Website Speed Matters More Than You Think: The Data

Website speed is not a technical nicety. It is a revenue lever. Here is the data that proves it.

The Bounce Rate Data

Google's research on mobile page load times shows a clear relationship:

• 1-3 seconds load time: 32% bounce probability
• 1-5 seconds: 90% bounce probability
• 1-6 seconds: 106% bounce probability
• 1-10 seconds: 123% bounce probability

That means if your site takes 5 seconds to load instead of 2 seconds, you are losing 60% more visitors before they see a single word of your content.

The Conversion Data

Amazon famously found that every 100ms increase in load time cost them 1% of sales. For small businesses the impact is even more dramatic because there is less brand loyalty anchoring the visitor.

Studies across e-commerce and service businesses consistently show:

• Pages loading in 1 second convert 3x better than pages loading in 5 seconds
• A 1-second improvement in page speed increases conversions by 7%
• 53% of mobile visitors abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load

The SEO Data

Google has used page speed as a ranking factor since 2010, and it has only become more important. Core Web Vitals — the speed and experience metrics Google measures — are now a direct ranking signal.

In practical terms: two websites with identical content and identical backlink profiles will rank differently based on speed. The faster site wins.

For local businesses competing in the map pack, this advantage can be decisive. If you and your three closest competitors all have similar reviews and similar content, the faster website gets the ranking boost.

Why Most Small Business Websites Are Slow

Bloated page builders. WordPress with 15 plugins, Wix with animations and effects, Squarespace with heavy themes. These platforms prioritize design flexibility over performance, and the result is websites that load 3-5x slower than they should.

Unoptimized images. A single unoptimized image can add 2-5 seconds to page load time. Most small business sites have multiple unoptimized images per page.

Cheap hosting. Shared hosting at $5/month means your website shares a server with hundreds of other sites. When any of them gets traffic, yours slows down.

Unnecessary scripts. Tracking codes, chat widgets, social media plugins, analytics tools. Each one adds JavaScript that the browser needs to download and execute before the page is usable.

What Ted Does Differently

Ted-built websites are fast by default:

• Modern code that loads only what is needed
• All images compressed and served in next-gen formats (WebP)
• No bloated page builders or unnecessary plugins
• Optimized hosting with edge caching
• Minimal JavaScript — no unnecessary scripts
• Lazy loading for images below the fold

The result: Ted-built websites consistently score 90+ on Google PageSpeed Insights, compared to the average small business website score of 35-50.