Research · Auto repair
The mobile performance gap
Customers often meet a business from their phone first. Yet only one in seven auto repair homepages we checked earned a good mobile performance score.
Only one in seven homepages performed well for a customer on a phone.
Most homepages, 61.8%, landed in the needs-improvement range. Another 24.2% received a poor score. The median score was 64 out of 100.
Mobile performance is more than one loading time
Lighthouse combines several laboratory measurements into one performance score. It looks at how quickly content appears, how soon the page responds, and whether the layout moves while loading.
A single score can vary between tests, and it does not predict sales or rankings by itself. It is a useful warning that the mobile experience deserves a closer look.
How we got these numbers
We checked accessible homepages from valid websites associated with businesses categorized as auto repair. Each website was counted once using its latest homepage result.
Mobile scores were available for 6,245 homepages. We used the Lighthouse bands: poor from 0 to 49, needs improvement from 50 to 89, and good from 90 to 100. Another 361 websites did not have a complete score and were excluded from the percentages.
An honest limitation: these are the businesses we chose to analyze, not a random sample of the industry. Lighthouse scores are laboratory measurements and can change with the test environment, website updates, and third-party scripts.
What to do about it
- Test the homepage on mobile. Start with the slowest visible elements.
- Resize and compress images. Do not make phones download desktop-sized files.
- Reduce unnecessary scripts. Every widget and tracker can add work.
- Protect the layout. Reserve space for images, banners, and embedded content.
- Retest after changes. Compare several runs instead of trusting one score.