LFW Monitor

Reading the numbers

Monitor combines browser measurements with checks of your public pages. Here is what the scores tell you, how coverage affects them, and how a finding becomes a next step.

How they are measured

Performance, SEO, and Best practices use Google Lighthouse. Desktop checks measure all three; mobile checks measure performance with a simulated phone and throttled connection. These lab results identify slow or unstable pages. Actual visitor journeys and field performance require visitor measurements. Device, network, and page coverage affect comparisons.

Accessibility uses axe-core rules for WCAG 2.2 AA and accessibility best practices. Monitor calculates its own score from the findings: impact weights are critical 10, serious 6, moderate 3, and minor 1, with an additional penalty for repeated elements. This is different from Lighthouse’s accessibility score; that category is disabled in Monitor’s Lighthouse run.

Coverage and measurement dates

Site scores are rounded averages of completed page measurements. Customer pages, devices, and exclusions follow the agreed scope.

Monitor runs a surface scan every day and a deep scan every week. The daily pass checks availability, response failures, TLS and security headers, changed content, link changes, and targeted accessibility.

A deep scan covers the agreed public HTML inventory at desktop and mobile widths, with Lighthouse on the written key-page scope. Pages affected by an LFW deployment are checked again after the change.

LFW.com’s weekly deep scan targets every discovered public HTML page, including articles, translations, pagination, public noindex pages, and observed functional query variants.

Eligible unchanged pages can reuse recent measurements after their content, release, and relevant settings are checked; reused measurements keep their original dates. Our homepage scores use the most recent complete measurement set and never present an unfinished run as new results.

Missing measurements are not passes. Failed or omitted checks remain coverage gaps, and axe checks needing human judgment remain marked for review. A rounded accessibility average of 100 can still conceal a failing page. On LFW.com, any individual score below 100 requires immediate remediation attention.

From findings to action

Monitor keeps a finding’s history across scans: new when first detected, regressed when it returns, and resolved when the relevant check completes without detecting it again. A failed or skipped check keeps its earlier findings open. Intentional exceptions can be reviewed separately.

LFW reviews findings before sharing relevant details and next steps through your Client Portal. Public results show aggregate scores and counts; selected resolved examples may appear here. Keyboard use, screen readers, and interactive states still need human testing. An automated 100 is useful evidence, not a certification of accessibility.

Our own record

In the history shown here, desktop performance starts at 83 on August 2, reaches a low of 81 on August 3, and ends at 100 in the latest recorded scan. Changes in page coverage and test conditions can affect the average.

What to watch for

• A new hero image uploaded at full size. Phones download it whole.
• A video or map embed dropped in without a reserved box. The page jumps when it loads.
• A plugin update that adds a script to every page. Performance drops overnight and nobody changed anything they can name.
• An email policy still at p=none. Anyone can send mail as you and have it delivered.
• Files parked in the media library. They are public the moment they are uploaded.
• A certificate that renews next month. Almost always automatic. Worth confirming once.