Slow website on mobile?
What it costs you and how to measure it yourself

A customer finds you on Google Maps, taps “Website” and waits. White screen. Three seconds, five, nine. They go back and tap the next one on the list. You will never find out, because that visit is never recorded anywhere as a lost customer.

How slow are the websites in the neighbourhood

In October 2026 we measured, with Google’s PageSpeed Insights on mobile, the websites of 210 local businesses in Petroupoli, a neighbourhood of Athens, across 12 trades: tutoring schools, gyms, dentists, accountants, hair salons, car repair shops and more. The results:

• The typical site needed 9 seconds before its main content appeared. Google considers 2.5 good.
• 9 out of 10 sites were above that limit.
• Only 23 of the 210 reached 95 or more on speed.
• Of the 445 businesses we found on the map, almost half had no website of their own at all.

One clarification, to be fair: the measurement happens in a lab. Google simulates an average phone on a slow network. A new iPhone on WiFi would see the same sites faster. Your customer doesn’t always have a new iPhone, though, and often looks you up on the street, not on the couch.

What it costs you

I won’t tell you “you’re losing 53% of your customers”. Figures like that circulate everywhere and most are old or measured in other markets. What holds for certain:

• Whoever searches for you on mobile needs you now. They type “tutoring near me” and see three or four options on the map. Whichever site opens first gets the first chance.
• Google sees it. Page experience, speed included, is one of the signals it uses. Speed alone won’t put you first, but a slow site starts at a disadvantage against an equally good, fast one.
• The first impression. A site that lags and jumps around while loading looks abandoned, like a shop window covered in dust. The customer doesn’t think “slow server”. They think “did they close?”.

Why it’s slow, usually

It is rarely one thing. Usually it’s these, together:

• Photos straight from the camera. Four to five MB each, when the phone needs a small fraction of that. Often it is the biggest cause.
• Ready-made themes that load everything. Every page carries code for sliders, effects and forms, even if it doesn’t use them.
• Add-ons collected over the years. Chat, pop-ups, visitor counters, social media buttons. Each one “only a little”, all together a lot.
• A server slow to respond. With very cheap hosting, the visitor often waits before the page even starts loading.

Measure it yourself in two minutes

1. Open pagespeed.web.dev, type your site’s address and press “Analyze”.

2. Stay on the Mobile tab. That’s where it counts. On a desktop most sites look fine.

3. Look at two things: the Performance number and, further down, Largest Contentful Paint. It tells you how many seconds it takes for the main content to appear. Up to 2.5 is good; above 4 the customer feels it.

4. Run it two or three times. The number moves a little each time. Keep the middle one.

The colour tells you the rest: 90 and above green, 50 to 89 orange, below 50 red. Next to Performance you’ll see three more numbers. I explain what all four mean in a separate article.

And then?

A red number doesn’t automatically mean you need a new website. Sometimes it’s enough to shrink the photos and remove the add-ons you don’t use. Ask whoever builds it for you what exactly slows it down. If the answer is “that’s how websites are”, it isn’t.

If you want a second look, send me your site’s address. I’ll tell you honestly what slows it down and whether it can be fixed without replacing it.