Slow websites kill business. Every 100ms delay costs 7% of conversions. Here are the speed standards every website should meet.
How Fast Should a Website Load?
Modern websites should load in under 2 seconds, with the key metric being Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) hitting 2.5 seconds or faster. First Contentful Paint should occur within 1 second. Google treats speed as a ranking factor, and sites below these thresholds lose search visibility and conversions at scale.
Core Web Vitals Targets (Google Standards)
| Metric | Target | Good | Needs Work | Poor | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | LCP | Under 2.5s | Under 2.5s | 2.5-4.0s | Over 4.0s | | FCP | Under 1.8s | Under 1.8s | 1.8-3.0s | Over 3.0s | | CLS | Under 0.1 | Under 0.1 | 0.1-0.25 | Over 0.25 | | INP | Under 200ms | Under 200ms | 200-500ms | Over 500ms | | TTFB | Under 600ms | Under 600ms | 600-1800ms | Over 1800ms |
Speed by Device
Mobile (most important)
- Load time: Under 3 seconds on 4G
- LCP: Under 2.5 seconds
- Why: Users on cellular, battery-limited, distracted
Desktop
- Load time: Under 2 seconds
- LCP: Under 2 seconds
- Why: Faster connection, but users expect instant results
Tablet
- Load time: Under 2.5 seconds
- LCP: Under 2.5 seconds
Real User Data Impact
Speed directly impacts business:
| Load Time | Bounce Rate | Conversion Rate | Organic Traffic | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1-2 seconds | 24% | 3.2% | Baseline (100%) | | 3 seconds | 35% | 2.8% | -12% traffic | | 5 seconds | 44% | 2.2% | -25% traffic | | 8 seconds | 53% | 1.5% | -40% traffic | | 10+ seconds | 66% | 1.0% | -50% traffic |
Translation: Every second above 2s costs 5-10% of conversions.
Speed by Industry
Benchmarks vary:
| Industry | Avg. Load Time | Target | Impact | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | E-commerce | 3.1s | Under 2s | 1% speed = 2% revenue | | News/Media | 2.8s | Under 2s | 1s delay = 4% traffic | | SaaS | 2.5s | Under 2s | Critical for signup | | Corporate | 3.5s | Under 2.5s | Brand perception | | WordPress | 4.2s | Under 2s | Needs optimization |
Why Speed Standards Exist
Google's Core Web Vitals measure real user experience:
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) Under 2.5s
- Measures: When main content is visible
- User perception: "Is the page loading?"
- Fix: Optimize images, reduce TTFB, defer JS
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) Under 0.1
- Measures: Page stability
- User perception: "Does this page jump around?"
- Fix: Set image dimensions, reserve ad space
INP (Interaction to Next Paint) Under 200ms
- Measures: Responsiveness to clicks
- User perception: "Is this responsive?"
- Fix: Optimize JavaScript, break up long tasks
TTFB (Time to First Byte) Under 600ms
- Measures: Server response speed
- User perception: Nothing visible yet
- Fix: Better hosting, CDN, caching
Speed Testing Tools
Free tools
- PageSpeed Insights (official Google)
- WebPageTest (detailed waterfall)
- GTmetrix (actionable fixes)
- Chrome DevTools (local debugging)
Paid tools
- Lighthouse CI (automated monitoring)
- Speedcurve (team collaboration)
- Synthetic Monitoring (continuous testing)
Speed Optimization Priority
If your site is slow, fix in this order:
1. Images (40-50% of page weight)
- Compress aggressively
- Use WebP/AVIF formats
- Lazy load below-fold images
- Typical improvement: 1-2 seconds
2. Third-party scripts (20-30% impact)
- Defer non-critical JS
- Asynchronously load ads, analytics
- Typical improvement: 0.5-1 second
3. Server response (TTFB) (10-20% impact)
- Upgrade hosting
- Implement caching
- Use CDN
- Typical improvement: 0.5-1 second
4. CSS/JavaScript (10-15% impact)
- Minify code
- Remove unused CSS
- Code splitting
- Typical improvement: 0.2-0.5 seconds
Common Speed Problems by Technology
WordPress
- Problem: Lazy-loading plugin conflicts, slow themes
- Fix: Caching plugin, theme audit, image optimization
- Typical improvement: 3x faster
React SPAs
- Problem: Large bundle, client-side rendering
- Fix: Code splitting, migrate to Next.js, lazy load routes
- Typical improvement: 2-3x faster
Legacy PHP
- Problem: No caching, database-heavy queries
- Fix: Implement caching, query optimization, CDN
- Typical improvement: 2-4x faster
E-commerce
- Problem: Product images, dynamic content
- Fix: Image optimization, product image lazy loading, caching
- Typical improvement: 2-3x faster
Speed Test Your Site Now
- Go to PageSpeed Insights
- Enter your domain
- Check your LCP, CLS, INP scores
- Identify slowest resource (usually images)
- Implement fix number 1 from optimization list
Most sites can improve by 1-2 seconds with image optimization alone.
Need professional speed optimization? Acefina performs free Core Web Vitals audits and typically improves load time by 50-70%.