Quick answer
Website speed optimisation means passing Core Web Vitals, hosting close to your customers, optimising images, cutting scripts, using caching, prioritising mobile, loading fonts efficiently and monitoring real user data. Speed supports search and sales.
Key takeaways
- Google uses Core Web Vitals as part of its page experience signals.
- Hosting your site in Australia or using a CDN cuts delays for local visitors.
- Images and third-party scripts are the usual culprits.
- Measure with real user data, not just one-off tests.
What do Core Web Vitals measure?
| Metric | Measures | Good target |
|---|---|---|
| LCP | Main content appears | 2.5 seconds or less |
| INP | Response to taps and clicks | 200 milliseconds or less |
| CLS | Layout jumping | 0.1 or less |
What are the biggest fixes?
- Hosting close to customers, or a CDN with Australian locations.
- Images in WebP or AVIF, resized, lazy-loaded and with set dimensions.
- Fewer scripts: remove, defer or load only where needed.
- Caching and Gzip or Brotli compression.
- Self-hosted fonts with limited weights.
Why prioritise mobile and real data?
Most visitors arrive on phones with patchy connections. Test on a mid-range phone with a throttled connection.
PageSpeed Insights and Search Console show real-user data, which tells you more than lab tests alone.
What are common mistakes?
- Uploading huge images straight from a camera.
- A plugin for every small feature.
- Overseas hosting with no CDN.
- Tracking tags that are never reviewed.
- Testing only on desktop.
Quick wins or bigger projects?
| Quick wins | Bigger projects |
|---|---|
| Compress and resize images | Move to faster hosting or a CDN |
| Remove unused plugins and tags | Replace a heavy theme or page builder |
| Turn on caching and compression | Rebuild templates with lighter code |
Where do you start?
Run key pages through PageSpeed Insights and fix images and scripts first. Measure after each change, because sometimes a few quick wins are enough and sometimes the platform is the bottleneck.
Our website speed optimisation service improves Core Web Vitals and keeps them healthy.
Bottom line
Speed supports both search and sales. Use real user data, fix images and scripts first and consider a CDN for local visitors.
