Page Speed
How quickly a webpage loads and becomes interactive, affecting both user experience and search engine rankings.
Definition
Page speed encompasses multiple metrics measuring load time, visual rendering, and interactivity. Core Web Vitals—LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), INP (Interaction to Next Paint), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)—are Google's key performance metrics.
Speed is both a direct ranking factor and a user experience factor. Slow pages frustrate users, increase bounce rates, and hurt conversions—creating a double penalty for poor performance.
Why It Matters
Users expect near-instant loading, especially on mobile. Studies consistently show that each additional second of load time increases bounce rates and decreases conversions—a slow site literally costs money.
Google has made Core Web Vitals a ranking factor, meaning speed directly affects search visibility. Sites that invest in performance gain competitive advantage in both rankings and user experience.
Examples in Practice
An e-commerce site optimizes images and implements lazy loading, reducing page load time from 6 seconds to 2 seconds. Mobile conversion rate increases 30% and bounce rate drops 25%.
A media site moves to a CDN and optimizes JavaScript, improving Core Web Vitals from "poor" to "good" across all metrics—and sees organic traffic increase 15% following the next algorithm update.
A B2B site discovers their third-party chat widget adds 3 seconds to load time. Deferring its load until after page interaction improves performance without losing functionality.