Misleading Speed Tests

Hope you had a great weekend!

Last week, I took an inside look at the upcoming Fluent Affiliate plugin. You’ll see the video featured below. Will definitely be awesome for my clients who want to run their own affiliate program. And will allow me to have an option available for you without putting you into that big plugin by… those other people.

Also, they took some feedback from me and they’re running with it. Having to do with a newsletter referral program. Going to be awesome.

Anyway, below, I want to give into the issues with WordPress speed performance tests misleading people into doing things they shouldn’t.

Also, is your site designed to be a conversion engine, or just sit there…. dead?

Let’s talk…

Why WordPress Speed Tests Are Misleading (And What To Measure Instead)

A lot of site owners like to run speed tests on their own website. I have clients that do it. And, too often, these scores end up making them think something is wrong.

It is like trying to go to Google when something hurts on your body. Give it a couple of minutes and you think you’re going to die. Dr. Google isn’t very good at diagnostics.

But here’s the truth:
Those scores don’t tell the whole story — and sometimes they lead people to make poor decisions that hurt performance and user experience.

Most popular site speed tools are designed to grade your site against a checklist — things like:

• Properly sizing images
• Using next-gen formats (like WebP)
• Minimizing JavaScript and CSS
• Lazy loading content

And while these are good practices, the final “score” can be skewed by things like:

• 3rd-party scripts (chat widgets, CRMs, fonts, analytics)
• Server timing quirks or momentary network issues
• Testing from a location far from your hosting server
• Lab data vs. real-world user data

In fact, I’ve seen sites that feel blazing fast in real usage get a yellow or red score, and bloated sites still manage to “ace” these tests by cutting corners.

What To Focus On Instead

If you’re a solopreneur or membership site owner, here’s what actually matters:

✅ Time To First Byte (TTFB)
This is a strong indicator of how fast your hosting/server is. Aim for <200ms.

✅ Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
This tells you how fast the main content loads. Under 2.5s is a solid target.

✅ Fully Loaded Time (Real-World)
GTmetrix gives this. Under ~3s is a good rule of thumb. Don’t obsess over perfection.

✅ Mobile Usability
Don’t just test desktop. You always want to test mobile devices. Just keep in mind that Google PageSpeed uses an artificially low 4G Slow speed to do it, which can give alarming scores even though your site is performing great on mobile.

✅ Your Site’s Conversion Rate
Sometimes a script or feature you remove to get a better score was actually helping your sales. Speed is important, but not at the expense of function.

️ Run Smarter Speed Tests

When I run site audits, I always test with these best practices:

• Run the test 2–3 times and average results. Numbers will change every time you run a test.
• Test from a region close to your audience
• Test both logged-in and logged-out (especially for membership sites)
• Look for reasonable actionable things to do to improve it, but don’t get into the weeds. It is all too easy to sink a stupid amount of time improving these scores beyond what makes sense…. and that’s time you should be spending on your business instead

And if you really want a performance edge, don’t just look at the numbers — ask what’s slowing things down, and whether it actually matters to your audience.

Want A Personalized Site Speed Audit?

If you’re not sure whether your site speed is helping or hurting your business, let me take a look. Concierge clients… just post a task in Basecamp for me. For others, you can check out my WP Speed Fix service.

Concierge Client Update

The WordPress dashboard sometimes likes to throw off warnings that scare people. And one of the ones I’ve been seeing on some of my client sites has to do with the PHP version.

So, a little heads up….

There are still many clients running on PHP version 7.x. There is nothing wrong with this and you don’t need to worry about it, however… it is a little dated at this point. For that reason…

I will be making the rounds over the next week or two across clients running PHP 7.x. If you’re getting that big nag notice on your dashboard, feel free to let me know. But, I will be checking eventually.

And I will be running tests to see if we can upgrade you to PHP 8.3. In fact, I’ll probably just do it by hand and manually test your site to ensure all is working properly. If it isn’t, I’ll back it off and we’ll handle the incompatibility.

Upgrading PHP won’t really be noticable on most sites. In theory, it is a little bit faster but the real-world effects are pretty hard to notice. But, truth is that they’re phasing out the 7.x versions from getting security updates and, slowly, hosts are moving on. So, we’re going to want to ensure PHP 8 usage just for the purposes of keeping up with the times and ensuring maximum security.

So, at this point, I have 24 client sites running less than PHP 8. For those 24 of you, I will be making the rounds over the next week or two to alleviate this issue and get you upgraded. And if we have any issues, I’ll be in touch so we can handle whatever comes up. If there’s some old plugin or incompatible dated software on your site getting in the way, we’re going to need to find a way to upgrade that or find a replacement.

