You only want a number
Then do not pay us. Run the free speed check, read the band it gives you, and get on with your day. The audit is for when you already know it is slow and need to know what to do about it.
// PERFORMANCE AUDIT
Website performance audit service: know what to fix first and what it costs
Our website performance audit service is a one-off $750 project. We measure your site the way Google does, on a throttled phone, then hand you a written list of what is slowing it down, ranked by impact and effort. Every item priced, so you can start at the top and stop whenever you want.
// THE GAP
What a free speed score tells you, and what it leaves out
Free automated tools are worth running. We built one and give it away. But a score is a smoke alarm: useful for knowing something is wrong, useless for telling you which room. Here is the honest split.
// WHAT A FREE SCORE DOES TELL YOU
- Whether there is a problem at all.
- A rough band: fast, middling or slow.
- Which of Google's thresholds you are currently outside.
- A generic list of Lighthouse opportunities, in Lighthouse language.
// WHAT IT LEAVES OUT
- Which of those opportunities actually applies to how your site is built.
- Which fix to do first when you can only afford to do three.
- How long each fix takes, and what it costs to have it done.
- Whether the cause is your theme, a plugin, an ad tag, or your hosting.
- Why the number moved fifteen points when you ran it again ten minutes later.
Start free. Put your address into our free website speed check and see where you land before you spend anything. If it comes back healthy, you are done and you owe us nothing. If it comes back slow, or it swings wildly between runs, that is the point where a paid audit starts earning its fee.
// THE SCOPE
What the website performance audit includes
Six areas, on the pages that actually matter to your business. This is the full list, so you know what you are buying before you buy it.
Core Web Vitals, measured
Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift and Interaction to Next Paint, taken from repeated runs rather than one lucky test. Where your site has enough traffic for Google to hold real-visitor data, we read that too and tell you where it disagrees with the lab.
Page weight, broken down by asset
Every image, font, script and stylesheet the page pulls in, with its transfer size and whether the first screen genuinely needs it. This is usually where the bulk of the problem is hiding.
Render-blocking and script audit
What is stopping the browser from drawing the page, and which scripts, tags and third-party embeds can be deferred, delayed, consolidated or removed outright.
Image and media check
Formats, dimensions, compression and lazy-loading across the pages that carry your traffic. Oversized images served at a fraction of their real size are the single most common finding.
Hosting and delivery check
Where the site is served from, what your cache and compression headers are doing, and whether edge delivery through something like Cloudflare would change the picture or not.
Mobile layout and interaction check
Tap targets, input sizing, fold depth and how the page behaves while it is still loading. Measured on a phone-sized viewport, then loaded on an actual handset, because a score cannot tell you how a tap feels.
// THE METHOD
How we measure it: throttled mobile Chrome and Core Web Vitals
Most of your visitors are on a phone, on a connection worse than the one in your office. A site speed audit that reports a desktop number on a fibre connection is measuring the wrong thing on the wrong device.
01
Pick the pages that matter
Not just the homepage. The pages that get the traffic, and the pages that take the enquiries. Usually three to five of them.
02
Measure on a phone first
Chrome emulating a mid-range Android on a throttled network and a throttled CPU, run several times. One Lighthouse run is noise. Repeated runs give you a median you can trust.
03
Lab and field, side by side
The lab run tells you what is technically slow. Google's real-visitor data, where it exists, tells you what your actual customers are experiencing. They often say different things, and that gap is informative.
04
Open the waterfall
What loads, in what order, at what size, and what the browser is sitting idle waiting for. This is the step an automated score skips entirely, and it is where the cause comes from.
05
Check it on a real handset
Then we load the page on an actual phone on an actual connection. Emulators do not feel a slow tap or a layout that jumps under your thumb.
// OUR OWN NUMBERS
We measure this site the same way. On the last production run, webblend.au held a median mobile Lighthouse performance score of 97, with accessibility, best practices and SEO all at 100, zero total blocking time, and a Content Security Policy enforced in production. That is our own site, self-measured, and it is the only performance result we will quote you. We will not put a number on what yours will do.
// WHAT YOU GET
What you get at the end
A written report, in language you can forward to whoever maintains your site without translating it first. Not a PDF export of a Lighthouse run.
- A prioritised list of fixes, ordered by what moves the needle most for the least work, so you can start at the top and stop whenever you like.
- An impact and effort rating against every item, in plain English, so you can tell a twenty-minute fix from a rebuild before you commit to either.
- The cause behind each finding, not just the symptom. Not "reduce unused JavaScript" but which script, loaded by what, and whether you still need it.
- What you can do yourself, what your current developer can do, and what needs someone in the code. Some of the list will not need us at all.
