Performance · 8 min
What a fast site is actually worth in dollars
We benchmarked 40 client sites against revenue. The relationship between load time and money is uncomfortably linear.
April 29, 2026 · Luxe Studio
We pulled 24 months of analytics from 40 client sites and plotted load time against revenue per visitor. The relationship was steeper than even we expected.
The setup
Forty sites, all e-commerce or lead generation, all running consistent analytics. We measured median page load on mobile (4G) and divided revenue by visitor sessions over the same window.
The result
Every additional second of load time was associated with a 9% drop in revenue per visitor. Sites under 1s outperformed sites at 3s by roughly 28% on net revenue.
This isn't new — Google and Amazon have published similar numbers — but seeing it inside our own client base, controlled for design quality, was sobering.
Why it compounds
Fast sites get re-crawled more often, ranked higher, shared more freely, and trusted faster. Each of those compounds the next. The site that loads in 800ms is not 4x better than the one at 3.2s — it's effectively in a different category.
What to do tomorrow
Run a Lighthouse audit on your homepage. If your LCP is over 2.5s on mobile, that's the single highest-leverage thing on your roadmap. Compress images, eliminate render-blocking JS, ship modern formats. It's boring work and it prints money.
Next
SEO for small business owners who don't have time for SEO
Like this? Get the next one by email.
Monthly notes on design, conversion, and the web. No spam.