Page speed

Where the numbers come from

Every Mainmark website measures how fast each page was on the visitor's own phone or computer, and sends it when they leave the page. Nothing is estimated in a lab: these are your real visitors, on their real connections.

Each figure is the time three in four visits were faster than. That is the figure Google uses, so a few very slow connections do not hide how most visitors see your site.

A figure shows once 20 visits on that kind of device have measured it, and a page shows in Slowest pages once 10 visits have. Before that the panel says Too few visits.

The measures

• Page shows: how long until the biggest thing on the screen, usually the main picture or heading, has appeared. Google calls it Largest Contentful Paint. Good up to 2.5 s, poor past 4 s.
• First paint: how long until anything at all appears. Good up to 1.8 s, poor past 3 s.
• Server response: how long until the first part of the page arrives, including the visitor's connection. Good up to 800 ms, poor past 1.8 s.
• Reacts to taps and clicks: how long the page takes to respond when someone presses something. Google calls it Interaction to Next Paint. Good up to 200 ms, poor past 500 ms.
• Stays steady: how much the page jumps around while it loads, as a score where lower is better. Google calls it Cumulative Layout Shift. Good up to 0.10, poor past 0.25. Only Chrome and Edge measure it.

Good, Needs work and Poor are Google's own lines for each measure.

Phones and computers

Phones and computers are shown apart, because a phone on mobile data is usually slower. Tablets count with phones. The sentence above the table uses phones whenever there are enough of them.

Making a page faster

Below the table, the panel names the part of a page that was slowest, such as the Hero picture on your home page. A large photograph is the most common cause. Mainmark already sends phones a smaller copy of full width photographs, so the usual fix is a lighter picture or fewer large pictures near the top of the page.

Mainmark's own servers usually answer in a few milliseconds; the panel says how long when it knows. Most of the remaining time is the visitor's connection and the size of the page.