Performance report

Where to find the Performance report

In the side menu, click "Behavior".

A submenu opens. Choose "Performance" there.

The Performance report opens.

When you should check here

The tricky thing about speed: you do not notice it yourself. Your website sits in your browser's cache and opens instantly for you. That is exactly why a look at this report pays off on certain occasions:

• After you added something. A new plugin, an image slider, a chat button, an ad script. Additions like that are the most common cause when a page suddenly turns sluggish. Check a few days later whether the score held.
• When many visitors leave quickly. High bounce rate, short visit duration, and you find no reason in the content? Then it may simply come down to waiting. Here you see whether that suspicion is right before you start fiddling with your texts.
• Before you put money into optimization. If the score is green, you save yourself the expense. If it is orange or red, you know not only that the work is worth it but also where.
• After a change of hosting or a relaunch. The trend shows you plainly whether the switch actually did anything. No gut feeling, no promise from the agency, just the curve.
• Otherwise once every few months. Websites slow down on their own over time. Images get added, scripts, extensions. One look per quarter is enough to catch a slow slide downhill.

Performance score

At the very top you see an overall grade from 0 to 100 as a gauge. You may know the scale from Google Lighthouse. The difference lies underneath: with us, the measurements of your real visitors are behind it. A single number with a color that tells you right away how your page's speed is doing:

That one number sums up the most important measurements. It tells you whether you need to keep reading. It does not yet tell you what exactly is slowing things down. That is what the sections further down are for.

Right next to the gauge are five metrics with the values the score is made of: LCP, INP, CLS, FCP and the load time. What those abbreviations mean, we explain in a moment under Core Web Vitals..

And the handy part: the metrics carry the same colors as the gauge. Green, orange, or red. So there is nothing for you to calculate. One look across the row is enough. If everything is green, your page runs smoothly. If red shows up anywhere, you know right away which value is pulling you down.

Slowest pages

Here you see which pages keep your visitors waiting the longest. One row per page with these columns:

What this does for you: a good overall score does not mean every page is fast. Often one or two pages pull the average down while the rest runs flawlessly. Those are the ones you find here. The math is simple: load time times number of views gives you the lost time. A page with 4 seconds and 2,000 views a month hurts you more than one with 9 seconds and 30 views. The second one can wait.

And the three columns, Network, Server, and DOM, tell you the cause: if Ø Server is high, the problem is in the hosting. If Ø DOM is high, there are too many or too large elements on the page (images, scripts). That way you do not tinker blindly with the whole website, you repair the two or three pages that really slow things down.

A practical side effect: those three columns also tell you who to call. Server and network go to your hosting provider. DOM goes to the person who builds your website.

Two views (switchable in the top right):

• Table (default): the complete list. Click a column heading to sort (by load time, for example), at the bottom you choose the entries per page (10/25/50/All) or page through the list. That is your tool for detail work.
• Bar chart: the 10 slowest pages as bars. The longest bar at the top is your biggest drag. One look is enough, and you know where to start first.

Core Web Vitals

Here are the metrics Google uses to judge how good your page feels. Three of them are the official Core Web Vitals: LCP for loading, INP for the response to clicks, and CLS for the stability of the layout. The fourth value, FCP, is formally not part of them. We show it as an equal anyway, because it often delivers the decisive hint when you narrow down the cause.

A note on history, in case you find older guides online: INP replaced the earlier metric FID in March 2024. Anyone still searching for FID is searching for something that no longer exists.

For each metric there are fixed benchmarks you can go by:

You know CLS from everyday life: you are about to tap a button, an ad loads at the last moment, everything slides down, and you tap the wrong thing. Annoying. That is exactly what this value measures. And the good news: CLS is usually not a speed problem but a question of tidiness. Anyone who gives images and ad slots a fixed height and width from the start often has the issue sorted in an afternoon..

What this does for you: if all four are green, the perceived speed is good for your visitors, and Google is happy too. If one metric lights up red, you know exactly which problem bothers your visitors. Not "the page is somehow slow", but "the main content takes too long" or "something jumps around while loading". A vague feeling turns into a specific job. And the last column tells you right away what helps.

Two views (switchable in the top right):

• Bar chart (default): the four values as bars. The quick overview of which metric looks good and which one is out of line.
• Table: the same values plus a rating per metric (good, needs improvement or poor). Here you see right away where you are in the red zone.

Load phases

This section breaks the total load time down into six phases. That way you see that it is slow. And you also see what it is down to.

Before you panic: you do not have to understand all six phases. You only have to find the biggest one. It tells you the direction, everything else is detail work for later.

What this does for you: the phase with the biggest share is your starting point. That way you know whether you have to tackle the hosting (network, server) or the content (images, scripts). Instead of guessing, you go straight to the right spot.

Three views (switchable in the top right):

• Pie chart (default): the percentage share of each phase. Shows right away which phase eats the most time.
• Bar chart: the absolute duration in milliseconds per phase.
• Table: every phase with duration and share as a list.

Performance by device and by browser

Two tiles that show which visitors have the worst experience:

• Performance by device: comparison between mobile, desktop, and tablet.
• Performance by browser: comparison between Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and so on.

What this does for you: often the mobile performance is considerably worse than on desktop. That is not a measurement error and not a one-off. A phone has less processing power and is more often on a shaky connection. Across all websites, only about a third to roughly half of mobile page views reach a good load value, on desktop, it is considerably more. And if a large share of your visitors are on mobile, a mobile problem affects that many visitors. Then it is urgent.

