How to Fix the ‘Avoid Enormous Network Payloads’ Warning

PageSpeed Insights shows “Avoid enormous network payloads” when your page downloads a very large amount of data. On a phone with a slow connection, every extra megabyte means seconds of waiting, and it uses your visitors’ data allowance.

Step 1: See what is heavy

The audit lists the largest files. You can also open your browser’s developer tools, go to the Network tab, reload the page and sort by size. A practical rule of thumb is to keep a mobile page well under 2 MB, and the lower the better.

Step 2: Fix the usual culprits

Images (the most common cause)

Resize images to the size they are displayed at. A 4000-pixel photo in a 600-pixel space wastes data.
Convert to WebP or AVIF and compress.
Lazy-load images below the first screen, but not the first image.

Video

Do not autoplay large background videos on mobile.
Show a preview image and load the video only when the visitor clicks play.
Host long videos on a video platform instead of your own server.

JavaScript and CSS

Remove plugins you do not use.
Replace heavy sliders, animation libraries and large icon sets with lighter alternatives.
Check which plugins load files on pages where they are not needed.

Fonts

Use fewer font families and weights.
Serve WOFF2 files.

Third-party scripts

Chat widgets, social feeds, tag managers and ad scripts often download a lot of data. Keep the ones you really use and delay the rest until the visitor interacts.

Compression

Make sure text files (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) are compressed with Gzip or Brotli. Your host or CDN usually provides this. See the plugin-free guide for an Apache example.

Long pages

A page with dozens of product images or blog posts loads everything at once. Split long lists into pages, or load more items only when requested.

Check the result

Reload the page, check the total transferred size in the Network tab, and run PageSpeed Insights again. Caching helps repeat visits, but not the first visit, which is what the test measures.