Most of your customers will open your website on a phone, often on the move and sometimes with a weak signal. If the page takes too long, they go back to Google and call the next business. That is why every site we build at Leader aims for a score above 90 on Google PageSpeed Insights.
What the score is
PageSpeed Insights is a free Google tool. Paste your address at pagespeed.web.dev and it tests the page on a simulated phone, giving a performance score from 0 to 100. Google marks 90 to 100 as good, 50 to 89 as needs improvement and below 50 as poor.
The same report shows the Core Web Vitals, the measures Google uses to describe page experience:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how fast the main content appears. Good is 2.5 seconds or less.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how fast the page responds when someone taps. Good is 200 milliseconds or less.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much the layout jumps while loading. Good is 0.1 or less.
When there is enough traffic, the report also shows data from real Chrome users, which matters more than the lab test.
Why it matters for a local business
- Fewer lost visitors. A page that shows up fast keeps people long enough to see your phone number and your work.
- A better signal to Google. Page experience is part of how Google evaluates pages, and a fast, stable site helps your profile and your service pages work together.
- AI tools read your site too. Assistants like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews pull information from websites. A clean, fast, well structured site is easier to read and cite.
The most common problems we find
- Huge images. Photos straight from the camera, several megabytes each. Modern formats like WebP and the right size for each screen fix most of it.
- Heavy page builders and plugins. Many templates load code for features the site never uses.
- Videos loading too early. A background video can stay, as long as the page shows a light image first and loads the video after.
- Too many third-party scripts. Chat widgets, trackers and embeds that load before the content.
- Layout jumps. Images and banners without fixed sizes push the text around while the page loads.
Speed works together with everything else
A 100 on a page nobody finds does not bring customers. Speed works together with clear service pages, your Google Business Profile, reviews and content. A fast site makes all of that pay off.
Want to know your score and what is slowing your site down? Ask for a free audit and we will send you the report with the fixes in order of priority.