What does MyBizGrade check?

We analyze your website speed, SEO tags, Google reviews, social media presence, and accessibility. Each area gets its own score and letter grade.

How is the grade calculated?

Each category is scored from 0 to 100 based on real data from your site. The overall grade is a weighted average across all five categories.

Yes, the full audit and grade are completely free. You can upgrade to a Pro report with copy-paste fixes for $39 if you want help improving.

What's in the Pro report?

You get a priority action plan, copy-paste ready fixes for every issue, time estimates, and a downloadable PDF. It tells you exactly what to change and how.

How long does the audit take?

Most audits finish in under 30 seconds. Complex sites with many pages may take up to a minute.

Do you store my data?

We store your audit results so you can revisit your report. We never sell your data or share it with third parties.

How often should I check my grade?

We recommend running a new audit every month. Your online presence changes as you update your site, get new reviews, and post on social media.

MyBizGrade was built by a small team of developers who wanted to make online presence auditing simple and affordable for small businesses.

Website Speed Matters: How Slow Pages Kill Your Business

# Website Speed Matters: How Slow Pages Kill Your Business A one-second delay in page load time reduces conversions by 7%. At three seconds, 53% of mobile visitors leave. At five seconds, the probability of bounce increases by 90%. These numbers mean slow websites actively push customers toward competitors. Every second your page takes to load, you lose money. Most small business owners never check their website speed. They load the site on their office Wi-Fi, see it pop up quickly, and assume everything is fine. Their customers on mobile connections have a different experience. ## How Slow Is Your Website? Before fixing anything, measure the problem. Use these free tools: **Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev):** Enter your URL and get separate scores for mobile and desktop. The tool also lists specific issues slowing your site down, ranked by impact. **GTmetrix (gtmetrix.com):** Provides a detailed waterfall chart showing exactly when each element loads. Useful for identifying the biggest bottlenecks. **WebPageTest (webpagetest.org):** Tests from different locations and connection speeds. See how your site loads for someone on a slow mobile connection in a different city. **Benchmarks to aim for:** - Load time: Under 3 seconds - PageSpeed Insights mobile score: Above 80 - Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Under 2.5 seconds - Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Under 0.1 - First Input Delay (FID): Under 100 milliseconds ## How Speed Affects Your Business ### Search Rankings Google includes page speed as a ranking factor. The Core Web Vitals metrics (LCP, CLS, FID) directly influence your position in search results. A fast site gets a ranking advantage over slower competitors. This applies to both desktop and mobile results. Since Google uses mobile-first indexing, your mobile speed matters most. ### Customer Trust A slow website signals an unprofessional operation. Visitors subconsciously associate slow load times with low-quality businesses. If your website feels clunky, people assume your service will be too. Fast websites feel modern and trustworthy. They communicate competence before a visitor reads a single word. ### Conversion Rates Amazon found every 100 milliseconds of latency cost them 1% in sales. While your business is not Amazon, the principle holds. Faster pages convert at higher rates across every industry. A local service business increasing page speed from 5 seconds to 2 seconds sees more form submissions, phone calls, and appointment bookings without changing anything else on the site. ### Bounce Rate Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors leaving after viewing one page. Slow sites have high bounce rates. Those visitors do not browse your services, read your reviews, or fill out your contact form. They hit the back button and call someone else. ## The 8 Biggest Speed Killers (And How to Fix Each One) ### 1. Oversized Images Images are the number one speed killer for small business websites. A single uncompressed photo from a modern camera weighs 3-8 MB. Your entire page should weigh under 3 MB total. **Fix:** Compress every image before uploading. Use TinyPNG (tinypng.com) or Squoosh (squoosh.app) to reduce file sizes by 60-80% without visible quality loss. Use WebP format instead of PNG or JPEG when your platform supports it. Resize images to the actual display size. If an image displays at 800px wide on your site, do not upload a 4000px wide original. ### 2. No Browser Caching Without caching, returning visitors download every file from scratch each time. Browser caching stores static files (images, CSS, JavaScript) on the visitor's device so repeat visits load instantly. **Fix:** For WordPress, install a caching plugin like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. For other platforms, check your hosting provider's caching options. Most modern hosts offer one-click caching. ### 3. Too Many Plugins (WordPress) Every WordPress plugin adds code your site loads on every page. Some plugins add JavaScript files, CSS