Two views (switchable in the top right of both tiles):

• Bar chart (default): the Ø Load time per device or browser side by side. The difference is visible right away.
• Table: the same values as a list, with the number of page views. That way you see how many visitors are affected.

Performance trend

The development over time as a line chart.

What you see: a curve showing one metric day by day. Through the toggle in the top right you choose which metric the curve shows: Load time, LCP, INP, CLS or FCP.

What this does for you: you see whether your website is getting faster or slower over time. If the curve rises, performance is getting worse. A warning sign. If it falls, it is getting better.

If the curve rises unexpectedly, think first of what you installed most recently. New plugin, new image slider, new chat button, new ad script. Additions like that are the usual suspects, because they push load time and response time up at the same time.

Aha moments you will recognize

Sometimes one look is all it takes, and suddenly it is clear where the problem is:

• A single page slows everything down. Lots of views, long load time. That one page annoys most of your visitors, and it is still easy to overlook because the rest of the website runs fast. That is the one you tackle first.
• On desktop everything flies, on the phone it stutters. Familiar. You test your page on the big screen with fast internet, and everything feels great. Your visitor sits on a train with a mid-range device, half in a dead zone. That experience is what gets rated, not yours. If mobile is slow and desktop is fast, you know right away where to start.
• The score is green, one page is deep red anyway. The overall value is an average, and averages like to hide the outliers. So do not only look at the traffic light at the top, look in the list of the slowest pages too.
• The time sits in the server, not in your images. You spend hours compressing images, and it still does not get faster? Then it may not be the content at all, but the hosting. The load phases tell you which of the two doors to open.

What is in it for me?

The Performance report shows you how fast your website feels to real visitors. Not in a lab, but out there, with their devices and their internet. And speed often decides whether somebody stays or bounces:

• Know whether speed is even your problem. Before you put time and money into optimization, you see here whether it is worth it. Green means: take care of something else. Orange or red means: there is room to improve, and it costs you visitors otherwise.
• Find the biggest lever instead of a little everywhere. You do not have to make the whole website faster. You need the one page that has lots of traffic and is slow. That is exactly the one listed at the top here. Biggest effect for the smallest effort.
• Knock on the right door. Is it the hosting or your content? That question decides whether you call your provider or your web developer. The load phases answer it for you, instead of you guessing.
• See whether your work paid off. You shrank images or switched hosting? The trend shows you plainly whether the curve really goes down. No gut feeling, the proof.

That this pays off is not theory. Vodafone Italy improved its LCP by 31 percent and then measured 8 percent more sales and 15 percent more inquiries. You do not have to run a corporation for that connection to hold. Anyone who waits less buys sooner.

And if you do not know where to start: images first. Right size, modern format, fixed width and height in the code, load images further down only once somebody scrolls there. That is the biggest effect for the smallest effort. You take on the scripts after that.

In short: a slow page is a silent bounce. The visitor says nothing, they are simply gone. This report makes that silent bounce visible before it costs you customers.

Common questions

Why is my score different from Google PageSpeed Insights?
Google tests your page under lab conditions. Trustlytics measures your real visitors, on their real devices and connections. Both are useful, but our values show what your visitors really experience. The lab test is your tool for troubleshooting. The values from Trustlytics are the verdict. A detail on the side: Lighthouse cannot measure INP in the lab at all and uses a substitute value there. Another reason the numbers diverge.

And why does Google Search Console show other numbers?
Because Google there does not rate individual addresses but groups of similar pages, and the group always gets the status of its worst value. In addition, that data comes only from Chrome visitors and is averaged over a longer period. Trustlytics shows you your visitors, every page individually, in the period you set at the top. Two pairs of glasses on the same thing. Both usable.

Some browsers are missing values. Is that an error?
No. LCP, INP and CLS were developed by Google and are reported reliably mainly by Chrome and related browsers. With Safari and Firefox, there can be gaps depending on the version. You see the load time everywhere, the finer metrics not always. That is normal and has nothing to do with your website.

From when are the numbers meaningful?
The more visitors, the more stable the values. On a very small site with few views a day, the numbers swing more. From a few hundred page views, the picture becomes reliable. A note for understanding: we show you averages, Google judges at the 75th percentile. That is, at the value three out of four visitors reach. A nice average can therefore still mean it is a struggle for every fourth visitor.

Do I have to understand all six load phases?
No. Just look at the biggest phase. It tells you whether the problem is in the hosting or in your content. Leave the rest to your web developer if in doubt.

What is a good value?
As a rule of thumb: the main content appears in under 2.5 seconds, clicks are answered in under 200 milliseconds, and nothing jumps around while loading (CLS under 0.1). Green, orange, and red take the classifying off your hands, so you do not have to interpret the milliseconds yourself. And if the page feels sluggish on a phone, your visitors notice that before any number.

Does faster loading really bring better rankings?
Honest answer: yes, but as fine tuning. Google uses these values as a signal. Content and relevance remain decisive. The advantage applies where several pages are equally good in content. Anyone with nothing to offer in content does not rank even with a green gauge. The bigger gain lies elsewhere anyway: in the visitors who stay.

Does the Trustlytics code itself slow down my page?
No. Our script is tiny and loads in the background without holding up the build of your page. It measures speed, it does not cost any.

My values swing a lot from day to day. Is that an error?
Usually not. Speed also depends on your visitors: somebody browsing on a train with a shaky connection has different times than somebody on a fiber connection. A single day with lots of slow connections pulls the average down. Only over several days do you see the real picture.