Make your site fast —
and keep it that way
Slow sites lose visitors before the page even appears, and Google notices too. I find what’s actually holding your site back and fix the cause, with measured before-and-after numbers you can check yourself.
What a slow site actually costs
Speed isn’t vanity. It shows up in three places that all cost you money.
Visitors leave first
People abandon a page before it renders — and they never appear in your analytics as a lost sale, so the problem stays invisible.
Google ranks you lower
Core Web Vitals are a ranking signal. Two similar pages, and the faster one wins — you lose positions without ever knowing why.
Carts get abandoned
A slow checkout is where stores bleed most. Every extra second between “add to cart” and “paid” is a chance to change their mind.
The three numbers Google actually grades
“Fast” is not a matter of opinion here. Google publishes exact thresholds, measures them on real visits to your site, and uses them as a ranking signal. These are the current ones.
Largest Contentful Paint
How long before the main thing on the page actually appears — usually your hero image or headline. This is the one most WordPress sites fail, and it is normally the server, the image, or a stylesheet blocking the render.
Interaction to Next Paint
How quickly the page reacts when someone taps a menu, a filter or an add-to-cart button. It replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital in 2024, and it is a far harder test to pass.
Cumulative Layout Shift
How much the page jumps around while it loads. It is what makes someone tap the wrong link because a banner or an image pushed the page down a moment too late.
Which work moves which number
Optimisation is not one lever. Each of the three is caused by different things, so an audit that only reports a single overall score tells you very little.
Slow server response, an oversized hero image in the wrong format, fonts and stylesheets that block the first paint, and images loaded lazily that should have been preloaded. On shared hosting the server response alone can eat most of the budget before a single byte of your page is drawn.
Chat widgets, heat-map trackers, ad scripts, review embeds and page-builder bundles all compete for the same main thread. The fix is rarely “minify” — it is removing, deferring or replacing whole scripts, which is a decision about your business as much as your code.
Images and embeds published without width and height, web fonts that swap in late and reflow the text, and cookie or promo bars injected above existing content. Mostly small, unglamorous corrections, and they hold once they are done.
What I fix — no magic plugin
Installing a caching plugin and calling it done is what most “optimisation” gigs deliver. These are the things that genuinely move the numbers.
One-off, fixed price
Speed Tune
- Full optimisation pass
- Caching, images, scripts, database
- Before & after PageSpeed report
- Mobile and desktop tested
- 7 days of follow-up
Store Speed Tune
- Everything in Speed Tune
- Cart fragment fixes
- Product & category page tuning
- Checkout path optimised
- Safe caching rules for dynamic pages
Performance Audit
- Deep server-level investigation
- Query and plugin profiling
- Theme code review
- Written report with priorities
- Honest hosting recommendation
Send me your URL first — I’ll tell you for free whether it’s worth paying for, and which of these it needs.
Measured, not guessed
Baseline measurement
PageSpeed, GTmetrix and real load times recorded for your key pages, so there’s a starting number neither of us can argue with.
Fix the causes
Work happens on a staging copy where possible, in order of impact — biggest wins first, not a checklist for its own sake.
Verify nothing broke
Aggressive optimisation can break layouts, forms and checkouts. Every key page and function is tested before it goes live.
Report the numbers
Same tests, same pages, side by side. You see exactly what changed — and what’s left that only a host or rebuild would fix.
What lands in your inbox at the end
Not a screenshot of a score. A short document you can hand to anyone — including whoever maintains the site after me.
Your site, your data — the report is yours to keep, share or take to another developer.
Frequently asked questions
Can you guarantee a 100/100 PageSpeed score?
No, and I’d be careful with anyone who does. A perfect score usually means stripping out things you actually need — tracking, chat widgets, ad scripts, some page-builder features. My aim is a genuinely fast site for real visitors, with a strong score as a side effect. If 100/100 is the goal, I’ll tell you up front what it would cost you to get there.
Will optimisation break my site?
It can, if it’s done carelessly — that’s exactly why every page and form gets tested before anything goes live, and why I work on a staging copy where one exists. If something does misbehave afterwards, the follow-up window covers fixing it.
What if my hosting is the real problem?
Then I’ll say so, rather than take your money for squeezing a slow server. Cheap shared hosting has a floor no plugin gets under. I don’t resell hosting, so my recommendation costs me nothing either way.
How much faster will it actually get?
It depends entirely on what’s wrong now — a bloated, never-optimised site can improve dramatically, while a reasonably built one may only gain a little. I’ll look at your site before quoting and give you a realistic expectation, not a sales number.
Will it stay fast?
For a while. Sites slow down again as you add plugins, images and pages — that’s normal. Keeping it fast long-term is part of what the care plans cover, but there’s no obligation to take one.
Other services
Not quite what you need? One of these may be a better fit.
WordPress Design & Development
Custom WordPress sites designed and built from scratch — fixed prices from $250, speed-tuned and handed over fully in your name.
See packages →WooCommerce Development
A store built to actually sell — from $800, payment-ready, fast and owned entirely by you.
See store packages →Hire a WordPress Developer
Work directly with the developer writing the code — fixed-price projects from $250, $25/hr, or a monthly retainer.
See how it works →WordPress Maintenance & Care
Tested updates, daily backups and monitoring from $39/month — the boring alternative to an emergency.
See care plans →WordPress Migration
New host, platform or domain, moved from $60 — rankings, email and content intact, with no visible downtime.
See migration pricing →Emergency WordPress Fix
Site down, hacked or locked out? Free diagnosis and a fixed price before any work starts, from $70.
Get it looked at →SEO, Blogging & AdSense Websites
A done-for-you site built to rank and earn — $70 one-time setup plus $70/month keyword-targeted blogging.
See how it works →Find out what’s slowing your site down
Send me your URL and I’ll tell you honestly what’s wrong — and whether it’s worth paying to fix.