The typical Sunshine Coast business website scores 56 out of 100 on Google's own speed test for phones. We measured it this week. We ran Google's PageSpeed Insights on 148 business websites, picked at random from the 7,886 in the Sunshine Coast Business Guide that carry a checked website, and only 6 of them reached 90. Every page we build scores in the 90s on the same test.
If you are comparing quotes for small business website design, ask each designer for their mobile score, then check it yourself. It takes about a minute.
What does the PageSpeed score measure?
How fast your website loads on a phone, scored out of 100.
Google tests your page on an ordinary phone over a slower mobile connection, the way a new customer would first see it. Run the test twice and the number can move a few points either way, which is normal.
Google uses speed as one of the things it looks at when it ranks pages, but speed on its own will not carry a page up the results. Being set up so Google and AI assistants can read your business matters as much, which is what getting recommended by AI search covers.
How fast are Sunshine Coast business websites?
Slow on a phone, and a lot quicker on a computer.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Websites tested | 148, picked at random from 7,886 |
| Typical score on mobile | 56 out of 100 |
| Scored 90 or more on mobile | 6 |
| Scored under 50 on mobile | 46 |
| Typical time for the main content to appear on the test phone | 9.4 seconds |
| Showed it in 2.5 seconds or less | 7 |
| Typical page size | about 3 MB |
| Typical score on desktop | 76 out of 100 |
Source: our PageSpeed Insights runs, 29 September 2026.
Google's own guidance is that the main content of a page should appear within 2.5 seconds. On the test phone, 7 of the 148 websites managed it, and 133 took longer than 4 seconds. The same websites on a computer score a typical 76, and 36 of them reach 90, so the slow part is the phone.
Why does my website feel fast when I open it?
Because you open it on a good phone, on good wifi, and your phone has already saved most of it.
Google's test does the opposite on purpose: an ordinary phone, a slower connection and nothing saved, which is much closer to someone finding your business for the first time. A Shopify store owner described the gap on Shopify's own forum. Their site seemed "to load really quickly when testing on our own mobiles and laptops", and PageSpeed gave it 6 out of 100.
What makes a small business website slow?
Mostly code that the page loads and never uses.
PageSpeed flagged unused code on 118 of the 148 websites we tested, more than any other problem. Every website builder brings its own code, and so does every add-on: the chat bubble, the review carousel, the booking popup, the Instagram feed, the tracking pixel from an ad you ran once. Each of them loads on every page, for every visitor, whether that page uses it or not.
Can I fix a slow website myself?
Only if you know how to code, and on a builder platform even that only gets you part of the way.
A builder platform loads its own code on every page, and it is not yours to remove. None of the 34 Wix, Squarespace and Shopify websites in our sample reached 90 on mobile. One Wix owner who had already compressed every image and cut every animation found the image at the top of their page was set to load late, and wrote on the Wix Studio forum that "Wix has no way I can find to disable that". WordPress websites can be made fast by someone who knows the code, but only 1 of the 62 in our sample was.
If you do not want to learn any of that, we can do it for you.
Why do our websites score in the 90s?
Because we build every page to load fast from the start, on your own server, with nothing on it that the page does not use.
A website that loads fast on a phone is ready the moment a customer finds you, and it does not take us long to get yours there. These are the pages we have built, measured on the same day as the sample.
| Page | Mobile | Desktop |
|---|---|---|
| Coastworks homepage | 90 | 100 |
| A Lab article | 99 | 100 |
| Our consult page | 100 | 100 |
| Sunshine Coast Business Guide homepage | 99 | 100 |
| A business listing on the guide | 100 | 100 |
| Gold Coast Business Guide homepage | 99 | 100 |
Source: our PageSpeed Insights runs, 29 September 2026.
Our homepage is the lowest, at 90 on a phone, because it plays a moving showreel. We chose that, and it costs about 10 points. Every one of these pages also scores 100 for search and 100 for best practice in the same report. You can read how this website was put together in the business you are looking at.
Where to start
Run the test on your own website today. Open pagespeed.web.dev, paste in your address, select Analyze, and read the Mobile result first.
If it comes back well under 90, we can fix it for you. Answer a few short questions and we will provide a free custom audit of your website. If your website needs replacing anyway, our web design for small business is the Website + Email Build at $5,950, and it includes the Engine and all five element packs. If we can help, the next step is the 60 minute consult, $295, credited toward the build.
Sources
Our own PageSpeed Insights runs on 29 September 2026, mobile and desktop, on 148 websites picked at random from the Sunshine Coast Business Guide and on our own pages. Google PageSpeed Insights documentation. Google Search Central, page experience. web.dev, Largest Contentful Paint. Shopify Community and Wix Studio Community forums.