When a website feels slow on a phone, the cause is rarely mysterious. In most small business websites we look at, a few heavy images and scripts are doing most of the damage. Here is a real example from one of our clients, M Ryder Roofing, a family-run roofing firm near Norwich, and the lessons you can apply to your own site.
Where it started
In our Lighthouse mobile test, the site scored 73 out of 100. The main content took 13.3 seconds to appear on a simulated phone connection, and the home page weighed 3.0 MB. Visitors on a weak signal were waiting a long time for a page that, on a desktop, seemed perfectly fine.
What was slowing it down
- A large hero photo, loaded late. The big image at the top was set as a background in the page's styles, so the browser only discovered it after loading everything else. The file itself was 877 KB.
- Full-size images everywhere. Service and gallery photos were sent at their original size, even to small phone screens.
- A spam-protection script on every page. The form protection, around 355 KB, loaded on every page whether or not the visitor ever touched a form.
None of these was a mistake anyone would notice by looking at the site. All of them showed up clearly in the measurements.
What we changed
- The hero image became a proper image, marked as the most important thing on the page so the browser fetches it first, and served in a modern format at the right size for each screen.
- Every other image is resized automatically for the visitor's screen, and images further down the page load only when the visitor scrolls towards them.
- The form protection now loads on demand, the first time someone clicks into a form, instead of on every page view.
The design did not change at all. Visitors see exactly the same website.
The result
In the same Lighthouse mobile test, the score went from 73 to 95, the main content now appears in 2.9 seconds instead of 13.3, and the home page dropped from 3.0 MB to 0.46 MB, roughly six times lighter.
What you can check on your own site
- How big are your photos? A photo straight from a phone is often 3 to 5 MB. For a website, most images should be a few hundred KB at most.
- Is the first thing people see also the first thing that loads? If the top of your page appears last, something is in the way.
- Which scripts load on every page? Chat widgets, booking tools, social feeds and form protection often load everywhere, even where they are not used.
- What does it look like on a phone? Test on mobile data, not your office wifi.
Why it matters
Speed is not a vanity number. People leave slow pages before they read a word, especially on phones, and search engines take page experience into account. A fast site simply gives every visitor a better chance of becoming an enquiry.
Every website we build is made this way from the start, and our Care Plan keeps it fast as content is added. Curious how your site does? Our free website check runs the same kind of test in about 30 seconds.