Guides: Why website speed is the basic digital experience and how to test it.

Google's research showed that the chance of a bounce increased by 32% when a page load time went from 1 to 3 seconds, and by 90% when the page load time went from 1 to 5 seconds. If a site takes up to 10 seconds to load, then the chance of a bounce increases to 123% (Source: https://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/building-websites/website-load-time-statistics/)

That’s why knowing how to test website speed is so important when trying to retain visitors. If you have a hunch that your site is lagging, it might be time to test and improve its speed. In this post, we’ll show you how.

How to Test Website Speed

How do you test website speed? How does it impact your website? Is there a way to make your site faster for users? These are just a few questions you might have as a site owner.

Luckily, there are many tools and tips for testing and boosting website speed to make sure your audience has a positive experience on your site that keeps them coming back.

Before we dive into the options, let’s look at what website speed means and why it matters.

What is website speed?

Website speed is how quickly your website loads for users. This is based on an average of multiple page speeds — page speed, or page load time, refers to how long it takes for the elements like text and images on a page to fully load.

These days, website visitors are often turned off by even the slightest delay — in fact, research has shown that someone is likely to click away from your site if it takes more than 400 milliseconds — a literal blink of an eye — to load.

Why does website speed matter?

As we mentioned, site speed can quickly determine whether a user sticks around on your website or not. But it’s actually even more important than that.

Search engines, particularly Google, place heavy importance on site speed when determining which websites to show at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).

Sorry, but you just can’t be number one if your site is moving too slow! Website speed optimization helps increase search engine optimization, or SEO) — so, it shouldn’t be ignored.

How to Improve Website Speed

Once you’ve determined your website speed for both desktop and mobile, you’ll probably begin to wonder how to make your site faster and more efficient.

This is the process of website optimization, which can help increase your rankings in the SERP, retain audiences for longer, secure more leads and even boost sales. If you’re ready to start optimizing your website speed, check out Progress Asia’s LinkedIn resources (https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/progress-asia/) on website optimization to understand website optimization from the ground up and learn how to make your website the best it can possibly be.

As for testing website speed, there are many website speed test tools online. Here are the ones we recommend:

1. Google PageSpeed Insights

It makes sense that if you’re trying to boost website speed, and by extension SEO, you’d turn to a search engine for help. Google PageSpeed Insights is a popular website speed testing tool that scores your site speed on a scale from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the better your website is performing.

To account for your mobile traffic, Google PageSpeed Insights can generate tests for both your desktop and mobile website. The best part is that your score is followed by suggestions to improve your site’s performance, some of which you can implement right away.

Lastly, PageSpeed Insights tests your website against Google’s core web vitals, breaking down the time it takes your website to reach each stage of the page loading process. Core web vitals allow for a more nuanced understanding of what your page load looks like and how it affects the user experience.

2. Pingdom

Like Google PageSpeed Insights, the Pingdom page speed test ranks your website speed from 0 to 100, but this tool is known to be easier to navigate and better for beginners.

You can test your website based on location, and it will provide your performance grade, page load time, page size, content size (broken down by content type), and the total number of requests as well as offer suggestions for improving speed. It’s also easy to re-run a test by clicking the screenshot of your page.

Pingdom offers more detailed analyses, too, to help anyone — from novice to expert — troubleshoot problems and make changes quickly. Each of the seven criteria of your site’s load time gets a letter grade and a simple explanation to help you prioritize the most important areas of improvement.

3. WebPageTest

Created by a Google Chrome engineer, WebPageTest is a free site speed testing tool with more advanced data and insights than many other free tools offer (although there’s also a simple test option if you’re looking for something more straightforward). Test your website speed across various browsers, devices, and locations, and the tool will even generate reports and insights to identify issues and improve site speed.

WebPageTest is also unique in that it frames its performance summary as questions: “Is it quick?”, “Is it usable?”, and “Is it resilient?” — all of which contribute to a user’s experience on?your pages. Answers to each of these are phrased in an accessible way.

Scroll down and you’ll see a detailed breakdown of page performance. There’s a visual page load timeline, a waterfall chart, videos of the page load, and an overview of core web vitals. The test even shows your results from each of the three times it loads your page during a test.

How to Respond to a Bad Test Result

It’s not difficult to find an online speed checker and plugin your site’s URL. The challenging part is figuring out what to do with your results, especially if your site’s score is less than ideal.

After running a test, you might receive a grade that’s lower than expected. First, realize this doesn’t mean your website is necessarily bad or designed poorly. Rather, there are improvements you can implement to make it even better. Here are some additional things to keep in mind if you get a poor speed score:

• Different tools grade performance in different ways, so you might receive a positive score on one test and a negative score on another. Consider trying multiple free tools to get a broader view of how fast your website is.
• Often, a low score can be addressed with a few quick fixes. You’re not condemned to a low score forever.
• While it’s possible to get a perfect score on these tests, it’s very difficult and might even be impossible for certain websites. If your tool of choice scores sites from 0 to 100, aim for a score around 90, then do some more tweaking if you want to bring it higher.
• Those a low score might seem harsh, performance truly is one of the most important factors when it comes to user experience — you want to get it right.