Every second of delay loses visitors before they see the page. In Iran the problem is more serious, because many users browse on mobile data and some foreign services are slow or unavailable.
Which metrics measure site speed?
Google measures page experience with three Core Web Vitals, and these metrics also affect SEO:
| Metric | What it measures | Good value |
|---|---|---|
| LCP | Time to show the largest content on the page | 2.5 seconds or less |
| INP | How fast the page responds to clicks and taps | 200 ms or less |
| CLS | Unexpected layout shifts | 0.1 or less |
What makes websites slow in Iran?
- Fonts from Google Fonts or scripts from foreign CDNs that are slow or blocked in Iran, while the page waits for them.
- Heavy images and video in old formats (large JPEG and MP4 files).
- Heavy themes and plugins with lots of JavaScript.
- Many analytics tools, live-chat widgets and ad pixels.
- A server far from users, or without compression and caching.
How do you make a site truly fast?
- Host every file, including the Persian font, on the site’s own server.
- Compress images with WebP or AVIF and video with AV1; sizes usually drop several times over.
- Send smaller image and video versions to phones.
- Build pages as static as possible so complete HTML is ready immediately.
- Enable gzip or brotli compression, HTTP/2 and long caching for static files.
- Declare image and video dimensions in HTML so the page doesn’t shift while loading (CLS).
- Load background video after the text appears, and skip it entirely on slow connections.
A real example
This very site is built this way: the homepage is about 10KB compressed, makes no requests to external services, and the cinematic hero video went from 18MB to about 540KB on phones — at higher quality, with a vertical version made for mobile.
Frequently asked questions
How fast should a good website load?
By Google’s standard, the largest content (LCP) should appear within 2.5 seconds or less; in practice, the faster the better.
Does a foreign CDN make a site faster in Iran?
Not necessarily. Some CDNs and foreign services are slow or blocked in Iran; hosting files on your own server is usually more reliable.
Is WordPress fast?
It can be, but heavy themes and plugins usually slow it down. A static site is lighter and faster by default.