CHOOSE THE RIGHT FEATURES
How to investigate a slow business website
Begin a speed review with a page and a task. “The site feels slow” is a useful observation, but you need repeatable evidence before choosing a fix.
Pick representative pages
Test the homepage, a service page and the enquiry route. Record the device, connection, date and URL. A page full of photographs may behave differently from a short contact page. Do not assume one result describes the entire website.
Separate lab tests from visitor data
A lab test diagnoses a page under particular conditions. Field data describes real visits when enough data exists. Google's web.dev guidance explains that the two can differ; a new site may not have sufficient field data. A missing field report is not a zero score.
Ask what delays the main content
Have the developer identify the large visible content and the requests needed to show it. Check oversized images, unnecessary third-party scripts, slow responses and chains of redirects. Avoid starting with a plugin purchase before understanding the delay.
Make one relevant change
If the hero photo is unnecessarily large, resize and compress it, then retest the same page. If an unused widget loads on every page, evaluate removing it. Keep a copy of the before result and the changed files. This makes it easier to identify regressions or roll back a change.
Verify the customer task too
After optimisation, read the page and try its controls. A faster score is not useful if the service information is hidden or the contact feature stops working. Check images for visible compression damage and fonts for layout shifts.
Your review record should contain the tested pages, measurement conditions, observed bottleneck, change and result. Keep uncertainty visible: one favourable lab run does not establish good real-user Core Web Vitals. Continue with the issues that affect customers most, and avoid promising that a speed score alone will produce search rankings.
Sources and further detail
Technical references checked on 8 October 2026. Provider features can change.
Practical guidance with illustrative examples. Read our editorial standards or send a correction.