Digging things up…
Digging things up…
Speed is a ranking factor, a conversion factor, and a retention factor. We look at every layer — from server response time to image delivery — to give you a complete picture.
A slow website costs you in three directions at once: lower Google rankings, higher bounce rates, and fewer conversions. Core Web Vitals are now a confirmed ranking signal, yet the majority of websites still fail Google's own benchmarks. Our performance audit gives you a precise, actionable breakdown of exactly what is slowing you down and how to fix it.
of mobile visitors leave if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load
drop in conversions for every one-second delay in page load time
the year Google made Core Web Vitals an official ranking factor
Performance
01
Google's official ranking signals: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint — how fast your main content loads), INP (Interaction to Next Paint — how quickly pages respond to clicks and taps), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift — whether elements jump around as the page loads). Failing any of these directly affects your position in search.
02
TTFB measures how long your server takes to start responding. A slow TTFB points to hosting quality issues, unoptimised server configuration, or database queries running on every page load. It is often the most overlooked performance bottleneck.
03
Images are the most common cause of unnecessarily large page sizes. We check whether your images are served in modern formats (WebP or AVIF), correctly sized for each device, compressed without visible quality loss, and loaded progressively so they do not delay the rest of the page.
04
Render-blocking resources, unused JavaScript, oversized third-party scripts, and unminified CSS can add seconds to load times. We identify exactly which scripts are responsible and whether they can be deferred, removed, or replaced.
05
Are your static assets cached with appropriate expiry headers? Is a content delivery network serving files from locations close to your visitors? Poor caching means every visitor downloads the same assets repeatedly — even on return visits.
06
Desktop and mobile scores are assessed separately because mobile users typically face slower connections, less processing power, and different rendering challenges. Many sites score well on desktop while failing badly on mobile — where the majority of traffic now arrives.
Why performance is non-negotiable
Google uses it to rank you. Core Web Vitals are a tiebreaker in competitive niches. A page that loads faster and shifts less can rank above pages with stronger backlink profiles.
Visitors make snap decisions. 53% of mobile users abandon a page that takes more than three seconds. That traffic does not come back — it goes to your competitor.
Conversion rates are directly affected. Amazon calculated that every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales. For smaller businesses, the same principle applies — slow pages mean fewer enquiries, fewer sales, fewer bookings.
Performance debt compounds. Every plugin added, image uploaded without optimisation, and script embedded makes the problem worse. Understanding your baseline is the first step to reversing the trend.
“Speed is not a feature — it is the price of admission. A slow website is not just a technical problem; it is a business problem.”
Dino Media — performance-first web development since 1996
Also in this audit
Free Website Health Check
Our free health check covers performance alongside four other critical areas — delivered to your inbox as a full PDF report.