Why your Katy business website is slow (and what it costs you)

Speed is a local ranking factor and a conversion factor

Most visitors to a local business site arrive on a phone, often on a mobile connection while they're already out running errands. A site that takes five seconds to become usable loses a meaningful share of those visitors before they ever see your phone number.

Google measures this with Core Web Vitals, and while speed is not the strongest ranking signal, it is one of the few you can fix permanently in a single engagement.

The three things that are almost always to blame

First, unoptimized images. A single 4MB hero photo straight off a camera will outweigh every other asset on the page combined. Modern formats and correct sizing usually cut page weight by half.

Second, plugin sprawl. Every analytics tag, chat widget, and popup tool adds render-blocking JavaScript. Audit them quarterly and delete anything nobody has looked at in six months.

Third, hosting and theme choice. A general-purpose theme loads code for features you will never use. Custom builds skip that entirely.

How to check yours in ten minutes

Run your homepage and your top service page through PageSpeed Insights on mobile. Look at Largest Contentful Paint first — aim for under 2.5 seconds — then at total page weight in the network panel of your browser's developer tools.

If either number is far off, the fix is usually mechanical rather than mysterious, and it's worth doing before you spend another dollar on ads pointing at that page.