How fast does my website need to load before I start losing leads?

Aim for your main content visible in under 2.5 seconds. Past 3 seconds, you start losing people — and your customers are often standing at a job site on a spotty connection searching "emergency plumber near me," which makes speed matter even more than it does for the average business.

The most common causes of a slow trade site:

• Huge, uncompressed photos straight off a phone camera
• Autoplaying background video on the homepage
• A DIY page builder loaded with plugins and scripts you don't actually use
• Third-party embeds — chat widgets, review carousels, booking calendars — all stacked on one page

The fix is usually straightforward: compress and properly size images before upload, cut anything you don't need on the homepage, and avoid page builders that load a stack of unnecessary code for every visitor. A leaner, hand-built site will almost always outrun a bloated template.

Test it yourself with Google's PageSpeed Insights — it's free and tells you exactly what's slowing your specific site down, not just a generic score.