Technical site speed report

Technical site speed report

Who this is for (and who it is not)

If your site looks fine on your laptop but feels heavy on a phone, and you’re losing bookings or paying more for ads than you should, this is for you. It’s also for owners who want a clear list of what to fix first, without guessing and without “let’s try this plugin” nonsense. If you run a boutique hotel or rentals around Halkidiki or Thessaloniki and most of your guests arrive from mobile, you’ll feel the difference quickly once the right things are fixed. If you want a report that helps you approve work with confidence, this fits.

If you want a perfect Lighthouse score for bragging rights, or you want to redesign the whole site because “it feels old”, this is not for you. If you won’t give access to basic hosting details, or you want us to work while three other agencies also touch the site, we’re not a fit. If this feels uncomfortable, we are not for you.

The real problem this solves in day-to-day operations

Slow sites don’t fail in a dramatic way. They fail quietly, in the two seconds where a guest is deciding whether you’re real, whether you’re expensive, and whether it’s safer to book on a big platform. On mobile, speed is part of trust. A page that stutters while loading photos looks like a business that won’t answer messages, even if you answer in five minutes.

Speed also hits your paid traffic. When your landing page is slow, you often pay more per click and get fewer enquiries from the same budget. Google has been open about page experience and loading signals being part of the ecosystem, and the tooling is public for a reason. You can see it yourself in Google’s documentation about Core Web Vitals: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/page-experience

And then there’s the internal mess: owners end up approving random tweaks because someone said “it will speed it up”. A new caching plugin. A new theme. A new image tool. After a few rounds, the site becomes fragile, updates break, and nobody can explain what actually improved. This report exists to stop that cycle and replace it with a short, testable plan.

What changes after it’s in place

You get a clear view of what’s slowing your site down, on the pages that actually matter for bookings. Not “your site is slow because WordPress”, but the specific causes: oversized hero images, too many scripts, heavy fonts, bad caching headers, hosting bottlenecks, or a builder that loads half the internet on every page. You also get the order of operations. Fix the few big things first, measure, then decide if the smaller stuff is worth touching.

Once you have that, decisions become easier. You can tell a developer exactly what you’re approving, and what you’re not approving. You can stop paying for “optimisation” that produces no measurable change. And you can protect yourself from the common trap where the site becomes faster on a test tool but still feels slow to real guests on a 4G connection.

We’ve seen this fail many times when owners chase a score instead of a user experience. The score goes up, bookings don’t, and everyone pretends it was “brand awareness”.

What it does not solve

A speed report doesn’t fix your site by itself. It does not replace good copy, good photos, or a booking flow that makes sense. If your availability is confusing, if your rates are hidden, or if your contact forms don’t work, speed won’t save you.

It also doesn’t turn a broken hosting setup into a high-performance platform without trade-offs. Some shared hosting plans have hard limits that no plugin can bypass. If your server is slow to respond, we’ll say it, but we won’t pretend a cache button will fix physics.

And it does not solve problems caused by ongoing interference. If another agency keeps adding scripts, pixels, popups, chat widgets, and tracking tools every month, speed will drift back down. The report can show what’s happening, but it can’t enforce discipline.

When this is a bad fit

This is a bad fit if your site is changing daily and nobody can freeze it long enough to measure properly. It’s also a bad fit if you’re not willing to remove or replace heavy elements that are “nice to have” but cost you conversions. Owners often get attached to sliders, video headers, and five font families. Those are usually the first suspects.

It’s also not a fit if you expect us to optimise while multiple parties have admin access and install things without telling anyone. Speed work breaks when responsibility is unclear. If something goes wrong, you need one person who can say, “Yes, we did that change,” not a group chat of excuses.

What the report focuses on (and why)

Most tourism websites don’t have a speed problem everywhere. They have it on a few critical pages that carry the business: the homepage, rooms or listings, offers, location, and the booking or enquiry path. Those pages are where paid traffic lands, where guests compare, and where the “is this place legit?” decision happens.

So the report is built around real usage, not theory. We look at mobile first because that’s where the damage is. We look at the pages that drive revenue, not the legal pages that nobody reads. And we separate “this feels slow to humans” from “this fails a lab test” because both matter, but not equally.

