A website is usually slow because a phone has to download far more than the page needs before it can show anything: photos straight off a camera, a stack of plugins, add-ons like chat boxes and booking widgets, cheap hosting, or a heavy platform underneath it all. And yes, it’s costing you customers: on Google’s own research, about half the people on a phone give up on a page that takes more than three seconds to load.
You, or whoever looks after your site, can fix some of those this month. Others need a rebuild, so it’s worth knowing which is which before you spend anything.
A slow site loses phone visitors, and you never hear about it
Nobody fills in your contact form to say your site took too long. Someone’s looking for a physio at nine at night, or a plumber when the hot water’s gone, or a café to book for Saturday. They tap your link, it hangs, and they tap the next result instead, so that business gets your customer.
Your own site always feels fast to you: you’re on good wifi, your phone has it saved from last time, and you’re patient with it because it’s yours. Your customer is on mobile data in a car park, one tap away from someone else, so test it the way they’d see it.
Slow sites also show up a little lower on Google
Speed is one of the things Google weighs, but it’s a small signal next to what the page says. On Google’s guidance, the most relevant page still wins even when the experience is poor, and a good one helps where plenty of pages are equally useful. So between two businesses saying much the same thing, the quicker site has the edge.
How to check yours
Google’s test is free and takes about two minutes.
- Open pagespeed.web.dev, Google’s speed test, PageSpeed Insights.
- Type in your address, such as yourbusiness.co.nz, and press Analyze.
- Read the Mobile result, not Desktop. It’s the one closer to a customer on a phone.
- Find the Performance score, the number out of 100 in the circle.
- Read it against Google’s bands: 90 to 100 is good, 50 to 89 needs improvement, and under 50 is poor (Google’s PageSpeed documentation).
The score moves a few points between runs, so run it two or three times. Further down, Google lists what’s slowing the page. It’s written for developers, but it’s the list to hand whoever looks after your site.
What’s a good PageSpeed score?
90 or better on mobile is good, on Google’s own bands, and it’s realistic for a small business site. You’ll find articles saying 90 on a phone is close to impossible, and for a heavy site with a stack of plugins it is. A light site gets there because the phone has so little to download.
The score comes from a test Google runs on a simulated mid-range phone over a slow mobile connection, which is why your site can feel quicker in your hand than its score suggests. If your site gets enough visitors, the top of the results also shows how it went for real people over the past 28 days, with a pass or fail against Google’s speed bar. Most small business sites don’t get enough traffic for that section to appear, so the score is the number to go on.
Can a slow site be fixed without a rebuild?
Often, at least partly. Of the usual culprits, the first two cost next to nothing to fix:
- Oversized photos. A photo straight off a phone or camera is usually many times bigger than the space it fills. Resized for the web, it looks the same and downloads in a fraction of the time.
- Plugins nobody uses. On a WordPress site, each plugin can add its own code to every page, whether that page uses it or not. Switch off anything nobody can explain.
- Add-on widgets. Chat boxes, booking widgets, review carousels, social media feeds, sliders and tracking scripts each load code from someone else’s server. Keep the ones that bring in work and drop the rest.
- Cheap hosting. The cheapest shared hosting can be slow to send even the start of the page. Better hosting costs a little more each month, and moving is usually a few hours of a developer’s time.
Tuning has a ceiling, though. If the site sits on a drag-and-drop builder or a heavy theme, much of the weight is the platform itself, and there’s no switch for that. WordPress alone runs about 40% of all websites, on W3Techs’ survey (October 2026). Not all of them are slow, but a page-builder theme with a pile of plugins is where much of the extra weight comes from.
A fair rule of thumb: if your site still scores in the 50s or lower once the photos, plugins and widgets are dealt with, more tidying won’t get it to 90, and a rebuild on something lighter is the better use of your money. If tuning gets it into the high 80s or better, keep the site you have and spend the money where it will do more.
A fast site is a light one
A light site carries only what the page needs, so a phone on patchy data has very little to download before your phone number is on the screen. Light also means less to go wrong, and less for anyone to break into.
Every site we build has to score 90 or better on Google’s mobile test before it goes live. Put boringweb.co.nz into pagespeed.web.dev and look at the Mobile score. Clearing Google’s speed bar matters to your customers: on Google’s own Chrome data, people gave up on a page 24% less often when it did.
What speed can’t do
A fast site with nothing to say still won’t get the phone ringing. Speed keeps people there long enough to read what you do, and what you offer is what turns them into customers. If your site is quick and says plainly who you help and what to do next, you’re most of the way there.
Find out what’s slowing yours down
You don’t have to take anyone’s word for it, ours included. Run the free report on your site: we run Google’s test and email you the score out of 100, with a plain-English note on what’s dragging it down, usually within five minutes. If it comes back fine, we’ll say so.