A Site That Was Fast and Got Slow

How it happens

A site launches quickly because somebody paid attention to it during the build.

Then a chat widget is added, then a booking tool, then a tracking tag for a campaign, then a plugin for a form, then a slider, then a second analytics tool because somebody preferred it.

Each addition costs a fraction of a second and each was requested by somebody with a reason.

Three years later the page takes four times as long and nobody can name the change that did it, because no change did.

What accumulates

• Third-party tags added for campaigns.
• Plugins for one feature each.
• Images uploaded larger over time.
• Fonts from a redesign that never removed the old ones.
• Tools from suppliers who have since left.
• Content added to the home page.

The fifth is the most avoidable. A tag installed by an agency for a campaign that ended in 2021 is still loading on every page, costing something, and belonging to nobody.

The reason it goes unnoticed

Because the decline is gradual and everybody involved has a fast connection and a cached copy.

Somebody who visits the site daily has most of it stored locally and experiences a speed no first-time visitor ever gets.

A change of a tenth of a second is invisible on any single visit and the accumulation is only visible against a figure from a year ago.

Which is why nobody notices until it becomes bad enough to be obvious, by which point recovering it is a project rather than a decision.

The remedy is a recorded number rather than an impression.

Record the figure now

The step that makes everything else possible.

Test three pages, note the load time and the page weight, and write those down with the date.

Do it again quarterly and compare against the record rather than against memory.

A rise of half a second in a quarter is traceable to what was added that quarter, and a rise of two seconds over three years is not traceable to anything.

That is five minutes four times a year and it is the difference between fixing something and archaeology.

Keep the record somewhere the business owns rather than in one person's notes.

A worked example

A business found their site taking about seven seconds to load and asked what had gone wrong.

Listing what the pages loaded produced twenty-three third-party requests.

Among them were two analytics tools, a chat widget nobody monitored, three tracking tags from campaigns that had ended, a font service loading four weights of which one was used, and a plugin for a feature removed in 2020.

Removing everything nobody could account for took an afternoon and brought it to about three seconds.

No single item had been worth more than a few tenths, which is exactly why each had been approved.

They then started recording the figure quarterly, which had never been done.

Ask before adding, not after

Since the accumulation is a decision process rather than a technical problem.

Agree that anything added to every page gets a question first: what does it cost in load time and who will own it.

That is not a veto, it is a record, and it means somebody can later find out why a thing is there.

Keep a list of every third-party tool on the site with what it does and who asked for it.

When a supplier relationship ends, that list is what tells you what to remove, which otherwise nobody knows.

Most of what accumulates would not have been added if somebody had asked who would own it.

Remove on a schedule

Since additions have an advocate and removals have nobody.

Once a year, go through the list and remove anything nobody can justify.

The test is whether somebody can say what it does and who uses the output, and anything failing both goes.

Remove one at a time and check nothing broke, since a tool nobody remembers occasionally turns out to be doing something.

Do it in a quiet month, and record the figure before and after, which turns the exercise into evidence.

Watch the content side too

Because not all of the accumulation is technical.

Home pages grow: another section, another set of logos, another row of testimonials, each added because somebody wanted it visible.

Images uploaded by different people over three years drift larger as the person who resized them stops working there.

Both are invisible page by page and substantial in total.

Check the total weight of your home page against the figure from a year ago, which is the number that captures both.

Check it after every change of hands

A trigger worth adding, since the accumulation happens fastest at handover.

A new supplier installs their own preferred tools without removing the previous ones, because removing something they did not add is a risk they have no reason to take.

The same happens when a member of staff leaves, or when a campaign is run by an outside agency and then ends.

Make a check part of the handover in both directions: what is being added, and what belonged to the person leaving that can now go.

Two sites out of three carry at least one tool from a supplier who has not worked on them for years, and handover is the only moment anybody is thinking about it.

The counter-case

Some of the additions are earning their place.

A booking tool that produces bookings is worth its load time comfortably, and removing things purely to improve a score is the wrong optimisation.

Sites also grow legitimately as businesses do, and a site with more on it than three years ago may simply have more to say.

And a modest slowdown matters far less than most performance advice implies.

Record the figure, ask who owns each addition, and remove what nobody can justify once a year.

What to do

1. Test three pages and write the figures down.
2. Date the record and keep it.
3. List every third-party tool.
4. Note who asked for each.
5. Ask the cost question before adding.
6. Remove the unjustifiable annually.
7. Retest quarterly against the record.

Step two is what converts this from an annual mystery into a traceable change, since a rise attributable to one quarter can be attributed to something.

What a page is actually requesting is covered in how many things a page loads.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.