I analyzed 55 websites across 19 industries to compare page speed performance, HTML size, and GTmetrix fully loaded time.
My personal goal was to see what industries trust our judgement more than emotions, let us dial in speed, and which industries are doing the best job keeping pages lean?
[click to enlarge]
Overall averages across all 55 sites:
- Median fully loaded time: 2.1 seconds
- Average fully loaded time: 4.0 seconds
- Average GTmetrix Performance score: 88%
- Average GTmetrix Structure score: 94%
- Average total page size: 2.25 MB
- Median total page size: 1.21 MB
- Average request count: 90.8
Legal sites were the strongest multi-site category.
Home services had excellent speed, though the sample size was smaller.
Real estate and e-commerce had the biggest performance opportunities. That is not a surprise, as those clients are the ones that are more sensitive to emotions than performance data.
Some of the slowest sites were not just large. They also had a lot of requests.
Page size alone does not explain everything, but it is still one of the clearest warning signs.
Best overall industry groups:
Home Services
⚡️ Average load time: 0.859 seconds
⚡️ Average Performance score: 100%
⚡️ Average page size: 640 KB
Legal
⚡️ Average load time: 0.881 seconds
⚡️ Average Performance score: 99%
⚡️ Average page size: 568 KB
Digital Marketing
⚡️ Average load time: 1.7 seconds
⚡️ Average Performance score: 96%
⚡️ Average page size: 902 KB
Recruiting/HR
⚡️ Average load time: 1.6 seconds
⚡️ Average Performance score: 94%
⚡️ Average page size: 1.02 MB
Financial Services
⚡️ Average load time: 2.5 seconds
⚡️ Average Performance score: 98%
⚡️ Average page size: 1.77 MB
Fast sites were usually not just smaller. They also had fewer requests.
The fastest sites were often under 1 MB.
The slowest sites tended to combine large page size with heavy request counts.
Some sites still scored well despite larger pages, but that was the exception.
Website speed is still one of the easiest competitive advantages in SEO and AI optimization, yet the most overlooked. Good page speed can also lower your CPC and increase conversions on paid ads.
A site does not need to be perfect. But if it is loading in 6, 8, 16, or 23 seconds, there is almost always money being left on the table.
The sites winning on speed are not magic. They are usually just doing fewer things.
Here are things you can focus on to improve your page performance.
- Reduce plugin bloat
- Remove unused JavaScript
- Compress oversized images
- Reduce unnecessary requests
- Improve hosting (one of the easiest wins)
- Limit third-party scripts (your site can load only as fast as the third-party site bottlenecks yours) Lazy-load non-critical assets
- Use proper caching
- Minify CSS and JS
For SEO, paid ads, lead generation, and conversion rate optimization, speed is not just a technical metric.
It is a revenue metric.
