You probably look at your own website on a laptop at home, or on your phone over the house wifi, where it’s loaded a hundred times before and comes up instantly. Your customers don’t see it like that. They see it for the first time, on a phone, often on mobile data, quite possibly while standing in a kitchen with water coming through the ceiling.
If the page is slow, jumps about while it loads, or hides the phone number behind a pop-up, many of them won’t wait. They’ll press back and try the next firm on the list. The good news is that you can find out how your site behaves in about ten minutes, without any technical knowledge. Here’s how.
"Test your website the way a stranger meets it: on a phone, on mobile data, from a Google search, with no patience. A score is useful, but the real question is simple. Could someone in a hurry find your number and ring you within a few seconds?"
Minutes 0 to 2: open it like a customer would
Turn off wifi on your phone so you’re on mobile data. Open a private or incognito tab, so nothing is saved from earlier visits. Then search Google for one of your services and your town, for example "boiler repair Halifax", and tap through to your site from the results, or search your business name if you don’t appear.
As it loads, notice:
- How long before you see something useful. Not a blank screen or a spinning logo, but your headline and what you do.
- Whether things jump. Text that shifts down as a banner or image loads, so you tap the wrong thing.
- What’s covering the page. Cookie banners, chat bubbles, newsletter pop-ups and "install our app" prompts all compete for a small screen.
- Whether you can see a phone number or a call button without scrolling.
Write down your honest first impression in a sentence. It’s worth more than you think.
Minutes 2 to 5: run Google’s free test
On a laptop, go to PageSpeed Insights, paste in your home page address and press Analyze. It reports on mobile and desktop separately. Look at mobile first, because that’s where most of the problems are.
You’ll see two kinds of results, and it helps to know the difference. According to Google’s explanation of PageSpeed Insights:
- Real-user data comes from people visiting your site in Chrome over the previous 28 days. This is what actual visitors experienced.
- Lab data is a simulated page load. It produces the performance score out of 100: 90 or above is good, 50 to 89 needs improvement, and under 50 is poor. It’s useful for spotting problems, but it’s a test, not real life.
Don’t worry if there’s no real-user data for your site. Smaller sites often don’t have enough visitors in the data set, and Google then shows data for your whole site or none at all. The lab results are still useful.
The three measures that matter
Google groups its main real-world measures as Core Web Vitals. Its guidance on Core Web Vitals gives these targets for a good experience:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), 2.5 seconds or less. How long it takes for the main content, usually the big image or headline, to appear.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP), 200 milliseconds or less. How quickly the page responds when someone taps a button or a menu.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), 0.1 or less. How much the page jumps about while it loads.
In plain terms: does it appear quickly, does it respond when tapped, and does it stay still? If you only remember one, remember the first.
Minutes 5 to 7: the thumb test
Speed isn’t the only thing that loses people on a phone. Go back to your phone and try to do what a customer would do.
- Tap the phone number. Does it offer to call, or is it just text you’d have to copy? Every phone number on the site should be tappable.
- Open the menu. Can you find your services and the areas you cover with your thumb, without zooming?
- Fill in the contact form. Is it short? Do the boxes fit the screen? Does the keyboard switch to numbers for the phone field? Does it tell you it’s been sent?
- Read a paragraph. Is the text big enough without pinching? Is there enough contrast to read it outdoors?
- Close every pop-up. How many taps did that take?
If a slow page loses people before they see you, a fiddly page loses them after. Both end the same way: a missed enquiry you never knew about. If calls are getting through but going unanswered, that’s a different problem, covered in why missed calls cost jobs.
Minutes 7 to 9: test it in the real world
Lab tests use a set connection speed. Real life in West Yorkshire is more varied. Mobile signal isn’t equally strong everywhere, and a site that’s fine on a good 5G connection in Leeds city centre may struggle on a weak signal in a valley bottom or on a moving train.
