Free website speed test
Type in your address. Google loads your site the way a phone on mobile data would, then tells you what is holding it back.
We only send the address you enter to Google for the test, nothing about you is stored, and results are cached briefly.
You open your own website on your phone and wait. First a white screen, then half a picture, then the text jumps. Behind this there are almost always the same handful of causes. The good news: most of them are easy to spot, and many are easy to fix.
Heavy images. A photo straight from a phone can be several megabytes and far wider than the page will ever show it. The visitor still downloads the whole file, often on mobile data. For small businesses this is the most common cause by far.
Too many plugins and scripts. Every add-on brings its own code, usually on every page, even where it does nothing. A contact form, a slider, a cookie tool, a gallery plugin: harmless one at a time, heavy together.
Page builders and bought themes. They are made to do everything, which means a lot of code for features your site never uses and a deeply nested layout the phone has to work through.
Cheap or overcrowded hosting. When hundreds of websites share one server, your visitor is already waiting before the first byte arrives. No image fix will change that.
Third-party widgets. Chat windows, an Instagram feed, an embedded map, tracking codes, review badges. Each one loads code from another server. If you serve visitors in the UK or EU, tracking also needs consent before it runs. Fewer widgets is better on both counts.
Web fonts. Three typefaces in four weights each quickly add up to a pile of files, and until they arrive the text can stay invisible.
No caching. Without it, the server rebuilds every page on every visit, and the browser downloads your logo again each time.
The big number from 0 to 100 is your overall speed score on mobile. 90 and above is green, 50 to 89 is orange, below that is red. The timings underneath matter more than the number. ‘Main content visible’ tells you when a visitor actually sees something useful. ‘Page frozen for’ shows how long the phone ignores taps. ‘Layout jumping’ measures how much things move about while loading.
The list under ‘What slows your site down’ is sorted by possible saving. Start at the top. If images are listed there, you are in luck: they are usually the easiest thing to fix.
Shrink your images. Resize photos to the width they are shown at before uploading, and save them as WebP. There are free online tools for this. For a wedding photographer in Lisbon or a yoga studio in Dubai with a big gallery, this alone can make a real difference.
Clear out the clutter. Delete plugins you no longer use, and ask of every widget whether it actually brings in customers. A live Instagram feed on the home page of a small holiday let looks nice but costs speed. A link to your profile often does the same job.
Replace the slider. One strong photo with a clear headline says the same as five rotating images and loads far faster.
Turn on caching. On WordPress a caching plugin does it. Many hosts also have a switch in their control panel.
If the server itself is slow to respond, only better hosting helps. If a theme or page builder dominates the list, tidying up around the edges is cosmetic. And if ‘Page frozen for’ is high, there is usually too much JavaScript behind it, which you cannot simply delete without breaking something.
At that point there are two honest options: have your current site properly sped up, or rebuild it if the foundations are too heavy. You will find what each costs on my pricing page. I will tell you beforehand which route makes sense for you.
Your customers search on the move: on a lunch break, on a train, in a car park before an appointment. Mobile networks are slower and less steady. A site that feels quick on your office computer can crawl on a phone. Anyone who waits too long taps back and tries the next result.
That is why Google also judges pages on mobile speed, through what it calls Core Web Vitals. It is one signal among many, not a button for first place. But between two otherwise similar sites, the faster one has an edge, and it stops losing visitors along the way.
Test the same page twice and you will often get two slightly different scores. Google measures over real networks and real servers, and they are not equally fast every minute. A few points up or down is normal. What counts is whether your site sits in the green zone consistently, or in the red.
Yes. It uses Google PageSpeed Insights, which is free in itself. You do not need to sign up or give an email address. If you would like help afterwards, message me. If not, that is fine too. You can also run the same test directly at pagespeed.web.dev whenever you like.
Because every test is a real measurement over real networks. Server load, adverts or widgets loading different content, and Google's own measuring all vary slightly. A difference of a few points is normal. If the score swings a lot, it is worth looking more closely at your hosting and third-party services.
Because most of your visitors arrive on a phone, and Google ranks the mobile version of your site. The mobile test simulates an average phone on a slower connection, so the score is almost always lower than on desktop. It is, however, much closer to what your customers actually experience.
It is possible, but it depends heavily on the theme, page builder and plugins. A lean WordPress site on good hosting can reach green. A heavy bought theme with lots of add-ons often cannot, however much you optimise. After a look at your site, I will tell you honestly what is achievable.
90 and above is green, and your site counts as fast. Between 50 and 89 is average, and below that is slow. Do not look only at the number, though. If the main content appears quickly and nothing jumps about, your visitors are having a good experience, even if a point or two is missing.
Founder of RAGANA Studio, web designer since 2009. I hand-build websites and online shops for small businesses in Romania, Hungary, Austria and Germany, and run my own online shop, raganadesign.shop. My story →
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