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How to test the speed of your Website
In these times, even the slightest delay can cause users to return to the search page to find another website with the information they are looking for.
Website speed is important when it comes to retaining visitors; Therefore, if you have a hunch that your site is lagging behind, it might be time to test and improve your speed.
How to test website speed… How is website speed tested? How does it affect your website? Is there a way to make your site faster for users? These are some questions you may have about your site.
Fortunately, there are many tools and tips to test and speed up your website to ensure your audience has a positive experience that keeps them coming back. Before we dive into the options, let's see what website speed means and why it matters.
What is website speed?
Website speed is how fast your website loads for users. This is based on an average of various page speeds - page speed or page load time refers to the time it takes for elements like text and images on a page to fully load.
Website visitors are often disconnected due to the slightest delay; in fact, research has shown that someone is likely to click off your site if it takes more than 400 milliseconds (literally the blink of an eye) to load.
Why is website speed important?
Site speed can quickly determine if a user stays on your website or not. But it's actually even more important than that. Search engines, particularly Google, place great importance on site speed when determining which websites to show at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).
Once you have determined the speed of your website for both desktop and mobile devices, you will begin to wonder how to make your site faster and more efficient. This is the website optimization process, which can help increase your SERP ranking, retain audiences longer, secure more leads, and even drive sales.
How to test the speed of the website?
Now we will look at some options on how to test the speed of your website and luckily for us there are several speed tools.
1. PageSpeed Insights (Google)
Is a website speed test tool that scores your site speed in a range from 0 to 100; the higher the score, the better. This tool will also generate tests for both desktop and mobile devices, followed by suggestions to improve your speed score.
This tool will also generate tests for both desktop and mobile devices, followed by suggestions to improve your speed score. We recommend this tool for experts and developers.
What does this tool give you?
- Speed measurement in both desktop and mobile formats.
- Extensive technical report related to the website code and its impact on page load times.
- Identification of heavier images and time saving projection, in case they are compressed.
- Technical tips for CSS files, JavaScript, cache, and more.
2. GTMetrix
Is a great tool to generate an action plan that optimizes the loading times of a web page, and it is also ideal for beginners.
The only slight drawback is that since it is not registered, GTmetrix uses Canada as the country of location. In case you want to have a more precise location, you will have to create an account. Creating an account is completely free.
What does this tool give you?
- An extensive technical report that includes multiple recommendations to improve your loading times.
- Each recommendation has a degree of prioritization, which is classified as high, medium and low.
- Identification of errors and separation by types.
- Information on the total weight of the website and the number of calls made to the server.
3. WebPage Test
This tool was created by a Google Chrome engineer, is free, and provides more advanced information and data than many other free tools. Test your website speed across multiple browsers, devices, and locations, and the tool will even generate reports and information to identify problems and improve site speed.
What does this tool give you?
- Extensive technical report on load times and the number of milliseconds that each element occupies on the analyzed page.
- Breakdown of content classified by type and with the number of milliseconds each domain uses.
- Interactive graphs with the amount of requests and bytes used by the domains that run on the web page.
4. Pingdom Website Speed Test
Like Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom ranks your website speed from 0 to 100, but this tool is known to be easier to navigate and better for beginners.
This tool offers a much more complete weight analysis and valuable information on the number of requests by content type.
What does this tool give you?
- Quick evaluation of the website: performance level, size, load time and number of requests to the server.
- Website size report separated by content type (Script, Font, Image, CSS, HTML, XHR and Redirect) and the amount of space each has in the total.
- Report of requests to the server classified by type of content.
- Report with the size of the website by domain.
5. Think With Google
This tool is ideal for followers of the Mobile First philosophy, since it is a speed analysis exclusively for the mobile format and with a 3G or 4G internet connection.
What does this tool give you?
- Speed analysis with 3G or 4G connection.
- Load time classification and monthly trend (if it has improved or worsened in a period of 30 days.
- Comparison of loading times with competitor websites.
- Evaluation of the impact that a faster website could have on your company (visits, conversations and number of orders)
Now you know, improving the speed of your website is very important to give your user a great experience. Remember that a slow website can hurt SEO, leading to lower search rankings, fewer clicks, fewer leads, and a decrease in sales.
By taking the time to test and improve the speed of your website, you are also investing in the overall wellness of your website. If you need help in Ingenia we can advise you. Go to your new digital power house!