Site Speed Optimization Pricing: How Much Does It Cost?

How much does website speed optimization cost in 2023?

In 2023, website speed optimization services cost $50 to $12,000. Prices depend on several factors, including your site’s size and format and your service provider’s experience and service plan. While some agencies charge a flat rate, most page speed optimization prices use an hourly rate.

Ready to learn more about what site speed optimization services cost and what you should pay? Keep reading! Or, if you’re looking to get more information on site speed optimization prices for your site, you can reach out to our award-winning team of strategists. You can contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 to chat one-on-one.

What is site speed optimization?

Site speed optimization focuses on improving the speed at which the content on your website loads.

You may hear the terms page speed, site speed, and website speed used to describe site load time.

Page speed refers to how quickly the content on a particular page loads. You can define page speed as:

• Load time: How quickly all the content on a given page loads. The average page load time is 10.3 seconds.
• Time to first byte: How long it takes a browser to receive the first byte of information from your web server

Site speed refers to how quickly your whole site, rather than an individual page, loads. Site speed is calculated by taking the average page speed of a sample of page views on your website.

Website speed is a more general term used to describe how quickly your site’s content loads, but is most often used as a synonym for site speed.

Page speed, site speed, and website speed are closely related terms — and they all impact your search engine rankings and how your users experience your website.

But what causes a slow site? Below are some top reasons your site may be slow.

1. Natural website evolution: To keep your site fast, ensure that there are no extra tags and that internal links, photos, and CSS files are referenced properly.
2. Large graphics: Including graphics on your site is crucial to providing a great user experience, but image files that are larger than necessary are one of the biggest causes of slow loading pages. Be sure to condense them first with a tool like Kraken.
3. Redirects: Redirects are created when you want to replace links to an old webpage with references to a new one. However, a lot of redirects on your site can cause slow-loading pages.
4. Server location and performance: When your site is on a dedicated server, you’ll have a much faster loading time. If your site is on a shared server, however, you’re sharing space and bandwidth with another website, meaning your site may be slower.

Why does page speed matter?

For businesses today, page speed matters because of users and search engines.

Users prefer fast page speed

From a user perspective, speed is critical.

Today, people expect a website to load within two seconds. If it doesn’t, they have a high chance of leaving your website and visiting a competitor’s site. The truth, however, is that website load times frequently exceed two seconds.

A recent study, for example, discovered that the average load time for mobile sites is 15 seconds. For reference, more than 50 percent of the world’s Internet traffic comes from mobile devices, which is why companies need to consider and prioritize the mobile user experience.

As a load time of 15 seconds is eight seconds longer than users expect, it causes a lot of shoppers to spend their money elsewhere. It also costs companies valuable sales.

If your website takes longer than two seconds to load, you can trust that your website is losing your business money.

Search engines care about page speed

If you’re familiar with search engine optimization (SEO), you may already know that page speed can influence your organic rankings in search results on Google, Bing, and other search engines. When you don’t rank at the top of search results, it’s difficult to reach your ideal shopper, which cuts into your revenue.

What if you’re new to SEO, though? Keep reading for a quick SEO review.

SEO refers to an umbrella of digital marketing strategies. These strategies all work towards the same goal of improving your online visibility. When you optimize your online presence and rank higher in search results, you can reach more customers and ultimately earn more revenue.

For a better explanation, look at the example below.

It’s a result for the search “wicker furniture cushions.” You can see the first four organic search results. If your business sold wicker furniture cushions, you’d want to appear first in this search, considering that the first search result earns more than 30 percent of search traffic.

If you have a slow site speed, however, it’s not going to happen.

Google uses more than 200 ranking factors when determining its search result rankings, including page speed and page experience. When Google sees a webpage with poor or average page speed, it recognizes how that impacts the experience of users. As a result, Google ranks it lower in search results.

That’s why if you want to appear in those relevant and valuable search results, you need to upgrade your optimization game. It’s not enough to publish a webpage that features the phrase “wicker furniture cushions” and a gallery of your products. You also need to make your webpage as fast as possible.

While page speed matters to both search engines and users, it’s essential for the same reason — user experience.

How can I check my website’s page speed?

PAGE SPEED SEO CHECKER: THE IMMENSE VALUE OF A PAGE SPEED TEST

If you’re worried about your page speed now, you can check your page speed for free.

Google offers a free tool, called PageSpeed Insights, that assesses the speed of your webpages and your page experience as measured using a set of metrics called the Core Web Vitals. The best part is you can access your page speed report in an instant.

Just enter your website’s URL and click the “Analyze” button.

When you submit your website for analysis, Google also provides recommendations for improvement. In most cases, these are technical suggestions that your development team, or the agency providing website speed optimization services, will understand.

How much should I pay for site speed optimization?

With a price range of $50 to $12,000, a lot of businesses wonder about website speed optimization pricing. What’s a fair and reasonable price for your website, and how can you make sure your company’s decision-makers understand that this service is worth the cost?

