Why your slow site is costing you money

Your website might be turning away one-third of potential customers before they see your first headline. If your mobile site takes more than 3 seconds to load, 53% of visitors abandon it — and 79% won’t return.

That’s not just traffic. That’s revenue walking out the door.

The conversion cliff

Speed doesn’t decline gradually. It falls off a cliff.

Research analyzing 27,000+ landing pages found that sites loading in 1 second see 3.05% conversion rates. At 2 seconds, that drops to 1.68% — a 45% decrease. By 3 seconds, you’re down to 1.12%.

Here’s what that looks like in real money: A site with 1,000 daily visitors and a $50 average order value generates $1,525 per day at 1-second load times. At 3 seconds, that same site earns $560 per day. That’s a $965 daily difference — nearly $30,000 per month — just from those two extra seconds.

The mobile reality makes this worse. While Google recommends 3-second mobile load times, US retail sites average 6.3 seconds — more than double the benchmark. Most founders check their site on desktop and never see the problem their customers face.

Even small improvements matter. Recent research shows that a 0.1-second improvement increases conversions by 8.4% for ecommerce sites. Every 100 milliseconds counts.

What Google actually measures

Google tracks three Core Web Vitals. You need all three in the “Good” range to see any SEO benefit — there’s no partial credit.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how fast your main content appears. Target: under 2.5 seconds. When visitors see blank screens, they leave. One-third of mobile visitors will abandon your site if you miss this mark.

Interaction to next paint (INP) measures how quickly buttons and links respond when clicked. Target: under 200 milliseconds. This replaced First Input Delay in March 2024. Frustration from unresponsive clicks drives users away faster than slow loading.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures whether content jumps around while loading. Target: under 0.1. Accidental clicks and visual chaos erode trust. Users think your site is broken.

Pass one or two? That’s the same as failing all three from Google’s perspective. Sites that pass all three can gain a ranking advantage—Google uses these metrics as a tie-breaker between pages with similar content quality.

The hidden cost

Speed problems create a compounding loss. Nearly 70% of consumers say speed impacts their purchasing decisions. But the real damage goes deeper: 79% of shoppers who experience slow sites won’t return, and 44% will discourage others. You’re not just losing one sale — you’re losing lifetime customer value and generating negative word-of-mouth.

This invisible revenue leak happens every day. You won’t see it in your analytics. You’ll just see conversion rates that never quite meet expectations and customer acquisition costs that keep climbing.

The path forward

Speed optimization requires specialized expertise. It’s not about installing a caching plugin or compressing images — those are table stakes. Real performance work involves server configuration, render-blocking resource optimization, third-party script management, and mobile-first architecture.

One more thing: Google evaluates Core Web Vitals separately for mobile and desktop. Changes take 28 days to reflect in rankings. If you’re expecting instant results, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re planning for sustainable improvement, you’ll see compounding benefits.

The gap between recommended and actual mobile performance represents massive competitive advantage. While your competitors average 6.3-second load times, you could be delivering content in under 2.5 seconds. That difference translates directly to revenue.

Ready to find your hidden revenue leak? Talk to us about your site’s speed.