Website Speed and Core Web Vitals: Why They Matter for Sales

Visitors do not wait for slow websites. If a page takes too long to appear, many people simply press back and choose a competitor. Speed matters even more in Kenya, where most visitors browse on mobile data and mid-range phones. Google also uses page experience signals, known as Core Web Vitals, when ranking pages.

What Core Web Vitals measure

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how quickly the main content, usually a hero image or heading, appears. Google recommends 2.5 seconds or less.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks. Good is 200 milliseconds or less.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much the page jumps around while loading. A low score means buttons do not move just as people try to tap them.

You can check your own site for free with Google PageSpeed Insights or the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console.

The most common causes of a slow site

1. Oversized images. Photos uploaded straight from a camera can be several megabytes each.
2. Too many plugins and scripts. Each chat widget, slider and tracking tag adds weight.
3. Cheap, overloaded hosting that responds slowly to every request.
4. No caching, so the server rebuilds every page for every visitor.
5. Layout shifts from images and adverts without reserved space.

Quick wins

Optimise images

Resize images to the size they are displayed, compress them and use modern formats such as WebP. When we migrated our own blog, converting the largest images to WebP cut their file size by more than 80% with no visible loss of quality.

Lazy-load what is below the fold

Images further down the page should only load as the visitor scrolls, so the first screen appears faster.

Reserve space for images and embeds

Setting width and height on images prevents the layout from jumping, which improves CLS immediately.

Remove what you do not need

Audit plugins, fonts and third-party scripts. Every one you remove makes the site lighter and more secure.

Use caching and good hosting

Server-side caching and a well-configured host make a dramatic difference to how quickly pages start loading. See our guide to choosing web hosting.

Speed is a sales feature

A fast site does more than please Google. It keeps visitors engaged, makes forms and checkouts easier to complete, and reduces data costs for your customers.

Our web development team builds sites that are fast by design, and we also offer performance audits for existing websites with a clear list of fixes.