Run a Website Speed Test
Do you want to run a website speed test and improve your site’s performance?
Best Tools to Run a Website Speed Test
There are a lot of free and paid WordPress website speed tests and performance monitoring tools that you can use.
Your goal should be to improve your page load speed for your users. The goal shouldn’t be to get a perfect score on a certain test.
The best tools to run a website speed test.
1. IsItWP Website Speed Test Tool
IsItWP’s free website speed test tool is the most beginner-friendly website speed testing tool.
It allows you to quickly check your website performance, run multiple tests, and drill down the results to find out what’s slowing down your website.
You also get improvement suggestions neatly organized. You can click on each category to see the steps you can take to troubleshoot performance issues. The website also offers server uptime monitoring and other useful tools for website owners.
2. MonsterInsights
The plugin includes a Site Speed report, which helps you measure your website speed for mobile and desktop.
MonsterInsights shows an overall score for your site speed and also other metrics to improve the user experience. You can see the report inside your WordPress dashboard and don’t have to leave your site.
The best part about using MonsterInsights is that it shows a goal for each metric that you should target.
You also get suggestions on how to improve each metric and make your website load faster.
3. Pingdom
Pingdom is one of the most popular website performance monitoring tools. It is easy to use and allows you to select different geographical locations to run a test which is really handy.
The results are presented with an easy-to-understand overview, which is followed by a detailed report. You get performance improvement suggestions at the top and individual resources as they load.
4. Google Pagespeed Insights
Google Pagespeed Insights is a website performance monitoring tool created by Google.
It gives you website performance reports for both mobile and desktop views.
You also get detailed recommendations for each issue.
5. GTmetrix
GTmetrix is another powerful website speed testing tool. It allows you to test your website using popular tools.
It shows detailed reports with a brief summary of the results. You can switch between the two tools and view recommendations.
Clicking on each recommendation will provide you with more details.
6. WebPageTest
WebPageTest tool is another free online speed test tool that you can use.
It does allow you to choose a browser and geographic location for your tests.
By default, it runs the test 3 times to get your website speed test results. It shows a detailed view of each result which you can click to expand and view the full report.
7. Uptrends
Uptrends is another free website speed test tool. It allows you to select a geographic region, browser, and switch between mobile and desktop tests.
Results are simple and easy to understand as it also shows your Google pagespeed score in summary.
You can scroll down for details and comb through your resources to understand the performance issues.
How to Properly Run a Website Speed Test
Running website speed tests is not guaranteed to tell you exactly how your website performs.
You see, the internet is like a highway.
Sometimes there is more traffic or congestion which may slow you down.
Other times, everything is clear, and you can run through it much quicker.
There are several other factors involved which would affect the quality and accuracy of your results.
1. Run Multiple Tests
There are multiple factors that can affect your test.
Each test would show you slightly different results.
The most important difference you will notice is the time it took to download the complete webpage.
Run at least 3 tests to get a more accurate picture.
You can then take out an average result and use it to decide whether or not your website needs improvement.
2. Test from Different Geographic Locations
You need to use Google Analytics to see where your users are coming from. After that, use that information to select a geographic region for your tests.
3. Make Sure Your Website Caching is Turned On
Make sure that your website caching is turned on before running the tests. This would allow you to test website caching and how effective it is in improving performance.
The best part is that it proactively builds your website cache, which significantly improves your website performance.
4. Check the Performance of Your Website Firewall / CDN Service
While WordPress caching plugins can do a lot, they definitely have their limitations.
This is where you need Sucuri. It is the best WordPress firewall plugin that improves your server performance by blocking malicious requests.
Now, normally all your website files are served from the same server. You can improve this by adding a CDN service to your website.
MaxCDN (by StackPath) is the best CDN solution for beginners.
A CDN service allows you to serve static website files like images, stylesheets, and scripts through a network of servers spread around the globe.
This reduces the server load on your website, makes it load faster, and improves the user experience for all your users.
Turning on your CDN service and the firewall will improve your test results significantly.
Understanding Website Speed Test Results
The most important parameter that you should look into is the time it takes your website to load.
Page load time
If your website is taking longer than 2 seconds to load, then look at the drill-down reports. Find out which resources are taking longer to load.
Usually, these are images, stylesheets, scripts loading from third-party websites, video embeds, and so on.
You would also want to pay attention to how long your server takes to respond to each request and how much time it takes to deliver the first byte.
You would also want to make sure that browser compression (also called gzip compression) is working.
This reduces the filesizes between your server and user’s browser by compressing them.
If your page has lots of images and videos, then you may want to consider deferred loading techniques also called lazy loading.
This allows content to be loaded when a user scrolls down and only loads the content that is visible on the user’s screen.
As always, you definitely want to make sure your images are optimized for the web by using an image compression tool.
The second important parameter you would want to test is the TTFB (time to first byte).
If your web server is continuously showing a slower time to the first byte, then talk to your web hosting company.
