Website Speed Calculator: What Your Slow Site Costs You

You paid for that click. A buyer tapped your link between jobs. Your page sat there white.

One second. Two. Three. She hit back and tapped the next guy. Crap.

You'll never see it. She didn't call, so she's not in your inbox. She's just gone.

I've built 10,000 sites in 26 years. Speed is the leak owners can't see, so let's put a number on yours. Then you can decide if it's worth fixing.

A calculator is only as good as what you feed it. Grab these first. One at a time, about ten minutes, all free.

In a hurry? Skip to the calculator and use your best guess.

Pick how people buy from you. Slide in your numbers. The dollars update as you go.

This is the number most owners never add up.

Your number is an estimate. Treat it like a rough bid, not an invoice. Here's what's solid and what's a guess.

Solid: your load time, your visitors and your job size. Those are yours.

Sourced: the 3 out of 100 for online stores. Portent measured 3.05% at 1 second (Portent, 2022).

A guess: the 2 out of 100 for call and form businesses. I couldn't find a number I trust, so move that slider if you know yours.

A judgment call: the drop per second. I take off a tenth for each second past 1. That's gentler than the gaps Portent measured, on purpose.

Two more things. It compares you to a 1 second site. And it assumes speed is the only thing wrong, which it may not be.

Your buyer doesn't wait. The clock starts when she taps.

Google looked at 900,000 mobile landing pages in 126 countries. It found 53% of people leave a page that takes over 3 seconds (Google, 2017, via Search Engine Journal). That study is old. Nobody I know got more patient since.

Nobody waits 8 seconds. That's only in bull riding. Here's how a slow site hands jobs to the other guys.

The leak isn't only people leaving. It's fewer of the ones who stay ever calling.

Portent studied 20 sites. Lead gen sites that loaded in 1 second converted 3x better than sites at 5 seconds. For online stores it was 2.5x (Portent, 2022).

Twenty sites isn't the whole web, and fast sites may be better built in other ways too. It's still the best number I've got.

The mistake: buying more traffic and sending it to a slow page.

The fix: fix the page first. You're already paying for those visits.

The payoff: more of the same traffic sticks around long enough to call.

Phones are where sites fail. Weaker signal, smaller chip, less patience.

HTTP Archive checked how many sites pass Google's speed test on phones (HTTP Archive, 2025). Here's how the big platforms did.

So more than half of WordPress sites fail on a phone. If you're on it, your plugins are probably why, and you're paying for the privilege. Passing isn't the same as fast, though. It just means you cleared Google's line.

Google grades three things. You'll see all three on your PageSpeed report (web.dev, Core Web Vitals).

1. Loading: 2.5 seconds or less. That's Largest Contentful Paint, when your main content shows up.
2. Reacting: 200 milliseconds or less. That's how fast the page answers a tap.
3. Holding still: 0.1 or less. That's how much the page jumps around while it loads.

Does it change your rankings? Some. Google says Core Web Vitals are used by our ranking systems, and also that good scores don't guarantee a top spot (Google Search Central).

So don't chase a perfect 100. Clear the line, then care about the buyer. Here's how Google grades speed, and run the AI Score Audit if you want to know how AI reads your site too.

Your site got slow the normal way. A theme with a hundred features you don't use. A stack of plugins. Big photos nobody shrank.

Each piece felt small. Together they put your buyer in a waiting room.

The fix isn't one more plugin. Tap what your site has, and see how the drag adds up.

Your phone has been to your site a thousand times. It saved a copy. A first time buyer doesn't get that.

See what she sees. It takes two minutes.

1. Turn off your home internet on your phone.
2. Open a private window in your browser.
3. Type in your address and count out loud until you can read your headline.

Your web guy says it's fine? Maybe it is. Ask for your phone score on PageSpeed Insights. A good web guy sends it in one text. Keep that guy.

That PageSpeed report reads like a foreign language. This free prompt translates it. You get the three biggest problems, and the exact text to send your web guy.

Fast is about a second. The sites I build load in about 1.1 to 1.2 seconds, even with video on the page.

Here's what small gains can do. Deloitte tracked 37 big brands. Shaving 0.1 seconds lifted retail conversions 8.4% and order size 9.2% (Deloitte, 2020).

Now the fine print. Google paid for that study, and those were big retail sites. Every page had to get faster, too (web.dev). It's not a plumber's number, but it points the same way.

Want to see it? Here's the speed test, side by side. That speed comes built into the 100K Website, and you go live on day 11.

Those were other people's studies. Here are real Google Analytics numbers from sites we rebuilt. The clients stay anonymous. The numbers don't.

Now the fine print. Those are visitors, not booked jobs, and a rebuild changes more than speed. I won't claim what nobody counted. But a buyer who leaves can't call you, and a buyer who stays can.

My own site went the same way. I cut 100% of my Facebook ads and 95% of my Google ads. Traffic dipped 4.63%. Search traffic jumped 277.59%, and people who stayed and read went up 117.48%. That's my Google Analytics, June 15 to August 13, 2026, against the 60 days before.

The site didn't do that alone. It took a ton of work, so keep your ads on until search covers them. Here's the whole story, and here's every case study, with the screenshots.

I build fast sites for a living, and I'll still tell you this. A fast site can't save a bad one.

You passed and the phone's still quiet. Then read your own homepage. It may sound like everybody else's.

People visit and don't reach out. Check the door. Your contact form could be killing leads.

They reach out and go quiet. That's not the website at all. Slow replies cost the job.

If your number came back under a few hundred bucks, fix the cheap stuff and move on. Go work on what's really costing you.

You've got your number now, and you know how much of it to believe. If it stings, let me show you what the other side feels like.

Your website should look this good. Let's talk. Take a test drive.

Want the whole playbook first? Plan your attack. Balls Out Marketing.