SEO
Slow Sites Lose the Job
A slow page is not a technical hobby. It’s the moment someone on a job site gives up and rings the next name. Speed, images and a page that works on a phone come first, and most of the fixes are free.
Why does speed matter more for trades than for most businesses?
Think about when your customers look you up. A pipe has burst. A gate has failed on a rental. A builder needs a concreter for tomorrow. They are on a phone, often on patchy mobile coverage, usually in a hurry, and they have a list of other names one tap away.
That person is not going to wait for a page to wake up. They won’t read your story or admire your gallery. If the number isn’t on screen quickly, they ring someone else. A slow site doesn’t just look bad, it quietly sends your enquiries to a competitor.
How do you test your own site for free?
Google’s PageSpeed Insights is free. Paste in your address and it reports how the page loads on a phone and what is slowing it down. You don’t need to understand every line. Look for the items it flags as biggest, and start there.
Then do the human test. Switch your phone to mobile data, switch off wifi, and open your site from a cold start. Count how long until you can see the headline and the phone number. Do it from a spot with weak reception, like a driveway or the back of a block. That is where your customers are.
What should you fix first?
Images, nearly every time. Photos taken on a modern phone are huge files. Uploaded straight to a website, a single gallery can be heavier than everything else on the page put together.
- Resize photos to the size they are shown at. A picture displayed 800 pixels wide doesn’t need to be 4,000 pixels wide.
- Compress them before uploading, and use a modern format where your site supports it.
- Load photos lower down the page only when the visitor scrolls to them.
- Cut the gallery to your best six to ten jobs, not every job you have photographed.
- Remove autoplay video and heavy slideshows from the top of the page.
Does the page work properly on a phone?
Speed is only half of it. A page can load quickly and still be a pain on a phone. Check that the text is readable without zooming, the buttons are big enough for a thumb, nothing jumps around as the page loads, and the phone number starts a call when tapped.
Check the form too. A quote form with twelve required fields loses people. Ask for name, number, suburb and what the job is. You can get the rest on the phone.
Before and after: what does this look like in practice?
An example, with a made-up business: a Brisbane concreter’s homepage opens with a full-screen video, a slideshow of forty uncompressed job photos, a chat popup and a menu with nine items. The phone number is in the footer.
The rewrite keeps one strong photo at the top, with the line “Concreting in Brisbane’s north and west” and a large call button. The gallery drops to eight compressed photos that load as the visitor scrolls. The video goes. The chat popup goes. The page does the same job with a fraction of the weight.
Where does hosting come in?
Where the site lives affects speed, but it is rarely the first fix. We build mobile-first, and our website hosting and care starts from $29/mo: hosting on accounts you own (Vercel and Cloudflare), uptime monitoring, updates and small content tweaks. Tradie websites start from $1,048 with a click-to-call layout that works on a phone. You own the site, and monthly services can be cancelled with 30 days’ notice.
Questions people ask
Is PageSpeed Insights free?
Yes. It is a free Google tool. Paste in your page address and it shows how the page performs on a phone and what to fix first.
Should I fix images or change my hosting first?
Fix images first. Oversized photos are the most common cause of a slow small-business page, and resizing them costs nothing.
Get a clear quote
Tell us what the business does and where. We reply with what is included and what it costs. You own the site.