Users never see your code. They only see whether the page shows up instantly or makes them wait. Speed is part of user experience that Google takes into account and clients judge in the first second.
Core Web Vitals in three lines
| Metric | What it measures | Good score |
|---|---|---|
| LCP | how fast the largest element (e.g. hero image) appears | ≤ 2.5 s |
| INP | how fast the page responds to a click | ≤ 200 ms |
| CLS | whether elements jump while loading | ≤ 0.1 |
What usually slows WordPress sites down
- heavy images instead of optimised WebP/AVIF,
- bloated themes and page builders,
- too many plugins,
- third-party fonts,
- marketing scripts loaded immediately,
- no page cache.
What has the biggest impact
- image optimisation, lazy loading and preloading the hero image,
- critical CSS inline, the rest loaded asynchronously,
- lean, custom front-end code,
- deferred analytics and chat scripts,
- fixed element dimensions to avoid layout shifts,
- page cache, compression and up-to-date PHP.
Speed and sales
Every extra second increases the chance the user goes back to search results and clicks a competitor — especially on mobile. A fast site means cheaper ad traffic, better rankings and more enquiries from the same budget.
Speed optimisation (target PageSpeed 90+ mobile) and an SEO audit with a PDF report are in the pricing. Send me your URL and I will tell you where to start.
