Improving your website‘s speed is crucial for providing a good user experience and boosting your SEO. With page load times being a ranking factor, slow sites can get penalized in search results.
Thankfully, there are many great tools available to test your site‘s performance. In this guide, we‘ll cover the top 8 website speed test tools and how to properly use them to analyze and improve your site speed.
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Why Website Speed Matters
Website speed has a direct impact on your visitors and your business. Here are some of the major benefits of having a fast site:
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Better user experience: Faster load times keep visitors engaged. 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes over 3 seconds to load, according to Google research.
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Higher conversions: Walmart saw a 2% increase in conversions for every 1 second improvement in page load time. An Aberdeen Group study found a 1 second delay in page load time can result in 11% fewer page views, 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and 7% loss in conversions.
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Improved SEO: Google uses page speed as a ranking factor. Sites with faster load times tend to achieve higher organic search rankings.
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Lower bounce rate: Quickly loading pages reduce bounce rates. One study by Akamai saw a 106% decrease in bounce rate by improving time to interactive under 5 seconds.
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More sales: Fast sites encourage visitors to browse more pages and products. Amazon found every 100ms delay cost them 1% in sales.
So if you want happy visitors that convert into customers, website speed should be a top priority. Running frequent tests will help you detect and fix any performance issues.
8 Best Website Speed Test Tools
Here are the top free and paid tools to analyze your site speed:
1. Pingdom
Pingdom is one of the most well-known website speed test services. It offers a free plan that lets you run basic page speed tests from multiple global locations.
The easy-to-read reports show your overall page load time, page size, number of requests, and webpage screenshots. You can drill into the detailed waterfall chart to see how long each individual element took to load.
Pingdom will highlight any issues found and provide suggestions for improving page speed. Their browser extension also lets you test site speed right from your browser toolbar.
2. WebPageTest
WebPageTest is an open-source tool created by Google. It provides incredibly detailed performance reports and is a favorite among developers.
In addition to load time and requests, WebPageTest measures start render time, visual complete, and Speed Index. You can select locations around the world to run your test from different networks.
One of the best features of WebPageTest is the video recording that shows you exactly how your page loaded. This helps pinpoint rendering issues. Results can be exported to file or API.
3. GTmetrix
GTmetrix offers a free basic speed test and paid plans for more advanced features. It analyzes pages using Google PageSpeed Insights and Yahoo‘s YSlow tool.
Your reports will contain grades for performance and structure along with recommendations for improvements. The waterfall charts break down both server response time and browser load times.
You can also test your site from 25 worldwide locations to simulate geographic visitors. Customizable reports and API access are included on paid plans. It‘s a great all-in-one tool for performance and code optimization.
4. Google PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed Insights is a free tool directly from Google that analyzes your site against their performance best practices. It focuses on mobile and desktop speed optimization.
It will generate an overall score (0-100) for each version of your site along with metrics for largest contentful paint, cumulative layout shift, and more.
Clicking into the report will show you recommendations from the Google team on what elements can be improved to boost your score. This is especially useful if you want your site to align with Google‘s speed standards.
5. Chrome User Experience Report
The Chrome User Experience Report lets you see real-world speed data on how your site performs for Chrome users.
It uses anonymized analytics from millions of sites to provide metrics like First Contentful Paint, DOM Content Loaded, and First Input Delay. You can compare your site against thresholds for a good user experience.
This gives you insight into actual user interactions that synthetic testing alone may miss. The data is updated monthly and segmented by country and device type. It‘s free for sites with substantial Chrome traffic.
6. Lighthouse
Lighthouse is an open-source audit tool from Google that you can run right in the Chrome DevTools. It will generate a report on page speed, accessibility, SEO, and more.
When running a Lighthouse speed test, it provides load timing metrics, opportunities to improve, and an overall performance score. The Performance section has a detailed breakdown of opportunities to enhance speed.
Lighthouse is great for quick tests during development. But note that it tests locally from your machine, so use other tools for server-level speed tests. Lighthouse is free and also available as Chrome extension.
7. WebPagetest Private Instances
For more control over testing, WebPageTest offers the ability to run your own private instances. This lets you test internal sites and applications behind logins.
You can create single or multi-machine instances on AWS, GCP, or Azure. The WebPageTest containers give you full access to configure tests and locations. Tests can be scripted via API or web interface.
Pricing for private instances varies by cloud provider, starting around $35/month. For internal site monitoring, private WebPageTest containers are a powerful option.
