You’ve Got 10 Seconds: Fix Your Page Speed To Stop Losing Sales

Color schemes, layouts, product photos — there’s a lot to focus on when you’re designing a website for your business. But performance matters just as much as appearance. A Clutch survey found that half (48%) of customers will leave a web page if it takes 10 seconds or longer to load.

Page speed doesn’t just affect how long visitors stick around. It impacts shopper behavior and even how they perceive your business. When customers can navigate your site quickly, they’re more likely to trust your business and make a purchase.

Making your site faster may seem like tech wizardry, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. These simple tactics will help you speed things up and boost sales. 

Key Takeaways: Faster Speeds = Happy Customers

• Slow loading times are a major turn-off, with 29% of customers reporting that they feel frustrated by this issue.
• Minimalism is the key to performance. Simple tactics like compressing images and deleting unnecessary plugins can lead to major speed improvements.
• Consider outsourcing for the best results. A professional web design agency can help with more advanced fixes or even an entire redesign.

How Long Are Shoppers Willing To Wait?

If your site already gets a steady stream of visitors, you might assume that page speed doesn’t really matter. After all, does a second (or five) really matter?

Absolutely. According to Clutch data, here’s how long shoppers are willing to wait for a website to load:

While 18% of shoppers are patient enough to wait over 20 seconds, the majority will bounce much sooner. And 48% will leave by the 10-second mark, which means speed is absolutely critical.

8 Tactics To Improve Page Speed

After all the work you’ve put into your website, watching it load at a snail’s pace can be incredibly frustrating. But you’re not alone.

“Page speed is one of the most common challenges we solve,” shares Heral, Managing Director at a Woocommerce Agency. “We’ve seen how much of an impact it can have on conversions, user experience, and overall business performance.”

Dan Heselton, Senior Designer and Web Developer at HireClix, recommends measuring your site’s baseline first. He says, “Use tools like Lighthouse to audit performance and optimize assets.” This platform analyzes your loading times and flags any issues bogging down the site. It also recommends strategies to fix them.

Along with Lighthouse’s advice, try these proven methods to supercharge your page speed.

1. Minimize the Design

It’s tempting to add all sorts of interactive features and visuals to your website. After all, you want to wow customers. But a flashy design often comes at a steep price.

“Including too many elements or animations can slow down performance,” Heselton remarks. “Focus on simplicity and prioritize essential content.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean your site needs to be boring, but prioritize the elements that add the most value. For example, customers want to see a few product photos, but they probably don’t need 20 oversized images. You can skip background animations and custom fonts, which drag down page speed.

2. Compress and Resize Images

While professional photos help build trust, large image files can make your load times skyrocket. Avoid this issue by using tools like TinyPNG or the WebP format to compress images. Your visuals will still look just as sharp, but they won’t weigh down your page speed as much.

Consider the mobile experience, too. Consider implementing lazy loading on your site, which makes images appear as users scroll instead of all at once, reducing delays. You can also use the srcset attribute in HTML to make images automatically adjust to different screen sizes, boosting page speed.

3. Reduce Third-Party Tools and Plugins

Site builders like WordPress and Weebly have all sorts of extensions and plug-ins. These tools are a great way to add new features to your site — especially if you don’t code — but some can drag down your page speed.

This is a familiar issue for Heral. “We regularly take over sites that are loaded with unnecessary plugins and heavy third-party tools,” he explains. “In those cases, we strip things back and rebuild the foundation—custom themes, optimized assets, and a lean tech stack.”

Audit your site for unnecessary scripts and plugins. You might find duplicate tools or outdated ones that haven’t been updated in years. Remove them where possible, but always back up your site first. A seemingly defunct tool might actually be the glue holding everything together, so play it safe.

4. Minimize CSS, JavaScript, and HTML

CSS, JavaScript, and HTML might be the holy trinity of web development, but they can quickly get bloated. As a result, your site's interactivity can be delayed, leaving visitors click-click-clicking unresponsive buttons in frustration.

Here are a few ways to slim down your code:

• Use the Coverage panel in Chrome to find unused scripts and styles. Removing this filler can help speed up a slow website.  
• Tools like CSSNano and UglifyJS allow you to minify assets, such as CSS stylesheets that define all your colors and fonts.
• Combining similar files with software like Parcel can improve performance.

