The Site Performance section of your scan report shows how fast your website loads and how smoothly it behaves for visitors. We use Google's PageSpeed Insights to measure this, which is the same tool Google uses to evaluate websites for search ranking purposes.
Why Performance Matters
A slow website costs you visitors and customers. Research consistently shows that if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load, over half of mobile visitors will leave. Performance also affects your search engine ranking — Google favours fast-loading sites.
Performance is scored separately from your security score and does not affect it. However, it's an important part of your overall website health.
What We Measure
We test your site on both mobile and desktop and report the scores separately, because the experience can be very different on each.
Performance Score (0–100)
An overall score based on how your site performs against Google's Core Web Vitals and other performance metrics. A score of 90 or above is considered good, 50–89 needs improvement, and below 50 is poor.
First Contentful Paint (FCP)
This measures how long it takes for the first piece of content to appear on screen — the first text, image, or graphic your visitor sees. A good FCP is under 1.8 seconds. If this number is high, your visitors are staring at a blank screen waiting for your site to start appearing.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
This measures how long it takes for the largest visible element to finish loading — usually a hero image or large heading. This is what Google considers the moment your page feels "loaded" to the visitor. A good LCP is under 2.5 seconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Have you ever been reading a web page and the content suddenly jumps down because an image or advert loaded above it? That's layout shift. CLS measures how much your page content moves around unexpectedly as it loads. A good CLS score is under 0.1. High layout shift is frustrating for visitors, especially on mobile.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
This measures how responsive your website is when someone interacts with it — clicking a button, tapping a link, or typing in a form field. A good INP is under 200 milliseconds. If this number is high, your site feels sluggish and unresponsive.
What to Look For in Your Report
- Green scores (90+) — Your site performs well. No immediate action needed.
- Amber scores (50–89) — There are opportunities to improve. Common causes include unoptimised images, too many third-party scripts (analytics, chat widgets, social embeds), or a slow hosting provider.
- Red scores (below 50) — Your site is noticeably slow and likely losing visitors. The most common causes are very large images, excessive JavaScript, or a hosting server that's under-resourced for your traffic.
Common Fixes
The most impactful performance improvements for most small business websites are:
- Optimise images — Use modern formats (WebP) and compress images before uploading. A 5MB hero image is the single most common cause of slow sites.
- Reduce third-party scripts — Every chat widget, analytics tag, and social media embed adds load time. Audit whether you actually need each one.
- Choose a good host — If your hosting plan is the cheapest tier available, your site may be sharing resources with thousands of other sites. Consider upgrading.
Performance improvements are generally the easiest wins for non-technical website owners, especially image optimisation.