Valero: a phone-and-desktop teardown
We loaded https://valero.com 3 times on a simulated iPhone and 2 more on a 1366px desktop, and wrote down what a real visitor would see on each. No login, no insider access, no Harvv pixel needed. Here is what repeated visits already show, sorted by how we know it.
TL;DRWhat jumped out
Of everything we found on this scan, this is the one to start with: Tiny buttons are hard to tap on mobile. 17 of 28 tappable items on this page come in below 44×44 pixels, the minimum size Apple and Google recommend for reliable tapping, and the same ones came up small on every test load. When visitors can't hit what they expect to, they get frustrated and many of them leave instead of trying again.
Below: what's already working, every finding ranked by impact and tagged with the screen it affects, the speed numbers on phone and desktop, and a checklist of what to fix first.
00What's already working
Start here so the problems below are in context. These held up across the test loads:
- Speed is good. The main content paints in about 0.4s in our test loads, inside Google's 2.5s "good" threshold. Real networks are slower, but the page itself is not heavy.
- No JavaScript errors on load. Nothing threw a script error across the test loads, so buttons and tracking are not silently breaking mid-session.
- Search basics are in place. Lighthouse scores SEO 92/100. The fundamentals Google looks for are present.
- Accessible to most visitors. Lighthouse accessibility is 96/100, so screen-reader and contrast basics are largely handled.
- Layout holds on phone and desktop. Nothing spilled past the edge at either 390px (phone) or 1366px (desktop), so the structure is responsive.
01Findings, ranked by what hurts conversion most
| Severity | Finding | How we know |
|---|---|---|
| High | Tiny buttons are hard to tap on mobileMobile 17 of 28 tappable items on this page come in below 44×44 pixels, the minimum size Apple and Google recommend for reliable tapping, and the same ones came up small on every test load. When visitors can't hit what they expect to, they get frustrated and many of them leave instead of trying again. | identical every load |
| High | Google Analytics tracking brokenBoth The Google Analytics request failed to complete on every one of the 3 test loads. If real visitors hit the same failure, GA is missing those visits and the dashboard has no way to flag it. Conversion numbers, audience counts, and channel attribution are all undercounting. Worth checking the tag loading order and any consent banner that might be blocking the request. | identical every load |
| Medium | Page is heavy and slow on mobile dataBoth Each visit downloads about 3.7 megabytes — roughly 3170 KB of images and 410 KB of JavaScript across 26 separate downloads. On a fast connection that's fine. On a phone with patchy mobile data, that's several seconds of blank screen before the page is readable. | median across loads |
"How we know": identical every load = a deterministic fact (e.g. element sizes). median across loads = a noisy lab metric, reported as a median. real-user field data = Google CrUX, actual Chrome visitors.
02Performance: phone, desktop, and real visitors
| Metric | Mobile | Desktop | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| TTFB (lab median) | 101 ms | 63 ms | Lab |
| FCP (lab median) | 344 ms | 280 ms | Lab |
| LCP (lab median) | 428 ms | 446 ms | Good |
| Page weight (median) | 3.7 MB | 4.6 MB | Watch |
Google Lighthouse (lab): Performance 57 mobile / 83 desktop, SEO 92, Accessibility 96, Best Practices 96.
Lab numbers are from a headless mobile browser on an unthrottled connection: treat them as a floor, not a typical experience. Add a Google API key to light up real-user field data (CrUX) and Lighthouse scores.
03Tiny buttons are hard to tap on mobile
17 of 28 tappable items on this page come in below 44×44 pixels, the size Apple and Google both recommend for reliable tapping on a phone. The same ones came up small on every one of the 3 test loads, so this is the page itself, not a fluke.
The buttons measuring below the minimum on this scan:
- a 1x1 "Skip to main content"
- a 65x19 ""
- button 40x32 "Toggle Navigation"
- a 30x30 "Youtube"
- a 30x30 "Instagram"
- a 30x30 "LinkedIn"
- a 30x30 "Facebook"
- a 114x41 "ValeroPay+"
The fix is CSS-only on most sites: add padding around the icon (don't just change the icon size) so the actual tap area is at least 44×44 pixels. No redesign, no new assets.
04Technical SEO & structured data
| Check | Result |
|---|---|
| Title | Valero | Advancing the Future of Energy (39 chars) |
| Meta description | 246 chars |
| H1 | 1 on page |
| Canonical | Present |
| Structured data (JSON-LD) | None |
| Open Graph | Incomplete |
05The fix checklist
Everything to fix, priority first, each tagged with the screen it affects and a rough effort. Work top to bottom.
- Tiny buttons are hard to tap on mobileMobileCSS only
- Google Analytics tracking brokenBothDev afternoon
- Page is heavy and slow on mobile dataBothSmall
Effort is a rough read from the outside: "CSS only" means no new assets or backend work, "1 line" means a single tag, "Dev afternoon" means a developer needs to touch tracking or scripts.
06What this report cannot tell you
Everything above is from the outside, looking at the page on a simulated phone and desktop. The questions that actually decide revenue need real visitors. Install the Harvv pixel (one script tag, 16 KB, zero personal data, no engineering project) and within about 72 hours you'd know which buttons real customers tapped and missed, how often Google Analytics is missing visits, and exactly where mobile shoppers stalled and left. This report shows you where to look. The pixel shows you how often it happens, and to whom.
Drop the Harvv pixel on valero.com and we turn this one-off scan into ongoing measured behavior: which taps miss, where sessions stall, and the real drop rates. Free to start, no card needed.
Add the pixel free07How we did this, and what it can't prove
- 3 mobile + 2 desktop loads of one URL from headless Chrome (iPhone viewport at 390px, desktop at 1366px), June 16, 2026. Enough loads to separate real defects from random noise, not a full-site crawl.
- Lab numbers, not real-user numbers (no field data was available for this run). Real devices on real networks run slower.
- Friction is inferred, not counted. We can prove a button is small. We can't, from the outside, count how often it causes a missed tap. That requires the pixel on a live page.
Prepared by Harvv. Last updated June 16, 2026.