmarks. If you have not set it up for your site, do it this week. It is free and shows you real data from actual visitors, not simulated tests.

WebPageTest (webpagetest.org) - Another free speed testing tool that gives you more granular detail than GTmetrix. Useful if you want to dig deeper into specific performance issues. Free to use with no sign-up required for basic tests.

I have been doing this for 17 years and I still regularly encounter small business websites scoring 20 or 30 on mobile PageSpeed. Sometimes they are beautiful sites. Well designed, professional, clearly had money spent on them. And they are haemorrhaging visitors because nobody bothered to check how fast they actually load.

The problem is usually one of three things: images that were never compressed, a cheap shared hosting plan that cannot keep up with demand, or a WordPress site loaded with plugins that nobody has audited in years.

You can fix the images today for free. The hosting and plugin issues take a bit more work, but you cannot fix anything until you know what the problem is.

That is all these tools do. They show you the truth about your website. Most business owners have never run a speed test on their own site. That is a bit like having a shop and never checking whether the front door actually opens properly.

Run the test. Then fix what it tells you to fix.

Got a tool you want me to review? Reply to this email. Need actual help with your business's systems or digital setup? I have been doing this for 17 years. Get in touch.