How to test website speed: a guide for non-technical owners

Your website might be costing you customers and you don’t even know it.

A slow site doesn’t just frustrate visitors – it actively pushes them towards your competitors. The good news? Testing your website speed takes about two minutes and costs nothing.

This guide walks you through exactly how to test your site, what the results actually mean, and what you can realistically do about it without needing a computer science degree.

Why website speed matters for your business

Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: if your site takes more than three seconds to load, you’re losing visitors before they even see what you offer.

According to Google’s research, as page load time increases from one second to three seconds, the probability of bounce increases by 32%. Push that to five seconds and you’re looking at a 90% increase in bounce probability.

But it’s not just about keeping visitors on your page. Speed affects three things that directly impact your bottom line:

• Search rankings – Google has used page speed as a ranking factor since 2010, and it’s become even more important since the Core Web Vitals update
• Conversion rates – every additional second of load time reduces conversions. For e-commerce sites, this translates directly into lost sales
• User trust – a slow, clunky site makes visitors question whether your business is legitimate and professional

The businesses that understand this have a significant advantage. If you’re wondering whether your current site is actually that bad, running a speed test is the first step to finding out.

Best free website speed testing tools

You don’t need to pay for expensive software to test your site speed. Three free tools will tell you everything you need to know.

Google PageSpeed Insights

This is the one that matters most because it’s Google’s own tool. It tests your site from Google’s perspective, which means the scores directly relate to how Google views your site for ranking purposes.

PageSpeed Insights gives you separate scores for mobile and desktop, which is crucial because Google now uses mobile-first indexing. Your mobile score is more important than your desktop score.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix provides more detailed technical information than PageSpeed Insights. It’s particularly useful for identifying specific files or resources that are slowing your site down. The waterfall chart shows you exactly what loads, in what order, and how long each element takes.

Pingdom Website Speed Test

Pingdom lets you test from different geographic locations, which is helpful if you serve customers in specific regions. It also provides a simple performance grade that’s easy to understand at a glance.

Use all three tools. They measure slightly different things and together give you the complete picture.

How to run your first speed test

Testing your site takes less than two minutes. Here’s exactly what to do:

Step 1: Go to Google PageSpeed Insights

Step 2: Enter your website URL in the search box. Use your homepage first, then test your most important landing pages.

Step 3: Wait about 30 seconds for the analysis to complete.

Step 4: Look at the mobile score first – this is what matters most for SEO.

Step 5: Scroll down to see the specific issues affecting your score.

Repeat this process with GTmetrix and Pingdom to get a fuller picture. Make sure you test:

• Your homepage
• Your main service or product pages
• Your contact page
• Any page you’re trying to rank for in search

Don’t just test once. Run the test two or three times because results can vary slightly depending on server load and other factors.

Understanding your speed test results

Speed test results come with a lot of technical jargon. Here’s what the important metrics actually mean in plain English.

Core Web Vitals – the three that matter most

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how long it takes for the main content of your page to appear. Think of it as answering the question: “When can the visitor actually see something useful?”

• Good: under 2.5 seconds
• Needs improvement: 2.5 to 4 seconds
• Poor: over 4 seconds

First Input Delay (FID) measures how quickly your site responds when someone clicks a button or link. A high FID means visitors click something and nothing seems to happen, which is incredibly frustrating.

• Good: under 100 milliseconds
• Needs improvement: 100 to 300 milliseconds
• Poor: over 300 milliseconds

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures how much the page jumps around as it loads. You’ve experienced bad CLS when you try to click a button but the page shifts and you click something else instead.

• Good: under 0.1
• Needs improvement: 0.1 to 0.25
• Poor: over 0.25

Other metrics worth understanding

Time to First Byte (TTFB) measures how long it takes your server to respond. A slow TTFB usually points to hosting problems rather than website code issues.

Total Blocking Time (TBT) measures how long the page is unresponsive while loading. High TBT usually means too much JavaScript is running.

What counts as a good (or bad) score

PageSpeed Insights gives you a score out of 100. Here’s how to interpret it:

• 90-100 (green): Excellent. Your site is fast. Focus on other areas of improvement.
• 50-89 (orange): Needs improvement. There’s room to make things better, and doing so will likely help your rankings.
• 0-49 (red): Poor. Your site speed is actively hurting your business. This needs addressing.

For small business websites, I’d consider anything above 70 on mobile to be acceptable, with 80+ being the goal. Desktop scores are typically higher than mobile, so don’t be alarmed if there’s a significant difference.

However, don’t obsess over getting a perfect 100. The returns diminish significantly past 90, and the time and money required to squeeze out those last few points is rarely worth it for a small business site.

Common speed problems and what they mean

Your speed test results will list specific issues. Here are the most common ones and what’s actually causing them:

“Reduce unused JavaScript” – Your site is loading code it doesn’t need. This often happens with page builder plugins or themes that try to do everything. If you’re considering rebuilding your website, choosing a leaner approach can eliminate this problem entirely.

“Serve images in next-gen formats” – Your images are in older formats like JPEG or PNG when they should be in WebP. This is usually fixable with a plugin.

“Properly size images” – You’re loading images that are larger than needed. A 3000-pixel-wide image displayed at 300 pixels is wasting bandwidth.

“Eliminate render-blocking resources” – CSS and JavaScript files are loading in the wrong order, preventing the page from displaying. This is a common issue and often requires technical intervention to fix properly.

“Reduce initial server response time” – Your hosting is slow. This isn’t something you can fix with a plugin – you need better hosting.

“Avoid enormous network payloads” – Your page is trying to load too much stuff. This is often a sign of bloated themes or too many plugins.

Quick wins to improve your speed today

Some speed improvements require a developer. Others you can do yourself. Here’s what’s realistic for a non-technical site owner:

Things you can probably fix yourself

Resize your images before uploading. Use a free tool like Squoosh to compress and resize images. No image on your site should be larger than 1920 pixels wide, and most can be much smaller.

Install a caching plugin. If you’re on WordPress, plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache can make a noticeable difference with minimal configuration.

Remove plugins you’re not using. Every plugin adds weight to your site. If you installed something six months ago and haven’t touched it since, delete it.

Use a CDN. Cloudflare offers a free tier that can speed up your site and add security. It takes about 20 minutes to set up if you follow their instructions.

Things that typically need professional help

• Fixing render-blocking JavaScript and CSS
• Implementing lazy loading correctly
• Optimising database queries
• Moving to better hosting
• Replacing a bloated theme with something leaner
• Cleaning up code from previous developers

If your speed test reveals multiple serious issues, patching them individually often doesn’t work. You end up in a cycle of fixes that create new problems.

When to call in professional help

There’s a point where trying to fix things yourself costs more in time and frustration than getting expert help. Here’s when to make that call:

• Your mobile score is consistently below 50
• You’ve tried the quick fixes and nothing improved
• The issues listed are all technical terms you don’t understand
• Your site is built on a page builder and the problems seem baked in
• You’ve had previous developers work on it and nobody documented what they did

When evaluating a WordPress developer, ask them specifically about their approach to site speed. A good developer builds fast sites from the start rather than trying to optimise slow ones after the fact.

Sometimes the honest answer is that your site needs rebuilding rather than patching. A properly built WordPress site on decent hosting should score 80+ on mobile without any special optimisation tricks. If you’re nowhere near that, the foundation might be the problem.

Test your site speed today. It takes two minutes, costs nothing, and tells you something important about how your business appears to both visitors and search engines. Whatever the results, at least you’ll know what you’re working with.