This article is based on a practical short video from Salazar Digital – Marketing & Web Design. If you want more leads and better engagement from visitors, one of the simplest improvements you can make is to speed up your website. Below I explain why speed matters, the most common causes of slow sites, and clear, actionable fixes you can implement or hire someone to handle for you.
Why website speed directly affects customers
When your website takes too long to load, people don’t wait. They leave and often go straight to a competitor. In short: faster websites keep more visitors engaged, increase the chance they become customers, and improve user experience across devices.
“If your website takes too long to load, visitors will go elsewhere.”
Common causes of slow websites
Most slow websites share the same root causes. Addressing these will make the biggest difference quickly:
- Heavy images and videos: Large media files add significant download time.
- Hosting and geographic distance: If your server is far from users, their requests take longer.
- Lack of caching or content delivery: Every visit forces full downloads instead of using local copies.
- Poor configuration or bloated code: Unoptimized plugins, themes, or scripts can slow rendering.
Practical fixes you can apply today
Start with these straightforward optimizations—many are quick and either free or low-cost.
1. Optimize images and media
- Compress images before uploading (use tools or plugins).
- Use modern formats like WebP when possible to reduce file size without visible quality loss.
- Enable lazy loading so images load only when they enter the user’s viewport.
- For videos, avoid hosting heavy video files on your own server—use platforms like YouTube or Vimeo and embed the player.
2. Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
A CDN stores copies of your static content (images, videos, CSS, JS) on servers distributed around the world. When a user visits your site, the CDN serves files from the server closest to them, reducing latency and download time.
Benefits of a CDN:
- Faster loading for geographically distributed visitors.
- Reduced load on your origin server.
- Built-in caching so repeat visitors download less data.
Cloudflare is a popular CDN provider with a free tier and easy integration for many websites. For more advanced setups or enterprise-scale needs, there are other paid CDN providers to consider.
3. Enable caching
Caching saves a copy of resources locally (in the browser) or on edge servers so that returning visitors don’t download everything again. Proper cache settings reduce bandwidth and deliver instant page loads for repeat users.
4. Get technical help when needed
Some improvements—like integrating a CDN, configuring server-side caching, or fine-tuning performance plugins—are technical. If you’re not comfortable making these changes, hire a developer or an agency experienced in web performance.
Quick checklist to improve site speed
- Compress and convert images to WebP when possible.
- Host videos on YouTube or Vimeo and embed them instead of uploading to your server.
- Install a CDN (Cloudflare is a common, cost-effective option).
- Enable browser and server caching.
- Audit plugins and remove or replace slow ones.
- Run performance tests (Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix) and iterate.
Conclusion
Yes—website speed can lead to more customers. Faster pages keep visitors longer, reduce bounce rates, and improve conversions. Start with media optimization, add a CDN and caching, and bring in technical help for more advanced fixes. Small changes often produce big results.
If you found these tips useful, consider reaching out to Salazar Digital – Marketing & Web Design for hands-on help implementing them on your site.
Salazar Digital Local Marketing
1172 Murphy Ave #208, San Jose, CA 95131
(408) 532-5118