To understand what you should pay for site speed optimization services, look at how agencies price their services:

• Hourly rate ($50 to $150 / hour): A lot of businesses that offer site speed optimization base their pricing on an hourly rate. At a minimum, website speed optimization requires 20 hours. This pricing model allows for a customized strategy, which works well because sites vary when it comes to what slows them down.

• Flat rate ($95 to $400 / site): Some agencies, however, offer a flat rate for their site speed optimization services. While businesses like the fixed rate, agencies often place a page limit cap on their services, usually five or six pages, which can result in a low upfront cost and a high final charge at the end.

• Hybrid rate ($1250 to $12,000 / site): This pricing model, which WebFX offers, is a combination of flat- and hourly-rate pricing models. With a hybrid rate, the agency bases its page speed optimization pricing off a flat rate, which scales off a set number of hours dedicated to your website. It’s also free of any page limits.

Now, what should your company pay for website speed optimization services? Start by answering these questions:

• How many pages do we have on our website?
• What is the total number of pages that need optimized for speed?
• How many pages are high-priority when it comes to speed?
• What is our preferred pricing model?
• What is our maximum budget?
• Which agencies do we want to work alongside?

Use your answers to determine what your company should pay for site speed optimization services.

In most cases, your pricing model preferences and your website’s size have the most influence on what you decide to pay. It’s also worth mentioning that plenty of businesses offer “cheap” or “low-cost” pricing for their website speed optimization services.

While tempting, it’s often a scenario where you get what you pay for, which means a website or a webpage that’s only a tiny bit faster. If a company’s prices seem too good to be true, they probably are, which is why it’s smart to invest your money elsewhere.

What determines website speed optimization prices?

If you’re looking for more information on website speed optimization pricing, this section is an excellent resource. You can learn about what factors influence prices, whether for an hourly, flat, or hybrid rate, which can help you make an informed decision later.

The five features that have the most impact on website speed optimization prices include:

1. Your website’s size

Your website’s size has a massive influence on your site speed optimization prices. If you have a five-page site, versus a 50-page one, you can expect lower prices due to the time required. An exception is if you’re purchasing website speed optimization services at a flat or hybrid rate.

Remember, however, that many flat-rate fees include a page limit cap.

From a pricing perspective, your website’s size can influence what type of pricing model you choose. For example, if you have a large website, like an ecommerce site, it’s more cost-effective to partner with an agency that offers a hybrid rate rather than an hourly rate.

2. Your website’s current page speed

Browse the page speed optimization pricing pages of a few providers. You’ll notice that some mention the current speed of your webpage and scale their prices or packages off that number. You can find your page speed with Google Page Insights.

In most cases, a website with a slower speed score tends to cost more than a site with a faster speed score.

Why? If your website’s already fast, it tends to require less work than a site that’s sluggish. That’s why it’s worth investing in routine site speed optimization services, as you can continue to maintain your website’s speed and make minor improvements to it.

3. Estimated project hours

If you’re interested in an agency that offers hybrid or hourly pricing, your project hours will also influence your page speed optimization costs. For hybrid pricing, most service providers use hourly ranges in increments of 25, 50, and 100.

The more time required to put into a website, the more the project costs.

In most cases, companies are unsure how many hours their website requires for page speed optimization. That’s normal. When you contact an agency or request a quote, they can provide advice on what hourly range is best for your website.

For controlling your costs, it’s best to set a hard limit for how many hours developers dedicate. If you’re partnering with an hourly agency, for example, specify in your written agreement when you want developers to conclude their work. For example, they can limit their time to 20 hours.

4. Your website’s platform

Your website’s platform can also affect your site speed optimization pricing. A few common platforms include:

1. WordPress
2. Shopify
3. GoDaddy
4. Wix

Depending on your business, you may have an in-house developer that created your website with HTML. This decision can influence your page speed optimization costs, as well as agency selection. While a lot of service providers specialize in the earlier platforms, only a few offer their services for more complicated sites.

From a pricing perspective, platforms like WordPress, Wix, and Shopify can cost less than more complex platforms.

5. Quality of the agency you choose

Pricing for website speed optimization services also depends on your agency.

If you choose an agency with less industry experience, they often charge less for their services. While a lot of businesses like these upfront savings, there are typically downsides. For example, these agencies frequently have a smaller staff, which can result in your optimization taking longer and costing more if they charge an hourly rate.

The background of their team can also result in overlooked optimization opportunities. For your company, that means you’re paying for a service and not receiving the full value of it, which doesn’t maximize your budget or page speed.

As you browse site speed optimization prices, keep these cost factors in mind.

What do site speed optimization services include?

Like pricing for page speed optimization, deliverables for your service also vary. That’s because your agency should tailor their services to your website or webpage’s unique needs, which is what we do for our satisfied clients.

Here are a few examples of what most website speed optimization services should include:

• Website optimization
• HTTPS setup
• HTTPS request reduction
• Image optimization
• JavaScript minimization
• Caching configuration
• Redirect optimization

As you can tell, a lot of these features are technical — and possibly new to you and your team. That’s why it’s helpful to partner with an agency that specializes in page speed optimization and features a dedicated team of developers.

