Benchmarks & Optimisation
Benchmarks & Optimisation
Industry Load Time Benchmarks (2026)
How does your website compare? Google recommends pages load in under 2.5 seconds for a “Good” Core Web Vitals score.
| Industry | Average Load Time | Target | Impact of 1s Delay |
|---|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | 3.8 seconds | <2.0 seconds | -7% conversions |
| Service businesses | 4.2 seconds | <2.5 seconds | -11% page views |
| Media/Blog | 5.1 seconds | <3.0 seconds | -20% engagement |
| Rhixo-hosted sites (average) | 0.8 seconds | ✓ | N/A (already fast) |
Core Web Vitals Targets
| Metric | What It Measures | Good | Needs Work | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) | How fast main content loads | <2.5s | 2.5-4.0s | >4.0s |
| INP (Interaction to Next Paint) | How fast site responds to clicks | <200ms | 200-500ms | >500ms |
| CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) | Visual stability (things jumping around) | <0.1 | 0.1-0.25 | >0.25 |
10 Speed Optimisation Tips
- Compress images — Use WebP format. A 2MB JPEG becomes a 200KB WebP with no visible quality loss.
- Enable caching — Returning visitors load from cache instead of re-downloading everything.
- Use a CDN — Serve static files from the nearest edge node (included on Business+ plans).
- Minimise plugins — Every WordPress plugin adds load time. Audit quarterly and remove unused ones.
- Lazy load images — Images below the fold only load when scrolled to, not on initial page load.
- Minify CSS/JS — Remove whitespace and comments from code files to reduce file size by 20-40%.
- Use system fonts — Custom fonts add 100-300KB of downloads. System fonts load instantly.
- Reduce redirects — Each redirect adds 100-300ms. Minimise redirect chains.
- Optimise database — Clean up post revisions, spam comments, and transients monthly.
- Choose NVMe hosting — The single biggest speed improvement. NVMe is 100x faster than HDD.