Check 23 of 23 · Does it deliver?

The page arrives quickly

We time how long your homepage takes to arrive. Slow pages cost a little, not a lot. This is a 2-point check, so it costs you points rather than blocking you.

  • Who fixes itYou, or your web person
  • TimeAbout 30 minutes
  • Worth2 of 100 points
  • How sure we areLikely

What this is

When something asks for your homepage, your server has to wake up, build the page, and send it over. We measure that whole trip in milliseconds (thousandths of a second). One second is 1000 ms.

This is not the same as how fast the page feels in your browser. We measure the time to receive the page’s code, not the pictures, fonts and scripts that load after.

Why it matters to you

AI agents work to a time budget. If a page is slow, some give up and move on. Nobody publishes the exact cut-off, and it varies by agent.

This check is worth 2 points out of 100. A slow site does not lose you much; it costs a little on every visit. The checks in Your robots.txt file works and Your words are in the HTML can block you outright, and this one cannot.

If your score is low, fix those first and come back to speed last.

What we look for

We time the trip from our request to the last byte of your homepage.

  • Pass: under 800 ms.
  • Warn: 800 to 1999 ms. You keep most of the points.
  • Fail: 2000 to 4999 ms, you keep a few points. 5000 ms or more, you keep almost none.

One measurement, from one place, at one moment. A slow reading can be a bad moment, not a bad site. Run it twice before you worry.

Whether you can fix this yourself

Probably not without a web person. Speed lives in the server, the hosting plan and the theme.

Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and SimplePractice run the servers. Their speed is what it is. If you fail twice on one of those, the cause is usually a heavy theme or app, and the platform’s own speed guide is the right next step.

How to fix it

Biggest win first: a CDN (content delivery network) keeps a copy of your page in many cities so it is served from near the visitor. Cloudflare has a free plan that works with any host. Wix, Squarespace and Shopify have one built in.

Second: server response time. If the first byte alone takes over a second, the hosting plan is the problem, and a better plan or host is the fix.

WordPress

  1. Install a caching plugin (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache). This alone often takes a page from 2000 ms to 400 ms.
  2. Deactivate plugins you do not use. Each one runs on every visit.
  3. Page-builder themes are heavy. A lighter theme is a bigger project, so do the first two steps first.

Shopify

Remove apps you no longer use. Each installed app can add code to every page. Online Store, then Themes, then “Speed score” gives Shopify’s own reading.

Your own site or a developer

Server response time first, then page weight. Turn on compression (gzip or brotli) and caching headers. Then a CDN.

How to check it worked

Google’s PageSpeed Insights is free. Paste your address and look at the “Time to First Byte” line under the diagnostics. Under 800 ms is good. Then run the free check again, twice, and compare.

Do not worry about

A single reading over 800 ms on a site that normally feels fast. Servers have slow moments. Two slow readings a day apart are a pattern. One slow reading is probably a bad moment.