Always Run This Free Test Before You Hire Anyone to "Fix" Your Website
TL;DR: Before hiring anyone to "speed up" your website, run a free, real Lighthouse + PageSpeed Insights test yourself first. It takes about 2 minutes, costs nothing, and gives you an independent baseline — so you know exactly what's actually wrong, and can tell if the improvement someone promised you was real.
Hiring someone to fix your website's speed usually means handing over access to a live store and trusting their word on what's wrong and what improved. Most store owners have no independent way to check — so they take the freelancer's numbers at face value, before and after.
You don't have to. The same tool developers use to measure this is free and public. Run it yourself first.
Why Check It Yourself First
- You'll know your real starting point — not a number someone tells you, but Google's own data on your actual site
- You can verify the "after" claim — anyone can say "I improved your speed by 40%." A before/after report from the same independent tool proves it
- You'll spot vague quotes faster — if a freelancer can't tell you which specific Core Web Vitals they're going to fix, that's worth asking about before you pay
- It costs you nothing to check — there's no reason to skip this step
Run the Same Free Check We Use
Our free Website Speed Test runs a real Google Lighthouse + PageSpeed Insights scan — the same engine and data Google itself uses to judge sites — on your actual store:
- Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO scores
- Core Web Vitals — LCP, CLS, TBT, FCP, Speed Index, and server response time
- Real-visitor field data, when Google has enough traffic on your site to report it
- Top opportunities to fix, ranked by impact
No sign-up, no email required. You can copy the report as text or download it as a PDF — keep it, so you have a real "before" to compare against later, whoever you end up hiring.
What to Actually Look For Before You Hire Someone
| Ask For | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Your current score, in writing | A real quote starts from your actual numbers, not a general estimate |
| Which specific issues they'll fix | "I'll speed up your site" is not a plan; "I'll compress these images and defer these scripts" is |
| A rollback plan | Speed changes touch theme and app code — ask what happens if something breaks |
| A before/after report | Proof of the result, not just a claim of it |
How We Handle It, for Comparison
We start every job from the same free report you can run yourself — there's no separate "diagnostic fee" for information that's already public. From there:
- Confirm a rollback plan before touching anything
- Make changes one at a time
- Test each fix before moving to the next
Your store stays fully functional throughout, and you get a real before/after report at the end — the same kind of report you can already generate yourself for free.
Get My Free Report & See Fix Plans →Optimization Packages
| Package | Price | Fiverr Price (50% off) |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $149.50 | |
| Standard | $349.50 | |
| Premium | $649.50 |
Works on any platform — WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Next.js, or a fully custom build.
Get your baseline first, always. Run the free check before you talk to anyone about fixing your site — then you'll know exactly what you're paying for, and can prove the result once it's done.