How to speed check your website
In 2018, improving the speed of your website has now moved from being an option to a necessity. Google is starting to downgrade slow websites and users expect speedy sites. Either way, testing page rendering speed is critical and essential. Now you are ready to enjoy the results of your speed check your website. Here are some of the best resources to do it.
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Website Performance Testing Tools
There are a number of free tools you can use to benchmark
your website’s loading time. The following details these tools along with how
to use them and any pros and cons.
1. Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed
Insights rates your website out of 100 for both desktop and mobile and provides
page speed improvements for your website in order of severity.
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Images can be a big part of what slows down a page and the
PageSpeed Insights tool will provide optimised images for you to download. Just
be sure to review them as they don’t always get this 100% correct.
2. Pingdom
Pingdom gives you a
more detailed summary of your website’s site speed and you can test from
multiple locations such as Stockholm, Melbourne, and New York. Pingdom provides
the load time, page size, and real-world comparisons with other sites.
As a general rule of thumb, your website should have a load
time of under 3 seconds and a page size under 3MB. The tool also provides a
categorised breakdown showing exactly which types of files (and individual
files) are extending your loading time.
Although this tester doesn’t give you the optimised files
for your website, it does provide a detailed report of where your website’s
speed is being affected.
3. WebPageTest
WebPageTest allows
you to test loading time in specific browsers. The tool runs three tests and
provides a median result giving you a real-world idea of page loading speeds.
This tool also plots a timeline of your webpage to see how long it takes to
load the whole page
4. site-perf.com | site performance
This site is very responsive and lets you test from a few
different servers — two in the U.S. and two overseas.
5. websiteoptimization.com | website optimization
This service (and it’s accompanying documentation and
guidance around optimization) is one of the best at giving recommendations on
what to fix.
6. whichloadsfaster.com | which site loads faster?
This site allows you to compare your site against another to
see which loads faster. It also lets you do multiple tests in a row to get a
better baseline. Hint: if you load faster than Google’s front page then you’re
doing well.
7. browser load time stopwatch | lifehacker
This is also one of my most-used options for testing speed.
It’s different than the others because it’s not a web page, but rather a piece
of JavaScript that runs. You add the link to your bookmarks and execute it to
test the page you’re currently on.
8. google chrome page speed | extension
The Page Speed chrome extension is phenomenal for getting
results that look like a local application in terms of detail and presentation.
9. google chrome developer tools | built-in tool
Many don’t realize that Google Chrome has a wicked-powerful
set of tools built in. By opening the tools from the options menu you not only
have the classics that let you manipulate JavaScript, see page layout, etc.,
but you also have a network display that lets you see what took the longest to
load. It’s like a mini Page Speed display without the extension.
10. yslow | browser extension
YSlow is like Google’s Page Speed, only not quite as
advanced and available for more platforms. It’s now available for Chrome as
well.
11. webpagetest.org | web page test
This is another very solid web-based test that gives
extremely detailed output with regard to what the request looked like from the
browser.
12. google analytics | google
It’s now possible to track load speed through Google
Analytics. Simply get the latest version of the tracking script that has the
functionality in it, and you’ll see it as an option within your metrics.
13. google’s webmaster tools
Google’s Webmaster Tools has a Page Speed menu under Labs
that shows you how fast your various pages have been loading. The options is
very beta, however, as it gives you no control over what to test and not much
information on what has been tested.
In addition to the listings on the market, MySpeed by
ToHsoft is also a very useful website speed test solution, let's experience the
website test that we just mentioned. =>
The Need For Loading speed check your website!
Each of these tools is useful and we use them all when
optimising websites. By reviewing the output you should be able to make real
improvements to your pages’ loading time.
If you have any questions on how to understand what is
slowing down your website or how to speed things up then drop a comment below
or get in touch via our contact page.
And if you are considering a new website, view or download
our comprehensive website planning guide.
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