Why it weighs more in Albania
Most visits come from mobile. Mobile connections outside cities and on the beach are variable. Foreign tourists use roaming or slow Wi-Fi. Mid-range phones are slower than the latest models. A site that opens fine in the office on fibre may not open at all in Ksamil in August. Google measures from mobile and penalises slow sites.
How fast is “fast”
The site visible within 2-3 seconds on mobile with 4G. Interaction (a click that responds) immediate. No elements jumping during loading. Google measures them with Core Web Vitals and shows them in Search Console. Target: “good” on all three indicators for mobile. Most Albanian sites are “poor”.
How to measure it yourself
PageSpeed Insights (free, from Google): enter the address, see the mobile score and the list of problems. Search Console: the Core Web Vitals report for all pages. The simplest test: open the site from your phone on mobile data, not Wi-Fi, in a place with average signal. If you wait, the customer waits too; if you leave, so do they.
Culprit 1: photos
5 MB phone photos uploaded as they are: ten of them weigh 50 MB and the site does not open. The fix: compression (under 200 KB for a large photo), modern formats (WebP), correct dimensions (not 6000 pixels for an 800-pixel space), lazy loading for photos below the fold. This alone often doubles speed.
Culprit 2: video
Video uploaded directly to the site: tens of MB. The fix: video on external platforms loaded only on click, or very short, compressed background video. A home page with heavy autoplay video is the most common mistake of hotel sites.
Culprit 3: plugins and theme
WordPress sites with 40 plugins, heavy themes with effects, page builders loading everything everywhere. The fix: remove the unnecessary, a light theme, caching. Or a static site for presentations: the fastest there is and almost unhackable.
Culprit 4: hosting
Cheap overloaded hosting, a distant server (the US for an Albanian site), no caching. The fix: good hosting in Europe, a CDN serving the site near the visitor (Italy, Germany, Albania), active caching. The yearly cost of good hosting is modest compared with lost customers.
Culprit 5: external scripts
Pixels, chat, maps, fonts, review widgets, ten scripts loading before the content. The fix: only the necessary ones, loaded after the content. A chat that slows the site by five seconds loses more customers than it gains.
Mobile first
The site must be designed for the phone: text readable without zooming, buttons pressable with a thumb, a simple form, phone and WhatsApp fixed, a clear menu. Google indexes the mobile version: if it is bad, the whole site ranks badly.
What fixing costs
Optimising an existing site (photos, caching, plugins, hosting): a modest one-off intervention, often enough to go from “poor” to “good”. Rebuilding as a static site or with a light theme: more, but it also solves security and maintenance. In both cases, the return comes from positions and customers who no longer leave.
Maintaining speed
Every new photo compressed. Every new plugin evaluated. A monthly PageSpeed check. Hosting kept updated. A site that was fast at launch becomes slow after a year of uncompressed photos: speed is maintained, not won once.
The mistakes
Testing only from a computer on fibre. Original photos uploaded. Autoplay video on the home page. Forty plugins. Cheap distant hosting. Chat and pixels before content. Ignoring Search Console. Thinking a “beautiful site” justifies slowness: the customer does not see the beauty if it does not open.
Example: a hotel in Sarandë
The old site: 12 seconds on mobile, a 40 MB autoplay video on the home page, 60 original photos, 35 plugins, cheap hosting. Google score “poor”, falling positions, direct bookings almost zero. The work: video replaced with a compressed photo, all photos in WebP under 150 KB, plugins from 35 to 8, caching and CDN, European hosting. After two weeks: 2.1 seconds on mobile, “good” on Core Web Vitals. After three months: positions recovered, direct bookings tripled, without changing a word of the texts.
Frequently asked questions
How fast should a site open?
Under three seconds on mobile with 4G. Test it with PageSpeed Insights and from your phone.
Why is my site slow?
Usually uncompressed photos, video, too many plugins, bad hosting. The analysis tells you.
Do I need to rebuild the site?
Often not: photo optimisation, caching and hosting are enough. Rebuild if it is old or insecure.
Does speed affect Google?
Yes, directly: Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor, especially on mobile.