Issue: Weebly page load speeds - RISK for Google page ranking

[golegup]

Dear Weebly,

I love Weebly for its simplicity in design, but Weebly's platform suffers from poor server side performance resulting in SLOW page loads.  This is NOT limited to a few complex sites, but most Weebly Themes including mine, I have tested. 

Weebly, I understand 'Responsive' themes require additional code to to make the seamless resizing and text flow work correctly on different mobile devices in particular.  But, this seems to come at a signficant cost to the end user, and a critical limitation in designing web sites for the Weebly platform. 

This issue should not be overlooked or dismissed by Weebly or the community of web developers and designers who use this paltform, as it poses a SIGNFINCANT future risk to SEO ranking on Google.  - These issues need to get addressed in the next major Weebly platform release.  Rather than focus on new features -  in short: Weebly needs to FIX this!  

At issue: there is currently no Weebly Server side support for "AMP"   (accellerated mobile pages):  This open source technology would allow web pages served to mobile devices to load rapidly. 

Why this is important:  As of July 2018 Google has placed a HIGH value on page load speeds as a determining factor in organic search engine ranking: accrdingly "...page speed will become a major ranking factor for mobile searches"

AMP Project Intiaitive:  https://www.ampproject.org/

(This initiaitve is backed by Google!)

Is this issue a shared concern by other users, or am I alone in this view?

[Bernadette3]

I don't think you are alone, @golegup I believe we had a feature request at some point regarding amp, but we don't have any additional information at this time regarding the status. It never hurts to bring the subject back up, though. Thanks and we appreciate your input!

[Mo6]

Please Weebly, help! Our income depends on organic traffic.

Will you be making changes to address Google's page speed Core Web Vitals? It appears Google will be scoring sites and labeling them with fast or slow markers (visual indicators) in search results. When I test my site's pages with LIghthouse or Google Page Speed Insights, most of the "improvements" on my pages are being reported as JavaScript, CSS and server response time issues, which are under Weebly's control. I'd appreciate hearing your planned response to these changes, which affect the success of your merchants and other hosting clients that receive Google search traffic.

See this Google announcement - https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/11/timing-for-page-experience.html

[SimonWakeus]

@Bernadette Hi. Do you have any plans in changing this? It simply cannot be accepted that all Weebly sites has the lowest SEO. It creates such a risk for us business owners, using Weebly will not be possible in the future. Please please please tell me you have any plans on doing something about this? 

Thank you. 

[Bernadette3]

I'm very sorry, but I don't have any updates to provide. Google AMP is still considered a feature request, but we'll update the threads if the status changes. 

[Spurgeon]

Nope! You're not alone! This is something all website platforms will need to address. My Weebly Google Page Speed scores are as low as 5! Even though customer service has told me they've quickly loaded my page on mobile, the only thing that matters is the ranking that Google actually gives us.

[Mo6]

In response to "This is something all website platforms will need to address." in my opionion is not completely accurate. It is platform specific. There are other platforms that offer much faster loading times. When I test my site's pages with LIghthouse or Google Page Speed Insights, most of the "improvements" on my pages are being reported as JavaScript, CSS and server response time issues, which are under Weebly's control.

[kdhambrook]

Hi,

Is there anything I can to do to address this? None of my weebly sites page speeds are anywhere close to the level Google considers acceptable, and they say that this will affect search engine rankings ( see https://webmasters.googleblog.com/search/label/speed )

[EF24]

I have the same issues with my Weebly sites I can't get them above 20 (performance) with Google by adjusting content etc.  This is about supporting my organic traffic. Any tips to get pages moving faster or a roadmap would be great to know. 

[Entrepreneur2]

As a small business owner, I share your concern and am looking for solutions.

[Mo6]

Unfortunately, the "solutions" are under Weebly's control. When I test my site's pages with LIghthouse or Google Page Speed Insights, most of the "improvements" on my pages are being reported as JavaScript, CSS and server response time issues, which are under Weebly's control.

[hholl]

I'm seeing this topic go back several years now.  I searched the forum for some answers as I have exactly the same issue as everyone else.  I am not seeing any response from Weebly though, what is happening with increasing the page loading speed?  I minimised all my photos on the homepage and managed to increase the desktop score, but there is no shift at all on mobile - I get 0!!!

Weebly, what is happening wiht this issue, and can you post any tips please beyond minimising photo size?  Thanks