Testing your websites speed — Site Optimisation Part 1

You try to open a website… You wait a few seconds before the site is loaded… Another few seconds…
… and you are gone!

Are you doing the same? Most likely Yes, and therefore Google decided that speed is essential for the ranking of your website. Apart from the ranking, you can notice that your conversion rate is not optimal and that the bounce rate of your site is pretty high.

It is time to make a change to your site. Therefore I have decided to write a guide in which you can improve the performance of your website. In part 1, we start by measuring the current speed of your website. For this, I use 4 tools that you can find online. They sorted based on my own experience.

GT Metrix

GT Metrix is my absolute favourite in terms of performance analyses. This tool brings lots of features and displays them in a clear dashboard.

Pros:

• Provides a complete report of performance issues.
• Creates reports that include Yahoo’s Yslow and Googles Page Speed at the same time.
• The user interface looks clear and is easy to use.
• The free version contains a lot of extras compared to other tools in the market.
• Being able to set up monitoring for up to 3 URLs.

Cons:

• Not sufficient testing locations available.
• A lot of terminologies is useful for only expert users. But don’t worry, we will explain this in the next part of this series.

Site: https://gtmetrix.com/

Google Page Speed Insight

Google Page Speed insight is one of the most used tools for measuring the speed of your website.

Pros:

• You can get insights on both mobile web and desktop web.
• Google Page Speed Insight makes use of Lighthouse. You can get these results via Chrome Devtools, command line, node module or a web UI.
• Google Page Speed Insights gives you clear explanations with each improvement point.

Cons:

• Some performance requirements are impossible to meet.
• Having a good score in Google Page Speed Insight is not sufficient. Therefore you need to use other tools as well.

Site: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Pingdom

Pingdom Website Speed Test gives you insights in the load time and technical improvements of your website. This tool is very useful for developers.

Pros:

• Provides testings from multiple regions in the world within the free version.
• Being able to set up monitors for speed optimisation testing.

Const:

• Less clear results compared to other tools in the market.
• The paid packages are more expensive than their competitors.

Site: https://tools.pingdom.com/

Webpagetest

Webpagetest is a bit older than the competitors mentioned above, but still seen as a very powerful testing tool.

Pros:

• A big number of datacentre locations from where you can test the site
• The tests on speed tests are being executed in 3 runs to get a more accurate result.

Const:

• Webpagetest doesn’t give a clear oversight of the actionable items. Therefore it requires more technical knowledge to use their service
• The test takes more time than with other competitors in the market.
• The UX/UI is outdated and therefore less user friendly

Site: https://www.webpagetest.org/

In the following parts of this article, we will discuss how you can create actionable tasks for the results of these insights.