Never Lose a Customer Again! 3 Ways to Boost PageSpeed Score

Introduction: Why Is Site Speed So Important Now?

Have you ever felt, "Our business website seems a bit slow to load..."? With the widespread use of smartphones, we live in an age where anyone can find information anytime, anywhere. Customers will quickly move on to another site if they are kept waiting even for a moment. Website loading speed is no longer just a technical issue; it is the very quality of the "hospitality" you offer your customers.

For local businesses, in particular, this "speed" is directly linked to sales. For example, imagine a customer finds your business on Google Maps and taps on your official website. If that site takes a long time to load, the customer might feel anxious, wondering, "Is this business okay?" and decide against making a reservation or visiting. This can also render your budding MEO efforts useless.

Furthermore, in the coming era, adapting to AI search, known as AIO (AI Optimization), will be essential. AI strives to provide the most comfortable and beneficial information for the user. A slow and difficult-to-use site may be judged by AI as "a site not recommended for users." In traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization), site speed is already one of Google's ranking factors, and its importance is only growing.

This article will explain, step-by-step and without difficult jargon, "concrete ways to improve your PageSpeed score" that you can implement starting tomorrow. It is aimed at business owners and web managers of small to medium-sized enterprises who may not have specialized knowledge. By reading this article, you can take the first step toward speeding up your business's website and ensuring you don't lose valuable customers.

The Problem: Is Your Site Keeping Customers Waiting?

In the online world, you may have heard of the "3-second rule." This term refers to the tendency for many users to leave a webpage if it doesn't load within three seconds. If your business's website takes 5 or 10 seconds to load, you could be losing many customers every day.

There are three main disadvantages to a slow-loading site:

1. Customer Drop-offs (Lost Opportunities)
This is the biggest drawback. Customers who were interested in your business give up before the site even loads. This is similar to a situation where someone sees your flyer and tries to call, only to find no one answers. You are letting customers who were right in front of you slip away.
2. Lower SEO Rankings
Google highly values sites that are "user-friendly." Loading speed is one of the key metrics (Core Web Vitals) for measuring that usability. A slow site can lower your ranking from Google, which can negatively affect your position in search results.
3. Lower Ratings from AI Search
In AI search, which is expected to become mainstream, AI generates the best answers to user questions. In doing so, AI references websites as reliable sources of information, but slow sites with a poor user experience are less likely to be chosen as a source. A smooth site experience is the foundation for future AIO.

You might be wondering, "But how do I know if my site is fast or slow?" Don't worry. Google offers a free tool called "PageSpeed Insights" that allows anyone to easily check their site's speed and get a score. Let's start by understanding your current situation with this tool.

Concrete Solutions: 3 Site Speed-Up Steps for Beginners

Even if you get a low score on PageSpeed Insights, there's no need to be discouraged. From here, we will explain three highly effective improvement measures that even non-experts can tackle. For many sites, the cause of slow loading speeds often falls into one of these three categories.

Solution 1: Put Your Website on a Diet! "Image Optimization"

The biggest reason a website becomes heavy is often "images." In particular, high-quality photos taken by a professional or with a high-performance smartphone camera tend to have very large file sizes. While it's understandable to want to convey the charm of your business with beautiful photos, it's counterproductive if it makes customers wait.

Image optimization is generally done in three steps.

Step 1: Change to the Appropriate Size (Resize)

For images displayed on a website, a width of around 1600 pixels is more than enough. Photos taken with a digital camera often exceed 4000 pixels in width. Uploading them as-is forces users to load unnecessarily large data, significantly slowing down the display speed.

What to do: Before uploading, use standard software like "Paint" on Windows or "Preview" on Mac, or a free image editing tool, to reduce the image width to about 1200-1600 pixels.
Checklist: Check the size of the main images on your site (top page main image, menu photos, staff photos, etc.) and resize any that are too large.
Estimated time: 15-30 minutes per page

Step 2: Reduce File Size While Maintaining Quality (Compression)

Further compress the resized images to reduce their data size. There are many free online tools that can dramatically reduce file size with almost no loss in quality.

What to do: Go to a web service like "TinyPNG" or "Squoosh," upload your images, and they will be automatically compressed. Download the compressed images and re-upload them to your site.
Checklist: As a guideline, check if the file size of each image is under 200KB (kilobytes).
Estimated time: (Including resizing) 15-30 minutes per page

Step 3: Use a New Image Format (WebP Conversion)

This is a bit more technical, but it is a very effective method. "WebP" is a new image format developed by Google that achieves an even higher compression rate than traditional formats like JPEG and PNG while maintaining quality. If you use WordPress, you can easily implement it with a plugin.

