Dive Brief:

• Google is launching a completely new set of mobile speed testing features on Test My Site and for the first time all of its testing features focused on mobile site speed are accessible in one place, the company announced today in a blog post that was made available to Mobile Marketer in advance.
• On the new Test My Site, which was originally launched last year, businesses can input their site's URL to find out how many seconds it takes a mobile site to load, how many visitors a site may be losing during load time and how a site compares to its competitors.
• Google will also email users a personalized assessment with specific recommendations on how to speed up a site that's been tested.  

Dive Insight:

Test My Site reflects Google’s commitment to ensuring consumers have a strong experience on mobile, which is critical for the platform’s own health now that the majority of searches come from mobile. But mobile speed is also imperative for any business with a site, which the company makes the case for via findings like that 46% of people say the most frustrating thing about browsing on their phone is waiting for slow pages to load and 50% expect mobile sites to load in under two seconds. Worldwide, mobile web traffic surpassed desktop late last year, meaning for marketers looking to connect with a wide group of potential new customers, they need a high-performance mobile website. 

By making mobile site assessment tools easily available, Google is addressing the fact that a lot of businesses are still stuck in a desktop mindset and that there isn’t a widely accepted approach for building mobile web experiences, resulting in some common and relatively easy fixes for speeding up sites. Given the platform's commanding presence in search, it is in its own interest that users searching on Google have a positive experience when they click through to a site from a link in search results. 

The Google post offers Yard Dog Fence Company as an example of the impact that enhancing mobile speed can have. The company took Test My Site’s recommendations and reduced the file sizes of the images on its site, which now loads in 5 seconds compared with 26 seconds previously. As a result, the company, which derives 90% of its business on mobile, doubled sales. 

Test My Site builds on Google's other recent efforts to enhance mobile search experiences through tappable shortcuts and connecting searchers to nearby events.