Run your website through Google PageSpeed Insights right now. If your score is below 90 and your load time is over 2 seconds, you're losing leads every single day — to both Google's algorithm and impatient customers.
Google has explicitly stated that page speed is a ranking factor. Faster sites rank higher. And the data on user behavior backs it up: 53% of mobile visitors abandon a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
Why Most Contractor Sites Are Slow
Template builders (GoDaddy, Wix, Squarespace) load 500KB-2MB of JavaScript on every page — much of it unnecessary. WordPress sites with 10+ plugins are even worse. Each plugin adds scripts, stylesheets, and database queries that stack up.
Unoptimized images are another killer. A single hero photo straight from your phone camera can be 5-10MB. That alone takes 3-5 seconds to load on a mobile connection. Multiply that by the gallery of project photos on your portfolio page, and you've got a 15-second load time.
The result: Google sees a slow site and pushes it down in rankings. Meanwhile, your potential customer sees a loading spinner and hits the back button. They find your competitor instead — the one whose site loaded in 0.8 seconds.
What Sub-1-Second Looks Like
A properly built contractor website serves optimized images (WebP format, properly sized), minimal JavaScript, and leverages server-side rendering so the page is ready before the browser even finishes asking for it.
The result is a site that loads in 0.5-0.8 seconds, scores 95+ on PageSpeed Insights, and gives both Google and your visitors exactly what they want: instant content. That speed advantage compounds into better rankings, lower bounce rates, and more leads.
