How do I test my website's speed?

Google's PageSpeed Insights is a free tool that measures how fast a web page loads and responds. It gives you two kinds of results: how the page performed for real visitors over the past few weeks, and a test run done on the spot. Slow pages lose visitors, so it is worth checking a few times a year.

What you need

• The address of the page you want to test, such as your home page
• About five minutes

Steps

Official guide: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v5/about

1. Go to https://pagespeed.web.dev/ in any browser.
2. Paste the full address of your page into the box.
3. Click Analyze and wait about a minute.
4. Look at the Mobile results first. Most visitors use phones, and Google looks at the phone version of your site.
5. Switch to Desktop to see the computer results.
6. Take a screenshot of the top of the report if you want to send it to us.

Reading the results

The report has two parts.

What real visitors experienced. This comes from Chrome users who visited the page over the last 28 days. It is the most honest picture. If your site does not get much traffic yet, this part may say there is not enough data. That is normal for new or small sites.

The lab test. This is a single test on a simulated mid-range phone or computer. It gives a score from 0 to 100:

Score	Meaning
90 to 100	Good
50 to 89	Needs improvement
0 to 49	Poor

The lab score can move up and down between runs. Do not worry about a few points. Look at the overall color.

Core Web Vitals, in plain words

Core Web Vitals are three measures Google uses to judge how a page feels to a visitor.

Measure	What it asks	Good
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)	How long until the main thing on the page, usually a big photo or headline, shows up?	2.5 seconds or less
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)	When someone taps or clicks, how fast does the page react?	200 milliseconds or less
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)	Does the page jump around while it loads, so people tap the wrong thing?	0.1 or less

Each one is rated good, needs improvement or poor. A page is only as good as its worst measure.

What to do with the results

You do not need to fix anything yourself. Large photos, too many add-ons and slow outside tools are common causes, and they need a developer's hands. If your results are orange or red, send them to us.

We can do this for you. Open a request in your client portal with your page address and a screenshot of the results, and our team will review what is slowing it down.

Common problems

• If the tool says there is no real-visitor data, rely on the lab score for now. Data appears once enough people visit.
• If your score changes each time you run it, that is normal. Run it two or three times and look at the middle result.
• If the page feels fast to you but scores low, remember the test uses a slower phone and network than yours, like many of your customers.
• If the tool cannot reach your page, check the address. A page behind a password cannot be tested.

Related articles

• Why does my website need to work well on phones?
• Why don't I see the changes on my website?
• Website words, explained
• What is page speed?