Over the past couple of weeks, I have been focusing on Web host speed and how that plays a big part in the overall performance of peterwitham.com.

We all know that the attention span on the Internet is measured in milliseconds. If you put content up on the Web, you are probably well aware that presenting your content to users needs to be fast. By that, I mean loading and displaying fast.

You may also wonder how much that matters and how much it affects your site. In a recent experiment born out of frustration, I found the answer and want to share the results with you.

The problem with Web host speed

The image below shows the user sessions on my site from my old host, MediaTemple Hosted WordPress, compared to my new BlueHost hosted WordPress for the same site.

The numbers do not matter because, visually, what happened is obvious. The higher the line, the more user sessions. Each point is a day this month.

I have tried very hard to filter out anything that may cause an unexpected discrepancy, like content, theme, and plugins.

Both sites are set up the same way, with minor differences in design.

To give even more perspective and food for thought. The Google speed rating jumped from an average of 69 to 99 for desktop and very similar for mobile, which is a massive difference in performance and rating.

Some advice and suggestions

So next time you are looking at those metrics and trying to find ways to squeeze more performance out of your Web projects.

Or feel something is wrong and you have done everything possible to optimize your site.

Consider if the host servers and response times are causing the problem.

I also learned much about the difference between a server's initial response and delivering the site content to a device during the process.