Ask around to any expert in data transfer, internet marketing, or tech support and they’ll all tell you that slow websites can kill your business. If you’re not measuring the speed of your website, you could be losing viewers and visitors without even realizing it. Speed means everything as people demand faster transfers on smaller devices and you need to be prepared and learn how to measure speed.
Here are four ways to measure your speed to stay ahead of the curve.
While speed usually comes down to load times, there are multiple factors that impact how fast a site loads. The amount of data that you’re sending, the number of users that connect, and the condition of your server all have impacts as to how your site behaves. You have a lot of factors to consider when it comes to site speed, but you should start with your load times.
Google Page Speed Insights is a powerful tool for checking your website’s load times. What you perceive as fast or as slow could be based on your own connection or computer, not based on how most of your users experience your site.
With this tool, all you have to do is to type the URL into the box that appears on the screen. Then hit the simple “analyze” button and wait to get a response that shows you how your site is performing.
As a result, you’ll get something showing you how fast your page speed is along with some assessment of user experience. These quick analytics help you figure out how to make your site faster and even easier to use. Every recommendation they post leads you to a clickable link that offers even more advice on solving speed issues.
Once you figure out the speed of your site, you need to know what to do next. With the help of some tools free to use online, you can figure out what’s hindering your site. Figuring out there’s a problem without finding out how to solve it just makes it seem like a fact of life that you’ve got an issue.
Thankfully Pingdom has a speed test tool to help you figure out what your issues are. When you enter your URL and hit the “test now” button, just seconds later, you’ll get a report that covers several different issues on your site. You’ll see organized sections meant to address what’s wrong with your site so you can fix it.
With the page analysis that is included, you get a performance grade and a waterfall analysis. This helps you figure out where your site is slowing down and why. With the help of figuring out what the factors are that impact your speed, you can start to address your problems directly.
Armed with the advice on how to fix your site, you should be able to make some impactful changes.
While data transfer might be a-ok within your server and between the different elements of your site, there are page load issues to deal with sometimes. If other tools tell you there are page load problems or if you suspect there are, a tool like Webpage Test can help you figure out what the load problem is.
You can even specify different locations around the world. As more businesses become globalized, with dispersed customer bases located around the world, narrowing down your problems helps you grow. You can even check out how different browsers offer different load issues, since every market has a different browser they rely on.
In an era where mobile means everything, you even get the chance to ensure that your mobile browsing is tip-top.
Webpage Test is a useful tool because it gives you timings for when a site begins to load and another timestamp when loading is complete. You get to see how long it takes for a page to load on a repeat load. If your user tries to bring it up a second time, you get to see what the difference is.
You even get to walk away with a pie chart that shows you the type of content and the amount that it impacts your load speed.
If you want to measure your load times with the most tangible metrics around, you should try out GTMetrix. This is a state of the art metrics tool that people around the globe rely on to get their load times down. By just adding your URL and pressing “go” you get access to a robust set of metrics showing you details about your load times.
You’ll get information on all different elements of your website. Load times are impacted by so many things on your site and each one of the elements is going to be graded on a scale from A to F. You get these grades so that you can rank the priority of what needs to be fixed.
At a glance, the red-yellow-green traffic light grading helps you to see where your site is performing well and where it’s failing. Get more details by clicking each one of your links. You get to see all of the most critical issues in order of biggest impact so that, in turn, you respond to them accordingly.
If you haven’t’ figured out how to measure speed on your website, you’re liable to fall behind the competition. Measuring speed is easy and if you’re not taking advantage of the free tools available, you can bet your competitors are.
If you want to avoid downtime for good, check out our guide for tips.