WordPress News & Updates

FluentCommunity 1.7.7. If you’re looking for a community-driven learning-based membership site, I really don’t think BuddyBoss is the way to go anymore. It’s FluentCommunity. It is coming along so well, too. Version 1.7.7 just came out and offers a lesson-completed trigger (with FluentCRM), more granular visibility controls for the sidebar menu, dynamic URLs for user profiles, better search, better email designs, etc.

WooCommerce 10 Keeps Getting Delayed. They’ve been kicking back the release date of WooCommerce 10 over and over again now. As of right now, it looks scheduled for today. I’ll be keeping an eye on this.

Fake Spam Plugin. The team at Sucuri found a pretty interesting SEO spam plugin designed to evade detection by disguising itself as the host site’s domain name. The goal of the plugin was to inject spam content into the site in order to manipulate search rankings. You can read more about it here. It is crazy the amount of ingenuity these spammers put into dishonest work. If they’d divert that energy into something legit, imagine what they could do.

Google Anti-Trust Lawsuit Over AI Overviews. The EU has an anti-trust lawsuit against Google because of those AI Overviews taking traffic away from publishers. While lawsuits like this are expected as things changed, it is a little hard to take it seriously in some aspects. AI Overviews are here to stay, whether people like it or not. And not only that, it isn’t as if Google is the only one doing it. They’re just the largest.

xCloud Now Offers Email Inboxes. xCloud is one of my hosting partners… and the platform just got a new capability. Now you can add email inboxes as an add-on and have domain-based email. See their docs on how it works. This is definitely a convenience to have it all in one spot, although I will continue to recommend FastMail to clients who need domain-based email hosting.

Ninja Tables 5.2.1. Not too often we see updates about Ninja Tables, but 5.2.1 came out with some under the good enhancements. Better performance, better REST API, and stronger security. I don’t use Ninja Tables often, but sometimes it just fulfills a need and does it well.

Huge Security Issue With Gravity Forms. Patchstack discovered critical malware embedded into the Gravity Forms plugin that was quietly injecting script tags into plugin pages…. probably for awhile. Read the full update here. Gravity Forms responded with an announcement last week. You want to make sure you’re running 2.9.12 or higher.

Matt Sued WP Engine “After A Lot Of Community Feedback”. That’s his story and he’s sticking with it. He said as much on the Decoder podcast from The Verge. I dunno. Doesn’t seem believable to me. My BS detector is ringing.

SearchWP Multiple Results Templates. Despite being an overpriced Awesome Motive product, it is hard not to see that SearchWP is the most powerful search plugin for WordPress right now. And it just got updated to support multiple results templates so not every search needs to have the same look and feel. Learn more about it here.

Your Website Isn’t A Brochure — It’s A Conversion System

Let’s get honest for a moment…

For too many solopreneurs, their website is just a slightly prettier business card.
It “looks nice,” has all the right menu items… but it’s passive. It just sits there, hoping something good will happen.

But in today’s world — especially if you’re running a membership site, selling courses, or building an audience — your website needs to do way more than just look good.

It needs to work. It should be like a team member…. sitting there working for you 24/7.

The Brochure Trap

Here’s what a brochure-style site typically looks like:

• A homepage with vague value statements (“We help people achieve success…”)
• A Services or About page that reads more like a résumé
• A contact form that leads nowhere
• A blog that hasn’t been updated in months
• Zero actual strategy behind the layout or flow

It might have taken weeks (or months) to build, but when you strip it down… it doesn’t do anything. No opt-ins. No funnels. No nurturing. No sales. It isn’t alive… it’s dead.

What a Conversion System Looks Like

A high-leverage website doesn’t just inform — it guides and converts. Here’s how you know your site is working for you:

✅ It has a clear call to action
Whether it’s joining your email list, scheduling a call, or taking a quiz — your site should have one primary job, and everything on the page should support it.

✅ It collects leads — strategically
Are your opt-in forms optimized and relevant? Do you segment subscribers or just dump them into a general list?

✅ It connects to your CRM or automation platform
If you’re using something like FluentCRM, is your site automatically starting email sequences based on behavior?

✅ It nurtures, pre-sells, and qualifies
Are you using your blog, lead magnets, and automations to do the work of educating prospects so they’re ready when it’s time to buy?

✅ It supports your business model
Membership? Services? Coaching? A course? Your site should move visitors toward the path that matches your revenue engine.

When you start treating your site like a business asset, everything changes:

• Instead of “Do I need a blog?”, the question becomes: “How do I use content to move people closer to the sale?”
• Instead of “Do I need a pop-up?”, the question becomes: “How can I give the right offer to the right person at the right time?”
• Instead of “Does my site look professional?”, it’s: “Is this site converting visitors into leads, and leads into customers?”

Your WordPress site isn’t a brochure. It’s a conversion engine — or at least, it should be.

The design, speed, plugins, layout — all of that matters. But only if it’s in service of a strategy that turns your site into a real business tool.

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The WP Edge is the official weekly newsletter of the Blog Marketing Academy.