Your website is slow on phones. Here is what to fix first.

Start with the number that matters

Speed scores are useful, but one measurement tells you the most: how long it takes for the main content of your homepage to appear, usually the headline or hero image. Google calls this Largest Contentful Paint and counts under 2.5 seconds as good, measured on a phone.

Measure before you change anything. Google's free PageSpeed Insights runs the test for you, and our free health report runs the same test and explains the results in plain English. Test a couple of times: scores move a little between runs.

1. Stop bouncing visitors through redirects

When someone types yourbusiness.co.ke and your site sends them to www.yourbusiness.co.ke, and then to a secure version of that, each hop is a round trip before the page even starts loading. On a phone, every hop costs noticeable time.

• Pick one address as the real one and redirect everything else to it in a single step.
• Use that exact address everywhere you control: your Google Business Profile, social media bios, adverts and email signatures.

It is one of the cheapest fixes there is, and one of the most commonly missed.

2. Get the first screen out of the way of everything else

Before a phone can show anything, it downloads the stylesheets and scripts the page asks for up front. Page builders and themes often load everything, for every page, before showing a single word.

• Load only what the first screen needs first, and defer the rest.
• Be wary of homepage sliders and carousels: they are heavy, and the main content waits for them.
• Show text straight away in a fallback font while custom fonts load, instead of keeping it invisible.

3. Shrink your images

Photos straight from a camera or phone are far larger than any screen needs. They slow the page down and spend your visitors' data.

• Resize images to roughly the size they are displayed at, allowing for sharp phone screens.
• Use modern formats such as WebP or AVIF, which keep quality at a fraction of the size.
• Load images further down the page only as visitors scroll to them, but never delay the main image at the top.

4. Remove scripts and plugins you do not use

Every chat widget, tracker, pop-up and plugin adds code the phone has to download and run. On a mid-range phone, that is often what makes a page feel sluggish to scroll and tap even after it has loaded.

Go through them honestly. If nobody looks at a tool's data, or it does not bring in enquiries, remove it.

5. Let returning visitors keep what they downloaded

If your server tells browsers not to keep images, fonts and scripts, every visit starts from zero. Long cache lifetimes, text compression (gzip or Brotli) and a content delivery network are usually settings, not rebuilds.

Where to begin

Run the test, fix the largest item it finds, and test again. In our experience the first two or three fixes do most of the work. If you would like a second opinion, our free health report puts the findings in order of what to fix first.