Site Speed
Page speed affects your SEO rankings, your conversion rates, and your user experience. But 'fast enough' isn't a number — it depends on your audience, your content, and Google's benchmarks. This guide explains what to test, what scores to aim for, and what to fix when your site is slow.
Test my website speedA proper speed test measures three things: how fast your page's main content appears (Largest Contentful Paint), how quickly your page responds to user interactions (Interaction to Next Paint), and how stable your layout is while loading (Cumulative Layout Shift). These are Google's Core Web Vitals — the metrics that directly affect your search rankings. A speed test should also show your overall Lighthouse performance score and identify the specific resources causing delays.
Google defines 'good' as: LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds, and CLS under 0.1. A Lighthouse performance score of 90+ is considered good, 50-90 needs improvement, and below 50 is poor. But the real benchmark isn't a number — it's your competitors. If your competitors' pages load in 1.8 seconds and yours takes 3.5, you're at a disadvantage regardless of whether you technically 'pass'.
The usual suspects: large unoptimised images (the #1 cause of slow pages), render-blocking JavaScript and CSS, too many third-party scripts (analytics, chat widgets, ads), slow server response times, no CDN, and excessive redirects. Images alone account for over 50% of page weight on most sites. Compressing them, using modern formats like WebP, and lazy-loading images below the fold can cut your load time in half.
Is your website fast enough?
Run a free speed test and see your real Lighthouse scores — plus exactly what to fix.
Your mobile speed score will almost always be lower than your desktop score — mobile devices have slower CPUs, less memory, and slower networks. But Google uses mobile-first indexing, so your mobile speed is what matters for rankings. Always test your mobile speed separately. A page that loads in 1.5 seconds on desktop fibre might take 5 seconds on mobile 4G — and that's the score Google uses.
You can use Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Lighthouse in Chrome DevTools. But the fastest way is to run a Velrix audit — it checks your speed alongside SEO and conversion, and tells you exactly which resources are slowing you down and what to do about each one. You get a prioritised action plan, not just a number.
If your speed test shows issues, prioritise: 1) Compress and convert images to WebP, 2) Defer non-critical JavaScript, 3) Use a CDN, 4) Minify CSS and JavaScript, 5) Reduce server response time (upgrade hosting or use caching), 6) Remove unnecessary third-party scripts. Images are almost always the highest-impact fix — start there.
A fast site ranks better, converts better, and keeps visitors happier. A slow site loses visitors before they even see your content. Velrix's audit checks your real Lighthouse scores, identifies exactly what's slowing you down, and gives you a prioritised fix list — all in 60 seconds.\n\nRun a free speed test and start fixing what matters.
Test my website speed