I run speed tests on every site that lands on my desk. The results are almost always the same. The owner thinks the problem is their hosting. Or their theme. Or the images they uploaded. And they’re usually wrong.
Here’s what’s actually slowing down most websites.
It’s probably the plugins
I see this all the time: a WordPress site with 40 active plugins. Each one adds CSS files, JavaScript files, and database queries. Individually, they’re tiny. Together, they turn a page load into a parade.
I worked on a site recently that had five different caching plugins. They were conflicting with each other. Removing four of them cut the load time by half.
The fix is brutal but simple: if a plugin isn’t essential, delete it. Not deactivate. Delete.
It might be your images
The second most common issue. Someone uploads a 5MB photo straight from their camera. WordPress resizes it, but the original file is still there, still loading on some pages.
Images should be under 200KB for most uses. There’s no visible quality difference between a properly compressed image and a raw camera file on a website. None.
Or the fonts
Custom fonts look great. Loading five different weights of three different font families will kill your performance. Stick to two families, two weights each. That’s plenty.
Or the tracking scripts
Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Hotjar, LinkedIn Insight Tag, and three other analytics tools you installed and forgot about. Every single one makes an external request. Some of them block the page from rendering until they load.
How to actually fix it
Run your site through PageSpeed Insights. Look at the “opportunities” section. That tells you exactly what’s wrong. No guesswork needed.
Most sites can get to a 90+ mobile score by cleaning up plugins, compressing images, and removing unused scripts. That’s usually enough. Obsessing over the last 10 points is rarely worth the effort.