What to do: Install and activate a WordPress plugin like "WebP Express" or "Converter for Media." This will automatically convert images uploaded to your site to the WebP format, which will be displayed in compatible browsers.
Checklist: After installing the plugin, view your site in a compatible browser like Google Chrome to ensure the images are displaying correctly.
Estimated time: 30 minutes to 1 hour (for plugin installation and setup)

Solution 2: A Deep Clean for Your Site! "Organizing Unnecessary WordPress Plugins"

If you run your site on WordPress, you may have installed many "plugins" to add convenient features. However, the more plugins you have, the more they can slow down your site's performance. It's important to regularly clean up plugins you are not using or that have overlapping functions.

Step 1: Delete 'Inactive' Plugins

Do you have plugins that you've just left "inactive"? If you have no plans to use them in the future, just delete them. Leaving unnecessary files on your server can also pose a security risk.

What to do: From the WordPress dashboard, go to "Plugins" → "Installed Plugins," find the inactive plugins, and click "Delete."
Checklist: Ensure no inactive plugins are left.
Estimated time: 10 minutes

Step 2: Review 'Active' Plugins

Let's also review the plugins that are currently active to see if they are all truly necessary. For example, you might have two contact form plugins with similar functions, or a plugin for a feature you tried long ago might still be running.

What to do: Go through your list of active plugins one by one and ask yourself, "What does this do?" and "Am I still using this?" If you decide a plugin is unnecessary, first "Deactivate" it to check that your site displays and functions correctly, then delete it.
Checklist: Aim for 20 or fewer active plugins as a general guideline. Check for plugins with overlapping functions.
Estimated time: 30 minutes to 1 hour

※Note: When deleting plugins, it is highly recommended to back up your site just in case. Your hosting provider's control panel often provides a backup function.

Solution 3: Re-evaluate Your Site's Foundation! "Improving Server Response Time"

If a website is a house, the server is the "land" it's built on. No matter how much you lighten the house (site data), if the land (server) has poor performance, it will take a long time to welcome guests into your home. This is especially true if you have been using a budget hosting server for many years; the server's performance may be the bottleneck.

Step 1: Check Your Server Response Time

First, let's do a simple check to see if the server is the cause. In the PageSpeed Insights report, there is an item called "Reduce initial server response time (TTFB)." If a warning is displayed here, there's a high probability that there is a problem with your server's performance.

What to do: Scroll down the PageSpeed Insights report and look for the "Reduce initial server response time (TTFB)" item in the "Diagnostics" section.
Checklist: Check if there is a red or orange warning for this item.
Estimated time: 5 minutes

Step 2: Review Your Hosting Plan

If you saw a warning, it's time to review your current hosting plan. Many hosting companies offer newer, faster plans to keep up with the times.

What to do: Visit the official website of your current hosting provider and compare your plan with their latest offerings. Plans that include keywords like "SSD support," "HTTP/3 support," and "LiteSpeed server" are expected to be fast. Consider upgrading your plan or switching to a faster hosting company.
Checklist: Is your current plan the latest or recommended plan from your hosting company?
Estimated time: 1-2 hours for research. Migrating servers may require technical expertise, so consider consulting with a web development company.

Action Plan: 3 Steps to Start Optimizing Your Site Today

Even if you understand the theory, it can be hard to know where to start. Here are three concrete steps you can take today. Try following them in this order.

Step 1: Assess Your Current Situation (Estimated time: 15 minutes)

In a browser like Google Chrome, search for "PageSpeed Insights" and go to the site.
Enter your business's website URL and click the "Analyze" button.
Check both the "Mobile" and "Desktop" scores. Pay special attention to the "Mobile" score, as most users are on smartphones.
Save a screenshot of the results page as a record of your score before the improvements.

Step 2: Implement What You Can (Estimated time: 1-2 hours)

Start with "Solution 1: Image Optimization," which is often the most effective and lowest risk. Try resizing and compressing 3-5 of the large images on your site's homepage.
Next, proceed with "Solution 2: Organizing Unnecessary WordPress Plugins." Simply deleting unused plugins can be effective.

Step 3: Re-measure and Evaluate (Estimated time: 15 minutes)

Once you've completed the tasks in Step 2, measure your score again with PageSpeed Insights.
Compare it with your previous score to see how much it has improved. If the score has gone up even a little, the measures were a success.
Use this success as motivation to move on to the next steps, such as optimizing images on other pages or reviewing your server plan.

Conclusion: Site Speed is an Investment in Your Future

Improving your website's loading speed is not just a technical tweak. It is an expression of "hospitality" towards each and every potential customer who visits your site. A comfortable website gives customers a sense of security and builds trust in your business.

This perspective of "improving the user experience" will become increasingly important in online marketing. A superior user experience not only boosts your traditional SEO ranking but also maximizes the effectiveness of your MEO efforts to connect with local customers. Furthermore, it forms the strong foundation—the very core of your AIO strategy—that will get your business recommended in the coming age of AI search.

The three solutions introduced today are all things that even non-experts can implement with a little time. Starting with an assessment of your current situation and making steady improvements one by one is a sure step toward becoming a business that customers continue to choose. Why not start with a health check for your business's website?

You can learn more about a systematic approach to AIO in our TrendPackage AIO Package.