Tools are useful, but they’re not the business. Still, it helps to reference what Google uses for measurement. PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse are part of the standard language now, and the underlying metrics are documented. If you want to see what those metrics mean, Google’s Web Vitals site explains it clearly: https://web.dev/vitals/

What’s included in the Technical site speed report

• A review of the critical pages (usually homepage, key landing pages, and the booking or enquiry path) with notes on what loads, what blocks, and what feels slow on mobile.
• The few biggest causes of slowness, written in plain language so you can approve fixes without being technical.
• The top fixes ranked by expected impact, including what changes on the page when done correctly (not just “enable caching”).
• Image findings: size, format, compression, lazy-loading behaviour, and whether the page is shipping desktop images to phones.
• Font findings: how many font files load, whether they block rendering, and whether the site is paying a speed tax for “nice typography”.
• Script findings: third-party tags, tracking, chat widgets, maps, sliders, and anything that delays interactivity on mobile.
• Plugin and theme footprint (when applicable): what loads site-wide, what should be page-specific, and which parts are likely to break if touched carelessly.
• Hosting and server response checks: basic limits, caching at server level, and whether the bottleneck is front-end or back-end.
• Caching and CDN options: what’s realistic for your setup, what’s overkill, and what typically causes conflicts.
• A measurement baseline and a re-check plan so improvements are verified, not assumed.

The practical checks owners actually care about

Images: the usual silent killer

Most slow tourism sites are slow because of images. Not because the photos are “too many”, but because the site sends huge files to small screens. A phone doesn’t need a 5000-pixel hero image. It needs something sharp enough to look premium, delivered in a modern format, sized correctly, and not blocking the first paint.

In the report, we point out where images are doing real damage: sliders, galleries, room pages, and location pages with embedded maps plus photos. We also call out false fixes. Compressing everything blindly can make your property look cheap, and owners notice that after the first season when guests say “your site looked different”. The goal is fast and still premium, not fast and ugly.

If you want a neutral reference on modern formats like WebP and AVIF, Mozilla’s docs are a decent starting point: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/Image_types

Fonts: branding that loads like a truck

Fonts are another common issue because they’re invisible until they’re not. The page loads, but text appears late, shifts, or flashes. That’s not a “designer problem”. It’s a trust problem. Guests read your room description while the page is still settling, and it feels unstable.

We check how fonts are loaded, how many weights are used, and whether the site is pulling fonts from external services in a way that slows down first render. Owners often don’t realise that “one nice font” can mean 6 files, and each file is another delay on mobile.

Scripts: the paid tax you didn’t agree to

Scripts are where things get political, because everyone wants their widget. Analytics, ads tracking, consent banners, chat, maps, review widgets, Instagram feeds, sliders, animation libraries. Each one promises value. Together they make the site heavy and unresponsive.

The report identifies what scripts are blocking the page, what loads on every page even when it’s not needed, and what can be delayed without losing function. We also flag scripts that are there “just in case” from old campaigns or old agencies. Those are common, and they cost you every day.

If you want to understand why third-party scripts can hurt performance even when your hosting is fine, Google’s guidance on JavaScript performance is worth a look: https://web.dev/learn/performance/

Plugins and builders: when the site carries dead weight

On many WordPress sites, speed issues come from a theme or builder that loads a full framework on every page. Even simple pages become heavy because the site is built like a Swiss army knife. You don’t need that for a boutique hotel site. You need a clean path to enquiry and booking, and pages that load reliably.

We don’t turn this into a debate about platforms. We look at what your current setup is doing and where the weight comes from. We also note where “optimisation” tends to break the site, like aggressive minification that kills booking widgets or caching that breaks dynamic availability pages.

Hosting limits: the part nobody wants to talk about

Sometimes the site is slow because the server is slow. You can see it in response time and in how long it takes to generate pages. Owners often pay for “fast hosting” because it had a good ad, but the plan is still crowded or misconfigured.

The report includes checks that tell us if you’re hitting a hosting ceiling. If you are, we’ll say what kind of change would matter, and what won’t. This is where owners waste money: they buy a CDN and three plugins while the server is the bottleneck. It feels active, but it’s not effective.

Caching and CDN: useful, but easy to mess up

Caching can help a lot, but only when it matches the site’s reality. A simple brochure site behaves differently than a site with dynamic booking elements. A CDN can help with global visitors, but it can also add complexity and break things if configured badly.

In the report, we outline realistic caching and CDN options for your setup and the risks to watch. We’ve watched owners get stuck in a loop where a cache plugin “works” until it doesn’t, and then the site shows old prices or old content. That’s not a speed win. That’s a support nightmare.