Next time you’re out on a job, somewhere the signal is ordinary rather than great, load your site again from scratch. If it’s slow for you, it’s slow for the customers in that area too.
Minutes 9 to 10: write down the three worst problems
Don’t try to fix everything. Pick the three things most likely to stop someone ringing you. For most small business sites, they come from the same short list.
What usually slows a small business website down
Huge photos
This is one of the most common causes. A photo straight off a modern phone can be several megabytes. Upload eight of those to a gallery and a visitor on mobile data has to download all of them. Photos of your work are valuable, as we cover in job photos that win work, but they need resizing before they go on the site.
Before uploading a photo, resize it so the longest side is around 1,600 pixels and save it as a compressed JPEG or WebP. Most phones and free online tools can do this. It usually makes a dramatic difference to file size, and on a phone screen nobody will notice any loss of quality.
Too many add-ons
Sliders, animated effects, chat widgets, social media feeds, embedded maps, videos and a dozen plugins each add weight. Every one of them has to load before the page settles. Ask whether each one actually helps someone get in touch. If not, remove it.
Old tracking codes and leftovers
Tracking codes from campaigns that ended years ago, test plugins nobody removed, and themes packed with features you never used all slow things down. A tidy-up also helps with cookie rules, which we explain in our guide to privacy and cookies on a small business site.
Cheap or overloaded hosting
If even a simple page takes a long time to start loading, the server may be the problem. Very cheap shared hosting can be slow at busy times. This is one for your web person or host, not something you can fix by editing pages.
What not to worry about
Be wary of anyone who uses a single low score to sell you an expensive rebuild. Scores vary between runs, and chasing a perfect 100 can mean stripping out useful things like photos. Aim for a site that loads quickly and works well for real visitors, fix the obvious problems first, then test again.
Google says it highly recommends good Core Web Vitals for success in Search, and treats them as part of the wider page experience its ranking systems look for. But no score guarantees rankings, and a fast page that doesn’t explain what you do or where you work still won’t bring in enquiries. If your site gets visits but the phone stays quiet, speed may be only one part of it. Our article on why visitors aren’t turning into enquiries covers the rest.
Keep an eye on it after you’ve fixed it
Websites get slower over time as photos, plugins and pages pile up. If you have Google Search Console set up, its Core Web Vitals report groups your pages into Good, Need improvement and Poor, for mobile and desktop, based on real visits. It’s worth a look every month or two, and rerunning PageSpeed Insights after any big change.
Your checklist for this week
- Load your site on your phone, on mobile data, in a private tab, from a Google search.
- Run your home page and your main service page through PageSpeed Insights, and note the mobile results.
- Check that every phone number is tappable and the contact form works on a phone.
- Remove or reduce pop-ups that cover the page on mobile.
- Resize the biggest photos on your site, starting with the home page.
- Ask your web person to remove plugins and tracking codes you no longer use.
- Write down your three worst problems and retest once they’re fixed.
A site that loads quickly and makes ringing you easy is the starting point for everything else. On the Driving Sales Locally monthly plan, at £225 a month, the website build, hosting and maintenance are all included. If you’d like Jeremy to look at how your current site performs on a phone, book a free call.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check my website speed on mobile?
Open your site on your phone using mobile data in a private tab, then run the page through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool and look at the mobile results. Check the real-user data if there is any, as well as the lab score.
What is a good PageSpeed Insights score?
Google rates a lab performance score of 90 or above as good, 50 to 89 as needing improvement and below 50 as poor. Scores vary between tests, so focus on fixing the main problems rather than chasing 100.
Why does PageSpeed Insights say there’s no real-user data for my site?
Real-user data comes from Chrome users over the previous 28 days, and smaller sites often don’t have enough visits to be included. The lab results still show you where the problems are.
What slows down a small business website most often?
Oversized photos are the most common cause, followed by too many plugins, sliders, widgets and old tracking codes. Slow or overloaded hosting can also be a factor.