In October 2026 we measured the websites of 50 small businesses around Sofia: dental clinics, accounting and law offices, car services, beauty salons, shops and small hotels. We ran Lighthouse in its mobile mode on each home page and checked HTTPS and the basic markup. The sample is not random, because we picked sites where a problem was already visible, so do not read the numbers as "the average Bulgarian website". They are, however, a very good map of what goes wrong, and almost every problem on it can be fixed in days, not months. Below are the findings, anonymised, and the checklist we use to fix a slow site, in order of impact.
#What we found
- Slow on phones. The median Lighthouse performance score was 64 out of 100; 16 sites scored below 50 and only 9 reached 90. The median Largest Contentful Paint, the moment the main content appears, was 6.3 seconds. Google calls anything above 4 seconds poor: 36 of the 50 sites were there, and only 6 met the 2.5-second target.
- Not built for phones at all. 30 sites had no viewport tag, so a phone shows a shrunken desktop page that visitors have to pinch and zoom.
- HTTPS problems. 23 sites did not redirect
http://tohttps://, and 13 showed a certificate warning or had no working HTTPS at all. Browsers mark those pages as "Not secure", which is a bad first impression for a clinic or a law office. - Heavy pages. The heaviest home page downloaded 19 MB; several others were between 4 and 15 MB, almost all of it images.
- Old software. 6 sites still referenced Flash, which no browser has run since its end of life on 31 December 2020. Nine loaded jQuery 1.x from 2009 to 2011, and several ran WordPress or Joomla versions years out of support.
One result deserves attention. Some sites scored 99 or even 100 for performance and still had no viewport tag: they were fast because they were tiny, old pages, and on a phone they were unusable. A speed score is one signal, not a verdict.
#The checklist, in order of impact
1. Measure the right way first
Run PageSpeed Insights on the home page and on the page that brings the most customers, in the mobile view. Write down the performance score, Largest Contentful Paint (good up to 2.5 s), Cumulative Layout Shift (good up to 0.1) and the total page weight. If the report shows field data from real visitors, trust it over the lab numbers. Measure again after every change.
2. Fix HTTPS
A valid certificate costs nothing today: most hosts issue Let's Encrypt certificates automatically. Make sure it covers both example.bg and www.example.bg, that http:// answers with a 301 to https://, and that the page loads no images or scripts over plain HTTP.
3. Make it work on a phone
Without <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> no other mobile fix matters. Adding the tag to an old fixed-width layout usually breaks it, though, so this is often the point where a redesign on a modern, light theme is cheaper than patching. Check the basics with a thumb: the menu opens, the phone number is a tap-to-call link, the text is readable without zooming.
4. Shrink the images
Images are the largest part of almost every heavy page we saw. A photo straight from a phone is 4000 pixels wide and several megabytes; on a phone screen it needs about 1200 pixels and 100 to 200 KB. Resize, convert to WebP or AVIF, lazy-load images below the first screen with loading="lazy" and give each image its width and height, which stops the page jumping while it loads. Set a budget: a small-business home page rarely needs more than 1 to 2 MB.
5. Check the hosting
If the server takes more than about 600 milliseconds to send the first byte, no front-end work will make the site feel fast. Look for a current PHP version, page caching for WordPress, compression (gzip or Brotli) and HTTP/2. Cheap shared hosting is usually fine for a small site when it is configured well; an overloaded server is not. Our articles on shared hosting or a VPS and moving a website to a new host cover the decision and the move.
6. Remove what nobody uses
Flash objects, sliders nobody watches, two analytics scripts, a chat widget that loads on every page, five web fonts. Each third-party script adds requests and blocks the main thread. Remove what you cannot name a reason for, and load the rest after the page content.
7. Update the software
Old CMS versions, plugins and libraries such as jQuery 1.x are slow and, more importantly, carry known security holes. Update in a staging copy first, then on the live site, and keep a backup you have actually restored once.
8. Check the things that bring customers
Speed matters because people leave slow pages. Make sure the pages they stay on work: the contact form sends to an inbox someone reads, the booking link works, the address and working hours are current, and the footer does not say "© 2013".
#We measure ourselves too
The cover of this article is a real Lighthouse report of this blog, taken the day we wrote it: 83 for performance and 100 for accessibility, best practices and SEO on the mobile test, with the main content appearing after 3.4 seconds. That is good, not perfect, and the remaining work is the same as on this list: less CSS blocking the first render. For the full picture of the metrics, see website speed and Core Web Vitals.
#A free check of your website
If you run a small business in Bulgaria and would rather not do this yourself, we offer a free website check. Within two working days you receive a one-page report: how fast the site opens on a phone (Lighthouse), whether HTTPS works, whether the contact form works, whether the software is outdated, and the three things to fix first. No commitment, and we do not need access to your site. Write to office@pnscripts.com or request the free check with the address of your site.
#Frequently asked questions
What is a good Lighthouse score for a small-business site?
Aim for 90 or above on mobile, but read the details: Largest Contentful Paint up to 2.5 seconds and layout shift up to 0.1 matter more than the single number, and a site can score well and still be unusable on a phone.
Do I need a new website or can the old one be fixed?
If the site has a viewport tag and a current CMS, fixing images, caching and scripts is usually enough. If it is a fixed-width layout from ten years ago, a light rebuild with the same content is often cheaper than patching.
Does a slow website hurt my Google ranking?
Page experience is one of many signals, and content and relevance weigh more. The bigger cost is visitors: people who wait several seconds on a phone often leave before they see your phone number.
What does the free website check include?
A one-page report within two working days on mobile speed, HTTPS, the contact form, outdated software and the three most important fixes. It needs no access to your site.
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