The “critical pages” approach (where speed actually pays you back)

You don’t need every page to be perfect. You need the pages that move money to be fast and stable. For most small tourism businesses, that means:

• Homepage (first trust check, often the heaviest page)
• Rooms or listings pages (comparison and intent)
• Offer pages that support ads (paid traffic landing pages)
• Location and contact pages (the “are you real?” check)
• Booking engine entry points or enquiry forms (where friction kills)

We measure and comment on those pages specifically. If a blog post is slow, it’s annoying. If your room page is slow, it’s expensive.

How you use this report as an owner

You use it to approve fixes without being forced to “trust the developer”. That’s the main value. The report gives you a short list of changes that should move the needle, and it tells you what result to expect in practical terms: faster first view on mobile, less waiting before the page responds, fewer layout jumps, and less wasted load.

Then you use it to avoid random tweaks. Random tweaks are how budgets disappear. Someone changes three things at once, the site feels different, and nobody knows which change helped or hurt. With the report, you approve one group of fixes, measure again, and only then decide the next step.

This also helps you manage people. If a freelancer insists that “everything is fine” because the desktop loads fast, you can point to the mobile findings. If someone wants to add another widget, you can ask what it replaces, because now you know the cost.

What owners usually notice after the first proper fixes

The first thing owners notice is not a number. It’s that the site feels calmer. Pages stop jumping around. The first screen appears quickly. You can scroll without lag. On a phone, that’s the difference between “this looks professional” and “this looks like a side project”.

The second thing they notice is that ads behave better. Not magically, not overnight, but the same budget starts producing cleaner sessions. Bounce rates drop on key landing pages, and enquiry paths get less leaky. If you’ve been paying for clicks that don’t even see your rooms properly, this is where you stop bleeding.

The third thing is internal: fewer “site is broken” moments. When speed work is done with discipline, you remove fragile parts and reduce conflicts. That’s boring, and boring is good. Owners who’ve been burned by experts usually want boring.

What not to waste time on (common money traps)

There are fixes that look productive but rarely pay back for small tourism sites. They’re not always wrong, they’re just often the wrong priority.

Chasing a perfect score is one. Scores are useful as a compass, not as a KPI. Another is installing multiple optimisation plugins that overlap and fight each other. Another is compressing images until your property looks like a budget hostel, then wondering why direct bookings didn’t grow.

We also see owners spend time arguing about tiny technical details while ignoring the big offenders. If your homepage ships 15MB of images, debating a micro-optimisation is theatre. This report keeps the focus on the few things that matter.

If you want an independent explanation of why “page weight” matters and how it affects mobile users, HTTP Archive data is a sobering reference: https://httparchive.org/reports/page-weight

Boundaries and conditions (so it doesn’t turn into a mess)

We don’t run social media campaigns, and this report is not about content marketing. It’s about performance that affects trust, ad cost, and bookings on mobile. We also won’t optimise if other agencies have access and can change the site while we’re measuring. That’s not control, that’s chaos, and you end up paying for noise.

We also don’t promise outcomes. We can show you what’s slowing the site, what’s likely to improve performance, and how to verify it after changes. If the site is built on a fragile stack, we’ll say where it usually breaks when people try to “speed it up” without understanding the dependencies.

If you want someone to teach you how to do the work, we’re not the right fit. The report is written so you can make decisions and manage execution, not so competitors can copy a process step-by-step.

What we need from you to do this properly

Send the site link and tell us where it’s hosted. If you have access to hosting panel details, even basic ones, that helps us avoid guessing. If there’s a booking engine involved, tell us which one, because those scripts often dominate the load.

Also tell us which pages matter most for your business. Owners sometimes assume it’s the homepage, but the real money page is often a specific room type, an offer page used in ads, or a location page that convinces hesitant guests. If we start from what makes you money, the report is more useful.

The decision, in business terms

If you’re paying for traffic, relying on mobile guests, or trying to increase direct bookings, speed is not a technical luxury. It’s part of what guests judge before they ever read your copy. A Technical site speed report gives you a controlled way to spend money on fixes that can be verified, instead of paying for endless “optimisation” that nobody can measure.

If you want to move forward, send your site link and your hosting provider name, and mention whether most bookings come from ads, organic search, or repeat guests. We’ll tell you if this is worth doing for your setup, without pushing it.

Not sure where to start? Contact our local team for friendly, personalised advice and to arrange a meeting in person.

No shortcuts. No noise. Data analysis. Use only what works.