Why a Page Feels Slow

Most page speed issues on our sites come down to a small number of common, fixable causes — and most of them are within an editor’s control. This page covers what to check yourself before raising a support ticket, and what’s outside your control and best left to us.

What editors can usually influence

Oversized images

By far the most common cause of a slow page. An image straight from a phone or camera can be several megabytes — far larger than it needs to be for the web. See the separate article on uploading images: best practice for file size for how to check and resize before uploading.

Too many heavy elements on one page

A page stacked with many large images, embedded videos, and maps all in one place will always feel heavier than one that’s more sparing. If a page feels sluggish, consider whether everything on it needs to be there, or whether some content could be split across more than one page.

External embeds

Embedded YouTube videos, social media posts, and maps all load extra content from other websites, which can be slower than content hosted directly on our site — especially several on the same page. This is usually still worth doing where it adds real value, but it’s worth being aware of as a factor.

What’s outside an editor’s control

• Server performance and caching — handled by WP Engine and configured by us; see the separate article on what “publish” does behind the scenes for how caching fits in.
• Plugin and theme performance — how efficiently the underlying code runs is a development concern, not a content one.
• Visitor’s own connection — a page can be well optimised and still feel slow to someone on a poor mobile signal; this isn’t something the site itself can fix.

Quick checks before raising a ticket

1. Try the page in a different browser or device — if it’s fast elsewhere, it may be a local/browser issue rather than the site.
2. Check whether it’s one specific page that’s slow, or the whole site — a single slow page usually points to heavy content on that page specifically.
3. Look at how many images and embeds are on the page, and whether any images look unusually large or slow to load in individually.

If it’s the whole site that feels slow, rather than one specific page, that’s worth flagging to us directly rather than trying to diagnose it yourself — it’s more likely to be a server or infrastructure issue.

Tips

• Get into the habit of resizing and compressing images before upload, every time — it’s the single biggest thing an editor can do for site speed.
• Use embeds where they genuinely add value, but avoid stacking several heavy embeds on one page unnecessarily.
• If you’re not sure whether a page is “normal” speed or genuinely a problem, send us the page and we can take a look.