- A fixed quote for the items you want us to do, if you want any of them done. Quoted per item, so you can pick.
- The measurements themselves, so you or anyone else can re-run them later and see whether the number actually moved.
Fix Impact Effort
Compress and resize the hero image High Low
Defer the third-party chat widget High Low
Replace the icon font with inline SVG Medium Medium
Move delivery to the edge and set cache headers Medium High
How a row reads, not a prediction about your site. Your rows come out of the measurement, and until we run it neither of us knows what they say.
// THE FEE
The fee: $750, credited in full if you go ahead
The fee is $750, paid once. If you go ahead with a website build or an SEO project with us within 60 days of the report landing, the full $750 comes off that price. So the audit either pays for itself or you keep the report and walk away.
Nothing renews, nothing rolls over into a retainer, and the report is yours either way. Take it to another developer if you like. It is written so that you can.
// BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF
Who this audit is not for
Four situations where $750 is the wrong spend. We would rather say so here than take the money and disappoint you.
Your site is already in the green
If the measurements come back healthy there is nothing to prioritise, and an audit is a waste of your money. We check before we invoice, and we will tell you if that is where you are.
You want the fixes, not the report
If you already know the site needs rebuilding, skip this and get a quote for the build instead. Paying for a document that concludes "rebuild it" is a slow way to reach the same answer.
You want a promised score
We will not put a number on what your site will score afterwards, and nobody honest will. We can tell you what is slow, why, and what changing it involves. The number after is a result of the work, not a term of the deal.
// THREE DIFFERENT THINGS
Where this sits next to the free tool and our other work
These get confused constantly, so here is the plain version. The free tool gives you a score. The website performance audit service tells you what to fix and what it costs. The SEO project is a different and much larger engagement that happens to include speed work.
// FREE Website speed check
One live Google test, a score, and a plain-English read on the band you land in. Costs nothing, takes a minute. Start here.
// FROM $2,800 Conversion website buildWhen the audit concludes the build itself is the problem, this is the fix: a hand-coded site built fast from the start rather than patched later.
// FROM $3,500 SEO project for tradiesA six-week search build: keyword research, page architecture, new pages, Google Business Profile and tracking. Speed is one part of a much bigger scope.
Website speed optimisation in Australia gets sold as a monthly service surprisingly often. It is not one. Measuring is a one-week job, fixing is a build job with a fixed price, and neither needs a subscription attached to it.
// QUESTIONS
Straight answers before you book
Not sure whether the free check is enough for where you are? Ask us. We will tell you honestly, including when the answer is that you do not need this yet.
Get in touchHow much does a website performance audit cost?
It is $750, paid once. That is the whole fee for the audit, and there is no retainer attached to it. If you go ahead with a website build or an SEO project with us within 60 days of the report landing, the full $750 comes off that price, so the audit either pays for itself or you keep the report and walk away.
How is this different from your free speed check?
The free tool runs one live Google test and hands you a score with a plain-English read on the band it lands in. It is genuinely useful and it costs nothing. What it cannot do is look at how your site is built, work out why the number is what it is, and tell you which three things to change first. That is the audit. Run the free one before you consider paying for anything.
Do you fix the problems, or only report them?
The $750 buys the diagnosis. The fixes are quoted separately and per item, so you can hand the list to your existing developer, do the easy half yourself, or have us do the lot. Website speed optimisation work is a build job with its own price, and we would rather you saw both numbers before deciding anything.
How is this different from your $3,500 SEO project?
Different size, different job. The SEO project is a six-week build: keyword research, page architecture, new pages written, Google Business Profile, tracking and handover. Speed is one part of it. This audit is a one-week diagnostic on a site you already have, and it does not touch keywords, content or your Google profile. Plenty of people should buy this one first and never buy the other.
Can you tell me what my site will score after the fixes?
No, and be wary of anyone who will. Scores move with your hosting, your plugins, whatever you add next month, and how loaded Google's test servers are on the day. What we commit to is the measurement and the list: what is slow, what is causing it, and what changing it takes. What you do with the list is what moves the number.
What do you actually test on?
Chrome emulating a mid-range Android phone on a throttled connection and a throttled CPU, run repeatedly so the median is meaningful rather than one flattering result. We read Google's real-visitor field data where your site has enough traffic to have any. Then we load the page on a real handset, because a lab score cannot tell you how a tap feels.
How long does it take?
About a week from go-ahead to the report in your inbox, sometimes less. It is a fixed piece of work with an end, not something that rolls on.
// READY WHEN YOU ARE
Find out what is actually slowing your site down
Send us your address and the pages that matter. You get the measurements, the prioritised fix list and a price against every item, for a flat $750 that comes straight off a build or an SEO project if you go ahead within 60 days.
Book the $750 audit