It’s also an immense benefit to have an agency that doesn’t hesitate to answer your questions about these terms. WebFX, for example, ensures that our clients understand our recommendations, whether it’s for site speed optimization, SEO, or another digital marketing service we offer.

Why invest in site speed optimization?

When it comes to page speed optimization, you want to make it a priority. It offers numerous advantages, which can help your company earn more conversions, sales, and revenue. Those wins can give your business the chance to achieve its biggest goals, like opening a new location, launching a new product, or hiring a new team member.

Five of the most notable benefits of investing in website speed optimization include:

1. Improve your user experience

With today’s users expecting a website to load in two seconds or less, you can bet that a faster website improves their online experience. That’s why mobile sites that load within that timeframe have a 15 percent higher conversion rate than other mobile websites.

Providing shoppers with the best possible online experience is critical.

Almost 90 percent of people shop with a competitor after a poor user experience (UX), which can include not only your page speed but also other features, like your navigation. That’s why more businesses are investing in page speed optimization, as well as UX testing.

The best part is that improvements to UX offer the tremendous return of $100 for every $1 invested.

Not to mention, a better user experience means that website visitors will spend more time on your site and be less likely to bounce to a competitor’s site.

2. Accelerate your conversion rate

With page speed optimization, your website’s conversion rates can move to a whole new level. Just a one-second increase in your page speed can boost conversion rates by seven percent. What does that kind of growth look like, though?

For perspective, check out this table.*

It looks at how much money your website loses every year without that one-second increase.

*Note: These are not guaranteed results, but calculated according to a seven-percent increase in conversions with each one-second improvement to your website.

Compare the average cost of page speed optimization, which is $50 to $12,000, to those losses. If your company makes a $1000 per day, you would make back the cost of your site speed optimization services and then some in a year.

Why lose that money if your company can make it, instead?

3. Maximize your time

While you could do site speed optimization on your own, it would take a lot of time and knowledge.

If you’re running your own business, department, or projects, your website is one small blip on the radar when it comes to your responsibilities. And, chances are, you don’t have the time to focus your efforts on page speed, and neither does anybody else at your company.

When you hire an agency like WebFX for site speed optimization, you can focus on your top priorities. Plus, you eliminate the worry and stress of leading or handling the project in-house. You also save a tremendous amount of time by not having to learn all the technicalities of website speed optimization.

4. Increase your website traffic

More than 70 percent of businesses and 80 percent of consumers start their research for a new product or service online. In most cases, they rely on a search engine like Google, Bing, or Yahoo to help them find what they’re looking for. That’s why more than 50 percent of users discover a new company after a search.

Improving your page speed, as well as optimizing your webpages for SEO, helps you rank better in relevant search results. With a better position in search results, your website can earn more valuable traffic. While traffic can sometimes appear as a vanity metric, it’s still useful.

For example, you can see how much traffic you’re driving to your site and how much of that traffic converts. That can help your SEO agency or in-house team discover new ways to improve your strategy, such as by upgrading your website with UX testing.

If your website doesn’t have the speed to rank in search results, however, your team never receives that data that could potentially improve your website.

5. Enhance your SEO strategy

Google considers more than 200 ranking factors when developing its search results. While your business needs a smart and competitive SEO strategy, it also requires a fast website. That’s why page speed optimization is so valuable to companies investing in SEO.

With a fast and optimized website, your business can earn a valuable place in relevant search results. It’s an enormous win, as 75 percent of users stick to the first page of search results, while only 25 percent click to the second page.

If you want to maintain your rankings in search results, however, site speed optimization needs to become an ongoing strategy, like SEO. By making site speed optimization a long-term part of your digital marketing strategy, you can maximize the results of your SEO.

Is website speed optimization a one-time thing?

A lot of companies look at site speed optimization as a one-time investment. However, because search engines, your website, and your competitors’ websites change constantly, site speed optimization requires ongoing work to ensure your site stays as fast as possible and doesn’t fall behind the competition.

At WebFX, our site speed optimization service plans include an initial optimization and ongoing optimization work to maintain your page speed over time.

Why consider ongoing site speed optimization?

WebFX offers two main packages – initial and ongoing – but there are a few important reasons you should consider ongoing page speed efforts:

1. As Google and other search engines continue to evolve, it’s crucial to your website’s success that site speed optimization is prioritized on an ongoing basis. In addition, site evolution — including plugin and CMS updates, require you to keep up with page speed audits.
2. Site speed optimization is a technical service that requires dedicated time from expert developers to uncover hidden issues in code that may be slowing down your site.
3. You’ll likely see larger gains upfront and incremental gains over time, but small, incremental gains will keep your site’s page speed in check.

How long does site speed optimization take?

While turnaround times vary, website speed optimization generally requires 20 to 100 hours of developer work for the initial optimization. As a result, most agencies need at least a week before they can finish this initial work.

To maintain your site speed, an agency will typically need between five and 25 hours each quarter.