Thank you for your checklist!
Printable View
There are some great tools out there to test website speeds such as gt metrics, Pingdom and even google page speed insights. What I love about these tools as opposed to following the generic lists placed here is that they show you a waterfall graph of how your site loads all the elements and scripts. This can help you with restructuring your website to load better - the code part of making a website faster. It also shows other valuable information as cumulative layout shifts which cases massive bounce rates and ranking declines with google.
I think there is this misconception that speed is getting your website to load fast as possible. while it is I think it's also very important to have things above the fold and to have a smooth load. Google on android has google lite where it cuts websites with excessive scripts ( calling it the lite version ). bloated websites are in a lot of trouble. Accesibilty is the new name of the game when it comes to websites.
Sometimes websites load slowly because of the server. If there is an issue with the server, this will take longer than normal. The cause of slow servers usually lays with the web host. You could be having a slow site because you are hosted on a free web hosting.
NOTE that this thread is Two YEARS Old and that the original poster hasn't been back.
Reasons why your website is to slow -
1.)Unsatisfactory server performance
2.)Unsatisfactory Server Location
3.)Excessive Flash content
4.)Inadequate caching techniques
5.)Too Many Ads
6.)Increased code density
All these things can be reasons for the slow speed of your website.