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If it's still slow, this is the first thing to cut
You'll know which order to trim weight in when photos, video, and fonts are all over budget at once, and what to leave alone until the first one is fixed.
By Yodai · Published on September 6, 2026 · Updated on October 12, 2026
A welcome video can weigh as much as a whole bunch of photos put together, each photo can carry extra weight even if it looks the same on screen, and even the font in your headings takes time to load. The problem shows up when your site has all three at once (video, gallery, and a font with personality) and together they add up to more weight than your site can afford on two bars of signal.
Here it's easy to make the same mistake: lower the quality of everything a little at once. The video gets compressed a bit more, the photos get shrunk a bit more, the font stays the same because it seems like no big deal. The result is your site still takes almost as long to load, but now with a worse video, worse photos, and a worse font. Three evenings of work for almost no gain.
What's missing isn't trimming a little off each thing. It's knowing what to touch first, because when one of the three weighs more than the other two combined, trimming a bit off each one barely makes a difference, and some things don't even need to be touched until that first one is fixed.
Why trimming a little from everything doesn't work
Picture a restaurant website: a fifteen-second welcome video on the homepage, a gallery of fourteen photos of dishes, and a font with some personality for the headings. The owner spreads the cuts across all three: compresses the video a bit, shrinks the photos a bit, leaves the font alone because "it's just text." Three evenings of work, and the site loads almost as slowly as before.
The reason is how the weight is distributed, and it's not even across the three.
Start with the video, if it's the heaviest part
You don't compress the video a bit more. You stop it from loading by default.
On two bars of signal, a lot of people never tap it. So anyone who doesn't tap it never pays that weight, even though the video is still there for anyone who does want to watch it.
This isn't about removing the video from the business. It's still there, still showing the same thing to anyone who looks for it. The only thing that changes is that it stops loading for everyone who just wanted to see the menu and the phone number.
Second, the extra photos
- Every photo loses sharpness, including the one that opens the site
- It's still fourteen files to download, even if each one weighs a bit less
- Customers notice it looks worse, not that the site loads faster
- Of the fourteen food photos, six repeat the same dish from a different angle
- Eight good photos tell the same story as fourteen
Which one to pick: Choose to cut before you downgrade. Only lower the quality of the ones that remain if, even with a tight seven or eight, your site is still too heavy.
Eight good photos tell the same story as fourteen, and if they're similar in weight, the total drops by almost half without any of them losing sharpness. It's the cut that shows up the most on the scale and the least on screen.
The font, last, and only if it's still needed
If your site is still slow after lightening the video and cutting the extra photos, then yes, it's time to touch the font: fewer variants of the same typeface (you don't need italic, bold, and three weights if you only end up using two across the whole site), or just the font your phone already has instead of a downloaded one.
This comes last, not first. It's the lightest of the three, and tackling it first is like bailing out a bucket with a spoon while the video faucet is still running above it.
- 1The video, as a thumbnail with a play button
Show a still image and only load the full video if someone taps play. If it's the heaviest part, that's half the problem solved right there. - 2The duplicate photos, out
From each group of nearly identical photos, keep just one. Don't compress the extras, delete them. - 3The remaining photos, sized to how they display
If your site is still too heavy after that, that's when you lower the quality a bit, starting with the last photos in the gallery, never the cover photo. - 4The font, only if it's still needed
Fewer weights of the same typeface, or the font that's already built into the phone. It's the lightest of the three: touch it last, not first.
- You know the video is the first thing to trim when it weighs more than the photos and font combined
- You've removed the duplicate photos from the gallery instead of making the cover photo worse
- You know the font is the last thing you touch, not the first
- Every time you upload a new photo or video, you have to run through this again
Three scenarios to help you decide the order
Answer before opening each one. If one gives you trouble, go back to the section that explains it.
1. Your site has a background video on the homepage that weighs 8 MB and a gallery of twenty photos that add up to 3 MB total. It still takes almost six seconds to load on a weak signal. What do you tackle first?
The video, even though the gallery has more files: 8 MB versus 3 MB means that's where more than half the problem is. Turn it into a thumbnail with a play button before touching a single photo.
2. A hairstylist has twelve haircut photos in their gallery, four of them the same haircut from different angles, and wants the site to weigh less without anyone noticing. Do they lower the quality on all twelve or remove some?
Cut the duplicates: out of four shots of the same haircut, keep one. Nine good photos tell the same story as twelve, the weight drops, and none of them lose sharpness. Lowering the quality on all twelve would also hurt the cover photo, which is the one you should downgrade the least.
3. You've already trimmed the video to a thumbnail and removed the duplicate photos from a clothing store, but the site is still slower than it should be. The heading font has four different weights. Is the font next?
Yes, now's the time: you only touch the font once the video and photos are already handled and there's still weight left to cut. Trim it down to the two weights you actually use on the site. It came last because, of the three, it was the lightest one from the start.
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