8. SpeedCurve
SpeedCurve provides continuous monitoring and performance optimization for your site. It checks page load times from worldwide points at regular intervals.
The dashboard shows trends over time so you can spot any new issues. SpeedCurve will automatically detect performance regressions when new code is deployed. You can set up alerts to notify you of drops in speed.
Advanced features like custom waterfall charts, filmstrip views, and performance budgets are included. SpeedCurve is a paid subscription service starting at $9/month for up to 50 URLs.
How to Run a Website Speed Test
Here are some tips for running accurate website speed tests:
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Test from different locations – Run tests from locations where your visitors are to get real-world data.
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Disable caching – Temporarily disable caching plugins so your site is tested in a cold, uncached state.
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Test multiple pages – Check a range of pages e.g. home, product, blog. Different pages can have different speed issues.
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Test on mobile – Make sure to test mobile experience in addition desktop. Mobile speed is crucial.
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Use incognito browser – Test in incognito mode with no other tabs open to avoid browser extensions or resources impacting results.
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Repeat tests – Run each test 3-5 times and average the results to minimize variability.
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Check compression – Verify gzip/deflate compression is enabled on your web server for optimum performance.
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Audit after changes – Re-test site speed after making optimizations or adding new code to check impact.
How to Analyze Website Speed Test Results
Once you‘ve run tests, here are the key elements to analyze in your reports:
| Metric | Recommended | What to Check |
|---|---|---|
| Page load time | < 2s on mobile < 3s on desktop | Identify slowest resources, enable caching, optimize images |
| TTFB | < 200ms | Server response time, caching, CDN configuration |
| Requests | < 50 | Eliminate unnecessary files, defer non-critical JS/CSS |
| Image optimization | < 100KB per image | Compression, file size savings, next-gen formats |
| Caching | Browser cache hits > 90% | Caching plugin settings, CDN caching rules |
| Page weight | < 1MB desktop < 500KB mobile | Large files, compress images, remove unused code |
| Server response time | < 200ms | Hosting platform resources and scalability |
| Third-party scripts | Only necessary scripts | Limit external scripts, lazy load non-critical ones |
Addressing these common issues found in speed tests will get you on your way to faster page load times. Be sure to keep running regular tests to catch any new performance regressions.
Here are some of the technical optimization techniques I recommend for developers:
- Enable compression like GZip/Brotli to minimize file sizes
- Configure cache headers and leverage browser caching
- Load non-critical JS asynchronously and CSS media types
- Inline critical CSS/JS to avoid extra roundtrips
- Use code minification and bundling to reduce script/stylesheet overhead
- Load images deferred after full HTML is parsed
- Employ HTTP/2 multiplexing for efficient parallel resource loading
Page speed optimization takes some trial and error to find the right combination for your specific site. But the time invested is well worth the faster performance gains for your visitors.
Speed Up Your Website
Improving website speed often requires tuning at multiple levels – content, frontend code, backend, servers, and infrastructure.
Here are some top ways to optimize performance based on my 15 years as a professional web developer:
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Enable caching – Caching reduces server requests and delivery time of static assets. Use a WordPress caching plugin like WP Rocket.
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Optimize images – Compress (80% savings), resize, and lazy load images. Convert large files to next gen formats like WebP (25% smaller than JPEG).
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Minify resources – Minify CSS, JS, HTML and SVG files to reduce their sizes without impacting functionality.
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Use a CDN – Distribute static assets across CDN servers geographically closer to visitors. CDNs can improve TTFB by 3x.
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Limit redirects – Minimize HTTP redirects which add latency between page requests. Each redirect can slow down page speed by 20-30%.
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Remove unnecessary code – Delete any inactive plugins, unnecessary code, and unused files on your site. Less code = faster load times.
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Improve server response – Upgrade hosting plan or switch providers if server response is consistently slow. Fast servers have huge speed impact.
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Enable compression – Make sure gzip and Brotli compression is enabled on your server to optimize transmission of files. Savings of 70-80% are typical.
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Async load third-party scripts – Defer offscreen or non-critical external scripts from blocking initial page load. Prioritize content first.
With some targeted performance tuning, you can significantly improve your website speed test scores. Be sure to keep monitoring with different tools to stay on top of any issues that may arise over time.
Fast page load times lead to happy visitors, better conversions, and higher SEO rankings. By regularly checking and optimizing your site speed, you‘ll provide the best web experience for your users.
