Performance (Core Web Vitals)
Lighthouse 12 lab runs, mobile and desktop · October 3, 2026
We ran Lighthouse 12 locally in headless Chrome on the homepage and the Brake Repair page, mobile and desktop. These are lab numbers from a simulated mid-range phone on a slow 4G connection. On a phone, the homepage scores 16 out of 100. The first text takes 16.4 seconds to appear, the main content takes 34.6 seconds, and the layout jumps around badly while it loads (CLS 0.754). The biggest cause isn't images or plugins. It's the page itself: every page's HTML is about 2.3 MB, and about 2.1 MB of that is CSS written inline by the Divi 5 public beta. A phone has to download and process all of that before it can show anything. On top of that come a 1.1 MB PNG photo, a 726 KB hero photo, two separate Google Analytics tags, and icons hot-linked from another website platform's servers. Server response is also slow at about 0.8 seconds. Desktop does better (59 home, 39 Brake Repair), but most people looking for a mechanic search on their phone.
Lighthouse Scores
The category score of 18 reflects what a phone user actually experiences: a page that stays blank for most of 16 seconds. Lighthouse's "SEO" score only checks basics like titles and crawlability; it doesn't measure rankings.
Core Metrics
| Metric | Home mobile | Home desktop | Brake mobile | Brake desktop | Good threshold |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint | 34.6 s | 5.6 s | 23.1 s | 5.3 s | ≤ 2.5 s |
| First Contentful Paint | 16.4 s | 2.8 s | 16.9 s | 3.0 s | ≤ 1.8 s |
| Total Blocking Time | 610 ms | 40 ms | 910 ms | 40 ms | ≤ 200 ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0.754 | 0.001 | 0.167 | 0.496 | ≤ 0.1 |
| Speed Index | 16.4 s | 3.8 s | 16.9 s | 3.0 s | ≤ 3.4 s |
| Page weight | 7.6 MB | 10.6 MB | 4.7 MB | 6.1 MB | < 1.6 MB |
| Requests | 76 | 90 | 60 | 63 | — |
| Server response (root document) | 820 ms | 810 ms | 740 ms | 790 ms | ≤ 200 ms (playbook) |
These are lab results. Real-user (field) data from Chrome would come from Search Console's Core Web Vitals report, which we can't see until access is sorted out (C4).
The Heaviest Items
| Item | Size | Where | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| The page HTML itself (about 2.1 MB is inline Divi CSS) | 2,284 KB | Every page (site average 2.9 MB) | Turn on Divi's static CSS file generation / critical CSS, so styles load as a cached file, or test a page-cache plugin. Test on staging first: it's a beta theme. |
| van-work-no-letters-980x653.png | 1,127 KB | Home | Convert to WebP (~100 KB) |
| Depositphotos_479002004_XL-scaled.jpg (hero, 2560 px) | 726 KB | Home | Serve a ~1400 px WebP; don't lazy-load it |
| leaderboard_banner_wide.png | 410 KB | Home | WebP |
| state-inpection-web-final-980x1307.jpg | 262 KB | Home | WebP, smaller |
| Google Analytics gtag.js × 3 loads (two IDs: G-HF68X7Z5KG, G-F3ZB43T30G) | 542 KB | Every page | Keep one property (M5) |
| Divi deferred CSS | 165–172 KB | Every page | Part of the Divi CSS fix |
| Font Awesome 6.5 solid font (cdnjs) | 153 KB | Home | Use only the few icons needed, or Divi's built-in icons |
| Icons hot-linked from irp.cdn-website.com (another platform's servers): phone--white.svg, map-pin--white.svg | 116 + 110 KB | Brake Repair (service template) | Upload small copies to the site, or use built-in icons. If that server removes them, they break. |
| swiper.min.js (softlite-io-integration) | 140 KB | Brake Repair | Load only where a slider is used |
Diagnosis
Fix Plan (H4)
| # | Step | Expected effect | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Divi: turn on static CSS file generation and critical CSS (Divi → Theme Options → Performance), clear et-cache, confirm the page HTML drops from ~2.3 MB to a few hundred KB | Largest single gain; FCP should fall from 16 s to a few seconds on mobile | 1–2 hrs + testing |
| 2 | Add a page cache that works with Divi (the server runs Apache; there's no cache plugin active today), test the sitemap and Shopmonkey button afterwards | TTFB from ~0.8 s toward ~0.2 s | 1 hr |
| 3 | Convert the van PNG, banner PNG, hero and state-inspection images to WebP; remove loading="lazy" from the first image on each template | ~2 MB less on the homepage; faster LCP | 1 hr |
| 4 | Remove one of the two GA4 tags (M5) | ~180–360 KB less script on every page | 15 min |
| 5 | Replace the hot-linked irp.cdn-website.com icons and trim Font Awesome | ~380 KB less; no dependency on another site | 30 min |
| 6 | Set fixed sizes on images and the reviews widget; preload the main font | CLS under 0.1 | 1 hr |
| 7 | Plan the move from Divi 5 public beta to the stable release (H2) | Fewer surprises like the sitemap crash | When stable ships |
Target: homepage mobile Lighthouse 60+ and LCP under 4 seconds within a month, then 80+. Re-run Lighthouse on the homepage and one service page after each step, so we can see which change made the difference. Take a backup before touching Divi settings (and store it outside public_html, see C1).