You are probably not the best judge of whether your website is slow. You open it in your office, on fast internet, and you have loaded it so many times that the browser keeps it ready. A new customer, on the other hand, opens it for the first time, on the road, on mobile data.
Luckily you do not need to be a developer to find out. Google offers a free tool that anyone can use. In this article I show you how to test website speed in 5 minutes, how to read the colors and the score, and which results mean it is time to call a specialist. The causes of slowness and how to fix them are covered in a separate article; here I focus only on measuring and reading the result.
The one thing to know before you start
Measure your site on both phone and desktop, but look at the phone first. Most of your customers find and call you from a phone. If the desktop result is good and the phone result is bad, the real problem is on the phone.
Also, the test does not give exactly the same result every time. Your connection and how busy the server is at that moment can shift the score by a few points. So do not fixate on a single result. Run it three times and look at the overall picture.
Measuring in 5 minutes, step by step
- Search for PageSpeed Insights in your browser and open Google's own page.
- Type your site's address, meaning your home page, into the box and press the analyze button.
- Wait about half a minute. The tool actually loads your site and examines it.
- On the results screen, look at the mobile tab first, then switch to desktop.
- Besides your home page, also test the page that brings you the most customers, for example your services or booking page.
That is all. You do not need to install anything or pay anything.
How do you read the colors and the score?
The result shows a score between 0 and 100 and three colors:
| Color | Score | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Green | 90 and above | You are in good shape. |
| Orange | 50 to 89 | Room for improvement, but no emergency. |
| Red | 0 to 49 | You may be losing visitors. |
One thing to keep in mind: scoring 100 is not the goal. Being in the green is enough. No business owner should have to sacrifice how their site looks for a perfect score.
More important than the score: real visitor data
On the results page you may see a heading such as "Discover what your real users are experiencing". This section shows what people who actually visited your site have experienced recently. It is more valuable than the lab score, because it is what real visitors lived through, not an estimate.
On small or new sites this section can be empty. Not enough visitor data has been collected yet; that is not an error.
In this section Google looks at three things. Here they are in everyday terms:
- How long did it take for the main content to appear? Google considers 2.5 seconds or less "good".
- How quickly does the site react when you tap? You pressed a button and nothing happened; that delay is what gets measured.
- Do things jump around while the page loads? For example, an image arriving and pushing everything down while you are reading.
Together these three measurements are called Core Web Vitals. If they show green, the experience your site gives visitors is good in Google's eyes.
Reading a concrete example
Say you own a hotel and you have tested your home page. The mobile score is orange and the desktop score is green. In the real-user section, the main image of the page appeared after 4 seconds.
What does that mean? A guest browsing your rooms waits 4 seconds until they see the main photo. Since Google's "good" threshold is 2.5 seconds, there is room to improve. Do not let the green desktop result mislead you; someone researching a booking is often on a phone. The job is clear: shorten the loading time on mobile, most likely by making the main photo lighter.
If the same result came from a law firm's site, the reading would be the same: a client calling from their phone is waiting for the page to open.
What should you do after seeing the result?
Below the tool you will see a long list of suggestions. Most are full of technical terms and you are not expected to understand them. Make this distinction.
What you can do:
- Open your site on your phone and check it with your own eyes.
- Shrink large photos before uploading them.
- Have unused pages and features removed.
What to leave to a specialist:
- Items with phrases like "reduce unused code" or "server response time".
- A score of orange or red when you cannot work out why.
- A big gap between your phone result and your desktop result.
When should you call a specialist?
If any of these apply, it is time to ask an expert:
- Your mobile score is red.
- You measured the same page three times and it stays on the orange-red border.
- Even one of the three measurements looks "poor" in the real-user data.
- Your Google traffic dropped after the site became slower.
- You cannot understand the results and do not know what to do.
Take screenshots of your measurements with you. Note which page you tested and on which date. That way you can make a before-and-after comparison once the work is done.
Frequently asked questions
My PageSpeed score is low. Am I losing customers?
A score alone does not prove you are losing customers. But if your page takes more than five seconds to open on a phone, some visitors are likely to leave without waiting. Real experience data tells you more than the score.
How often should I measure?
Once a month is enough. Measure once more after any major change to the site.
It is green on desktop and red on mobile. What should I do?
This is very common. Mobile is the priority, because most visitors come from there. When you see this gap, ask a specialist for improvements aimed at mobile.
Will raising the score put me at the top of Google?
No, no one can guarantee that. Speed is only one of the many factors that influence rankings, but it helps visitors stay on your site.
Conclusion
Measuring your site takes five minutes and shows clearly how well or badly you are doing. If the results worry you, or you do not know what to fix and how, we can look together at how speed problems affect your visibility on Google. You can see the details on my SEO services page.