files, and database queries. Twenty plugins might add 30+ extra files to each page load. **Fix:** Audit your plugins. Deactivate and delete anything you do not actively use. For plugins you keep, check if lighter alternatives exist. A single bloated slider plugin sometimes slows a site more than everything else combined. ### 4. Cheap or Overloaded Hosting Shared hosting plans at $3/month put your website on a server with hundreds of other sites. When another site on your server gets traffic, your site slows down. **Fix:** Upgrade to quality hosting. Managed WordPress hosting from providers like SiteGround, Cloudways, or Flywheel costs $15-30/month and delivers significantly faster load times. The improvement is immediate and dramatic. ### 5. No Content Delivery Network (CDN) Without a CDN, every visitor downloads files from a single server location. A visitor in New York accessing a server in Los Angeles experiences latency from the physical distance. A CDN copies your files to servers worldwide. Visitors download from the closest location, reducing load times significantly. **Fix:** Cloudflare offers a free CDN plan working with any website. Sign up, point your domain's nameservers to Cloudflare, and your site loads faster globally. ### 6. Render-Blocking JavaScript and CSS Some code files block the page from displaying until they finish loading. This creates a blank screen while the browser processes files the visitor does not see. **Fix:** Defer non-critical JavaScript and CSS. In WordPress, plugins like Autoptimize handle this automatically. For other platforms, a developer adds "defer" or "async" attributes to script tags. ### 7. No Text Compression (GZIP/Brotli) Text compression reduces the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files sent to browsers. Without compression, files transfer at full size, wasting bandwidth and time. **Fix:** Most hosting providers enable GZIP compression by default. Check yours at checkgzipcompression.com. If compression is off, enable it through your hosting control panel or .htaccess file. ### 8. Too Many HTTP Requests Every file your page loads (images, scripts, stylesheets, fonts) requires a separate HTTP request. Pages with 100+ requests load slowly regardless of individual file sizes. **Fix:** Combine CSS and JavaScript files where possible. Remove unused fonts. Use CSS sprites for small icons. Aim for fewer than 50 HTTP requests per page. ## Quick Wins You Implement Today Do not feel overwhelmed by the list above. Start with these three actions producing the biggest improvements: 1. **Compress your images.** Visit TinyPNG, upload your largest images, and replace them on your site. This alone shaves 1-3 seconds off load time for most sites. 2. **Enable caching.** Install a caching plugin or enable caching through your host. Takes five minutes. 3. **Sign up for Cloudflare's free plan.** A CDN improves speed for all visitors, especially those far from your server. These three steps take under an hour and often improve PageSpeed scores by 20-30 points. ## Speed by Platform **WordPress:** The most customizable platform but also the easiest to slow down with plugins and themes. Use a lightweight theme, limit plugins, install caching, and optimize images. **Wix:** Wix handles hosting and some optimization automatically. Your main lever is image compression. Reduce the number of elements on each page and avoid excessive animations. **Squarespace:** Squarespace sites are generally fast out of the box. Speed issues come from oversized images and custom code. Use Squarespace's built-in image optimization and keep custom code minimal. **Shopify:** Shopify handles hosting infrastructure well. Speed problems come from heavy themes and too many apps. Audit your installed apps and remove unused ones. Compress product images. ## How to Monitor Speed Over Time Page speed changes as you add content, install updates, and modify your site. A site fast today might be slow in six months after adding new images, plugins, or features. Set a monthly reminder to run a PageSpeed Insights test. Track your score over time. If it drops, investigate what changed. Google Search Console also reports Core Web Vitals issues. Connect your site to Search Console and check the "Core Web Vitals" report for flagged pages. ## Check Your Website Speed Score GradeMyBiz tests your website performance as part of a comprehensive online presence audit. See your speed score alongside your Google Business Profile, reviews, and competitive analysis. [Get your free speed score at GradeMyBiz](https://grademybiz.vercel.app) ## For more on this topic, read [How to Get More Google Reviews (Without Being Annoying)](/blog/how-to-get-more-google-reviews). For more on this topic, read [How Often Should You Audit Your Online Presence?](/blog/how-often-audit-online-presence).Speed Is a Competitive Advantage Most small business websites are slow. The average small business site loads in 4-6 seconds on mobile. By getting your site under 3 seconds, you outperform the majority of local competitors. Faster sites rank higher, convert better, and create stronger first impressions. The effort to improve speed pays dividends every day your website is live. Start with image compression, caching, and a CDN. Measure your progress. Keep improving. [Grade your full online presence for free](https://grademybiz.vercel.app)