Not sure where to start? Google PageSpeed Insights can help detect inefficient code and recommend specific ways to fix it.

5. Defer or Delay Non-Essential Scripts

In JavaScript, you can use the defer attribute to delay less important elements. On a product page, for instance, you might load images and text first to engage customers. Non-essential items like chatbots and trackers should load last so visitors can see the most valuable content quickly.

6. Enable Object and Full-Page Caching

Some parts of your website, such as your contact page and logo, don’t change often. Caching lets servers save these static elements so they load faster.

“Without proper caching, the server has to generate a fresh page for every visitor, which kills performance under load,” notes Heral.

“Many sites skip this entirely or set it up incorrectly, especially on shared hosting plans,” he continues. “Our stack uses carefully configured caching layers that dramatically reduce server strain and keep load times low even during high traffic.”

Site builders often offer convenient caching tools. WordPress, for instance, has plugins like LiteSpeed Cache and W3 Total Cache. You can also use server headers — such as htaccess files — to tell browsers to save your data locally.

7. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A Content Delivery Network is another way to cache content. It stores copies of your site’s data on cloud servers (and sometimes physical ones) around the world.

When someone visits your site, the CDN retrieves this information from the nearest server. A user in California might load your site from a server in Phoenix, while a visitor in Taiwan could get the same static data from Singapore.

CDNs work because they display assets faster than traditional servers. To use one, you’ll need to upload your content to its origin server and point your domain to it. Platforms like Cloudflare and Google Cloud CDN have tutorials to guide you through the process.

8. Upgrade Hosting or Consider a Performance-Focused Platform

There are plenty of inexpensive hosting providers, but they often don’t have the horsepower for speedy performance. And if you buy a plan with a shared server, your website can be downright sluggish.

“If they’re not already on it, we move clients to our performance-focused VPS hosting, where we can control caching, backups, and performance directly,” says Heral.

There are plenty of platforms that prioritize hosting, such as Kinsta and Hostinger. But be sure to read customer reviews before you commit. Any platform can claim that they’re the fastest host around (and many do), but they don’t all live up to the hype.  

How Page Speed Impacts Bounce Rate

Obviously, customers can’t buy your products if they immediately abandon your site. According to Clutch’s survey data, nearly 1 in 3 customers (29%) say they feel frustrated by slow loading times when shopping online.

By improving your site’s performance, the chances that visitors will remain on your site increases. Faster loading times will help prevent these issues by decreasing bounce rate and increasing conversion rate.

Improve Your Page Speed With Help From a Web Design Agency

Many of our tips are relatively easy to apply, even if you’re not tech-savvy. But sometimes, it’s worth outsourcing your web redesign or refresh to an external pro.

“If the site is revenue-generating or supports a core business function, it’s worth bringing in a specialist,” Heral explains. “Performance isn’t just about numbers on a report; it’s about optimizing the entire stack, from front-end code to server infrastructure.”

He continues, “Teams like ours go beyond surface-level tweaks, ensuring long-term gains and avoiding regressions. We’ve taken over projects that were ‘optimized’ in the past but never actually addressed the root issues, and the difference after a real rebuild is night and day.”

Here are a few signs that it’s time to outsource:

• Your Lighthouse scores are still low, even after you’ve made all the improvements in this guide.
• You’re dealing with legacy code that a long-forgotten employee wrote in 2007.
• You just don’t have the time or coding knowledge (“minify what?”) to handle updates yourself.

Need a hand (or 10)? Browse Clutch’s directory of vetted web design agencies for expert assistance.

Final Thoughts: Your Website Can’t Afford to Be Slow

A clunky website isn’t just annoying. It’s a serious threat to your bottom line. Even the most loyal customers often won’t stick around longer than 10 seconds to wait for oversized images or glitchy animations to load.

Luckily, you don’t need to settle for a slow website. Step up your performance by configuring a CDN and creating a minimalist design. 

And don't hesitate to outsource time-consuming or challenging tasks to an expert. Need professional support but not sure where to start? Learn how to outsource your web design here. 

About the Author

Jeanette Godreau Senior Content Marketing Specialist at Clutch

Jeanette Godreau crafts in-depth content on web design, graphic design, and branding to help B2B buyers make confident decisions on Clutch.  

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