I was emailed yesterday by a local web design company saying that the site I built from scratch with Blocs for my yoga studio works well on desktop, but could be improved on mobile (I’m in the process of rebuilding the whole site to address mobile issues). They sent a link to a mock up site they’d made for me which I presume they just used AI to ‘crawl’ my existing site and populate a template with the text and images; regardless of the fact that all my images are locked and there is a clear copyright declaration on the site, but I won’t press that point with them. I ran both mine and their sites through page speed insights and the results were, well, insightful:
Their mobile site had an average score of 63, while mine was 5 behind that.
Their desktop site scored 82, while mine was 10 points higher.
Best practices and accessibility were similar.
Even more interesting, the SEO for both their versions were a whopping 30 points below mine; both mine score 96.
I just found it interesting that although they would be improving my mobile score, their benchmark isn’t particularly high.
I just checked what is considered average for Mobile sites and interestingly, Google simulates the test at 3G, so scores are usually lower than desktop sites.
I use page speed insights and try and get both mobile and desktop into the green. I am just making a new site ands found I had to strip out a few elements to get it to perform on mobile so interesting about the 3G bench mark - particularly when it will all be switched off soon. I also ways try and build for mobile because that’s the device people might initially browse on.
For SEO I have found that nothing can beat doing each image description yourself and any alt tags.
You will find that ‘web companies’ will do this thing all the time and scare you in to spending five grand with them. Lighthouse/Google Speed test is a great tool, it can be dangerous that it becomes too obsessive and not neccersary to the extent we are led to believe. Blocs performs exceptionally well on well considered builds with this getting 98-100. Mobile is always a bit of a tricky one to get a big score, but it’s not the end of the world. If you are getting decent enough scores I wouldn’t worry, if your website works well for you and displays fine on mobile/tablet and ultimately you are in control of it, then that’s great. You also have to think of server speed for some of these. I work with somebody that will only have London-based servers in the UK for their Google/Lighhouse speed tests, every little bit counts.
You will find that there are many of these ‘web companies’ that ping out these unsolicited emails/reports that want to charge you five grand for a generic Wordpress website built inbetween the social media posts they create of themselves larking around in coffee shops often neglect accessibility. This is a massive strength with Blocs. The UK/EU has laws to be adhered to, Wordpress can sit well with a US audience and userbase that doesn’t have these laws, just moral obligations. The generic Wordpress sites can be a nightmare for this as many folk creating them aren’t looking at this aspect and they should if they are creating websites for a UK/EU audience.
If you want to see how this company, that sent you unsolicited emails performs with their accessibility then run their website through the following:
Ooh, I sound really cynical, but these companies that set up banging out Wordpress generic sites and scaring folk really wind me up (at times), they can be cheeky so-and-sos.
I regularly get emails from companies offering to improve my CEO. They’ve looked at my website and a few tweaks will have me rushing up the Google rankings.
The problem is that my ‘website’ is just a dull holding page, with directions to another site.
I was emailed yesterday by a local web design company saying that the site I built from scratch with Blocs for my yoga studio works well on desktop, but could be improved on mobile (I’m in the process of rebuilding the whole site to address mobile issues).
Only one, lucky you, I get minimum 10 per days. Off to spam they go.