Quick Answer
- Upgrade to business-level hosting ($40+/month for informational sites, $65+ for e-commerce)
- Audit plugins with Query Monitor
- Resize, compress, and convert images to WebP
- Monitor 404 errors with Yoast or Rank Math
- Track Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS)
The $10,000 F5 Button
I once worked with a business owner who paid someone minimum wage to refresh their website every 30 minutes. They thought hitting F5 kept the site “running fast.”
The irony? The cost of that employee would have paid for professional optimization that would have actually fixed the problem.
This is what happens when you don’t understand what slows a website down.
In 2025, 47% of users expect pages to load in under 2 seconds. Conversion rates drop by 4.42% for every second of delay. Speed is not technical — it is financial.
The Three-Part Website Speed Diagnostic
Every slow website fails in the same three places:
- The server
- The plugins
- The images
These issues stack. A slow server magnifies bad plugins. Bad plugins magnify large images. Soon, your 2-second site becomes a 12-second conversion killer.
Why Cheap Hosting Breaks Everything
If you pay $8–$12/month, you are on a server farm designed to pack hundreds of sites onto one CPU. When one spikes, they all suffer.
When clients move from shared hosting to managed hosting, we routinely see:
- Load times drop from 12s → under 1s
- PageSpeed scores jump from 20 → 90+
- Bounce rates drop 22%
Hosting is not a cost — it is your foundation.
How Much Hosting You Actually Need
| Site Type | Proper Hosting |
|---|---|
| Business website | $40+/month |
| WooCommerce store | $65+/month |
| High-traffic site | $400–$800/month |
Cheap hosting costs more than good hosting once lost conversions are counted.
Why Plugins Are the Silent Killers
WordPress can run 30+ plugins — if they’re coded well. One bad plugin can add 3–5 seconds to every page.
Use Query Monitor to see:
- Database queries per plugin
- Script load time
- API calls
It turns guessing into measurement.
Image Optimization: The Fastest Win
Images account for 50% of load time on most websites.
Fix this by following this workflow:
- Resize to actual display size
- Compress using TinyPNG
- Convert to WebP
- Enable lazy loading
This takes 60 seconds per image and saves seconds of load time.
404 Errors Are Silent Performance Killers
Every broken URL wastes server resources. Use Yoast or Rank Math to log 404s and redirect them monthly.
This removes invisible friction from your site.
Track These 3 Metrics
- LCP: Under 2.5s
- FID: Under 100ms
- CLS: Under 0.1
Vodafone improved LCP by 30% and saw an 8% sales lift.
When DIY Ends
If you still see 4+ second load times after fixing hosting, plugins, images, and 404s, the problem is now in server configuration or database performance. That’s when a professional is needed.
Call WebWize
If your site is slow, WebWize can diagnose it in minutes. Call 713-416-7111 to stop losing customers to loading screens.
About Glenn Brooks
Glenn Brooks is the founder of WebWize, Inc. WebWize has provided web design, development, hosting, SEO and email services since 1994. Glenn graduated from SWTSU with a degree in Commercial Art and worked in the advertising, marketing, and printing industries for 18 years before starting WebWize.
