Short answer: most slow websites are caused by large images, too many plugins or scripts, no caching, and slow or overloaded hosting. Start by compressing your images, turning on caching and removing plugins you do not use, then test again with Google PageSpeed Insights. If your server itself is slow to respond, move to hosting with fast NVMe storage, such as SiloLobby's Tubor plans from ₦2,500/month.
Visitors leave slow websites. On mobile data, which most Nigerians use to browse, every extra second matters. Speed also affects your Google rankings, because Google measures page experience. This guide explains what slows a website down and gives 12 fixes, starting with the quickest wins.
How to measure your website speed
Before you change anything, measure:
- Open Google PageSpeed Insights and enter your page address.
- Look at the mobile results first.
- Note three numbers from Core Web Vitals:
| Measure | What it means | Good |
|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | How long the main content takes to appear | Under 2.5 seconds |
| Interaction to Next Paint (INP) | How quickly the page responds to taps and clicks | Under 200 milliseconds |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | How much the page jumps around while loading | Under 0.1 |
Test your home page and your most important pages, such as a product or contact page. Write down the scores so you can see what each fix improves.
1. Compress and resize your images
Images are the biggest cause of slow pages. A photo straight from a phone can be 4 MB or more, while a web image rarely needs to be over 200 KB.
- Resize images to the size they are shown at (a 1,200-pixel-wide image is enough for most layouts).
- Compress them, and use modern formats such as WebP.
- In WordPress, use an image optimisation plugin that compresses images when you upload them.
2. Turn on caching
Caching saves a ready-made copy of your pages so the server does not build each page from scratch for every visitor. In WordPress, install one reputable caching plugin and turn on page caching. Do not install two caching plugins at once; they conflict.
3. Remove plugins and themes you do not use
Every active plugin can add code, database queries and files to your pages. Deactivate and delete plugins you do not need, and delete unused themes. Replace several small plugins with one that does the job well.
4. Use a lightweight theme
Some themes load large page builders, sliders and fonts on every page. A lightweight, well-coded theme can make a big difference. Avoid heavy sliders on the home page; a single strong image loads faster and often converts better.
5. Limit fonts and third-party scripts
Each font weight, chat widget, social media feed, tracking pixel and embedded video adds requests. Keep:
- one or two font families with only the weights you use,
- only the tracking tools you actually check,
- embedded videos loaded on click (a preview image that loads the video when tapped).
6. Keep WordPress, plugins and PHP up to date
Newer versions of PHP run websites noticeably faster, and updates often include performance fixes. In cPanel you can choose your PHP version. Take a backup first, then update. See how to back up your website.
7. Clean up your database
Over time, WordPress databases fill with post revisions, spam comments and leftover data from deleted plugins. A database clean-up plugin or a few minutes in phpMyAdmin keeps queries quick.
8. Use lazy loading
Lazy loading means images and videos further down the page only load when the visitor scrolls to them. Modern WordPress does this for images by default; make sure your theme or plugins have not turned it off.
9. Minify and combine files carefully
Minifying removes spaces and comments from CSS and JavaScript files, making them smaller. Many caching plugins offer this. Turn options on one at a time and check your site after each change, because aggressive settings can break layouts.
10. Fix redirects and broken links
Each redirect adds a delay. Make sure your website loads directly on its main address (for example https://yourbusiness.com.ng) without passing through several redirects, and fix links to pages that no longer exist.
11. Check your hosting
If PageSpeed Insights reports a slow server response time, the problem is your hosting, not your pages. Common causes:
- older, slower drives instead of NVMe storage,
- an overloaded server shared by too many busy sites,
- a plan that has run out of resources for your traffic,
- a server far away from your visitors.
SiloLobby Tubor plans run on NVMe storage, which reads and writes much faster than ordinary SSDs, with unlimited bandwidth so traffic spikes are not cut off.
| Plan | Websites | Storage | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tubor Lite | 5 | 20 GB NVMe | ₦2,500/month |
| Tubor Basic | 10 | 45 GB NVMe | ₦4,500/month |
| Tubor Pro | 20 | 150 GB NVMe | ₦6,500/month |
| WordPress Starter | 1 | 10 GB NVMe | ₦3,000/month |
If your site has outgrown shared hosting, for example a busy online store, a Cloud VPS gives you dedicated resources.
Where your server is
Distance adds delay: every request travels from the visitor's phone to the server and back. For most business websites the difference between nearby and distant servers is small compared with image sizes and caching, but it adds up on pages that make many requests. Reduce the number of requests first, then consider server location and a content delivery network (CDN) for images if your visitors are spread across many countries.
Mobile data and your visitors
Most people in Nigeria browse on mobile data, often on connections that slow down at busy times. That makes page weight especially important: a 6 MB home page that loads quickly on office Wi-Fi can take many seconds on a phone. Test with PageSpeed Insights' mobile results, and check your site on your own phone using mobile data, not Wi-Fi. Aim for a home page under about 2 MB.
12. Monitor your website
Speed and uptime change over time, after a plugin update or a traffic spike. SiloLobby hosting includes website monitoring that checks your site every 5 minutes and emails you if it goes down. Monitoring Pro (₦1,500/month) checks every minute and adds SSL expiry warnings and monthly reports.
A quick speed checklist
- Images resized and compressed
- One caching plugin active
- Unused plugins and themes deleted
- Lightweight theme, no heavy sliders
- Fonts and third-party scripts kept to a minimum
- WordPress, plugins and PHP up to date
- Database cleaned
- Lazy loading on
- No chains of redirects
- Hosting on fast storage with enough resources
When to ask for help
If you have tried these fixes and your site is still slow, contact our support team. We can check your server response time, PHP version and resource usage and tell you whether the issue is your website or your plan. If you are moving from another host, we migrate your website for free.