Quick answer
Page speed affects how many people find your website on Google and how many of them contact you. Check yours free at pagespeed.web.dev and read the mobile score: 90 to 100 is fast, 50 to 89 needs improvement and under 50 is poor. Oversized images, slow hosting, page builders and too many plugins are the usual causes.
Alpine Studio speeds up slow websites, at a fixed price quoted before work starts. See Performance, or run the free audit on your own site.
Page speed is not a technical vanity metric. It is a business metric, one that directly affects how many people find your website and how many of those people contact you. A slow website is quietly costing NZ businesses money every day.
The impact comes through two channels: search rankings and user behaviour. Google uses page speed as a ranking factor. Slow sites rank lower. Separately, human visitors abandon slow pages. A site that ranks well but loads slowly still loses customers. Both problems compound each other. That is why the JTECH Solutions site was built as static code on Cloudflare rather than on a page builder, and why we build the same way for businesses in Arrowtown and Wanaka.
What Google PageSpeed Insights Actually Measures
Go to pagespeed.web.dev, enter your website URL, and run the test. You will get a score from 0 to 100 for both desktop and mobile. The mobile score is the one that matters most: Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it evaluates your site as a mobile user would experience it.
The score is based on a set of real user experience metrics called Core Web Vitals:
LCP: Largest Contentful Paint
How long it takes for the main content of the page to load. For most sites, this is the hero image or headline. Target: under 2.5 seconds. Over 4 seconds is poor.
INP: Interaction to Next Paint
How quickly the page responds when a user taps or clicks something. A page that freezes when you tap the phone number is failing this metric. Target: under 200ms.
CLS: Cumulative Layout Shift
How much the page layout shifts while loading, the infuriating experience of tapping a button and having it jump just as you touch it. Target: under 0.1. Common on sites where images load without reserved space.
Where your score lands:
90 to 100
Fast
Your site loads quickly on most connections. Google considers this a positive ranking signal. Aim for this.
50 to 89
Needs Improvement
Usable but not optimal. There are specific issues slowing the page that can be identified and fixed.
0 to 49
Poor
Significantly slow. Users on mobile connections will likely leave before the page finishes loading. Google penalises this in rankings.
The Real Cost of a Slow Site
A slow site costs you twice: Google ranks it lower, and visitors on a phone leave before it finishes loading. For a local NZ service business, that translates directly into missed phone calls. A Queenstown plumber whose site takes 6 seconds to load on mobile is losing a measurable percentage of every customer who would otherwise have called. The site is working against the business.
How fast are Queenstown business websites?
Alpine Studio tested 653 distinct Queenstown and Frankton business websites between 13 and 26 August 2026, using the mobile performance score in Google PageSpeed Insights. The median score was 55 out of 100. Of the 653, 243 (37%) scored under 50, in the poor band, and 24 (4%) scored 90 or above.
How we tested: One mobile test per website through Google's PageSpeed Insights, of businesses listed on Google Maps or OpenStreetMap with a Queenstown or Frankton address. Lab scores move a few points between runs. No business is named.
What Makes NZ Business Websites Slow
The causes of poor page speed are consistent across the majority of slow NZ business websites. Most sites suffer from several of these simultaneously:
Unoptimised images
The single biggest culprit on most NZ business websites. A 4MB hero photo that should be 120KB. JPEGs where WebP would load in a third of the time. Images that are 3000px wide being displayed at 400px.
Slow hosting
Shared hosting plans that cost $5 to $15/mo NZD put your site on a server with hundreds of other sites. When traffic spikes, performance degrades. Cheap hosting is usually the hidden reason a site is slow.
Bloated page builders
Wix, Divi, Elementor, and similar drag-and-drop builders load enormous amounts of unused JavaScript and CSS. A simple 5-page website on Elementor can load more code than a full e-commerce platform built on a fast stack.
Too many plugins
WordPress sites with 20+ plugins are loading 20+ separate codebases on every page request. Each plugin adds HTTP requests, JavaScript execution time, and potential conflicts that slow things further.
No caching
Without caching, every visitor triggers a fresh database query and page build. With caching, the pre-built page is served instantly from memory. Most template platforms do this poorly or not at all.
No CDN
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) serves your site from a location geographically close to the visitor. An NZ business hosted on a US server adds 200 to 300ms of latency before a single byte loads. A CDN eliminates this.
Render-blocking scripts
Analytics tags, advertising pixels, live chat widgets: each third-party script loaded in the page head blocks rendering until it finishes. A site with 8 third-party scripts loads them all before showing the customer anything.
Speed on Different Platforms: What to Expect
Platform choice is the single biggest determinant of achievable page speed. Some platforms make fast sites difficult or impossible to build regardless of how well you configure them.
| Platform | Typical Mobile Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Wix | 30 to 55 | Heavy JavaScript runtime, limited image optimisation |
| Squarespace | 45 to 65 | Bloated CSS/JS, template overhead |
| WordPress (average) | 35 to 60 | Plugin bloat, slow shared hosting, page builder overhead |
| WordPress (optimised) | 65 to 85 | Possible with caching, CDN, and disciplined plugin use |
| Custom Build (Next.js / static) | 90 to 100 | Hand-optimised code, no platform overhead, CDN delivery |
Scores are typical ranges, individual results vary based on content, hosting, and configuration.
The implication for NZ businesses is that if you are on Wix or Squarespace, there is a ceiling on how fast your site can be, and that ceiling is often below what Google considers good. Image optimisation and settings rarely get a Wix site to 90+ on mobile, because the limit is the platform itself.
What You Can Fix Without Rebuilding
If your site is on a platform that supports some configuration, these improvements are worth doing before considering a rebuild:
- Compress all images: Use a tool like Squoosh or TinyPNG to compress images before uploading. Aim for under 150KB for most images, under 300KB for hero images. This alone can add 10 to 20 points to your score.
- Convert images to WebP: WebP format is typically 30 to 40% smaller than JPEG at equivalent quality. Most modern hosting and platforms support it. If yours does not, this is a reason to move.
- Remove unused plugins (WordPress): Audit every installed plugin. If it is not actively used, deactivate and delete it. Every removed plugin reduces load time.
- Upgrade your hosting: Moving from shared hosting to a managed platform (Cloudflare, Vercel, or a quality NZ host) typically adds 15 to 25 points to page speed with no other changes.
- Enable a caching plugin (WordPress): WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache with correct configuration can significantly reduce server response time.
- Audit third-party scripts: Open your site in Chrome DevTools, go to the Network tab, and count the third-party requests. Remove any script that is not essential: live chat widgets, social share buttons, advertising pixels.
When to Rebuild Instead of Patch
If your mobile PageSpeed score is under 50 and you are on Wix or an unoptimised WordPress build, incremental fixes will not move you to 90+. The ceiling of the platform is below your target. At that point, the conversation is not about configuration. It is about whether the cost of staying on a slow platform (lost rankings, lost customers) exceeds the cost of a rebuild.
For most NZ service businesses, the maths on this is straightforward. A fast mobile site gives you an edge over slower competitors in local search, and it keeps the visitors who do find you. For a tradie getting two additional enquiries per month as a result, the rebuild pays for itself within one or two jobs.
The question to ask is not “what will a faster site cost?” It is “what is the slow site costing me?” Test your score. If it is under 60 on mobile, you already have your answer.