Checking the website loading speed: TOP tools

The article content

Every owner of an Internet site would like to see their product at the top of search results. This is what provides them with increased visibility for the target audience, increases the number of visits to the site, and with it the number of orders, business income in general. But promoting resources is a rather complex task, which involves taking into account a huge number of factors and indicators. One of them can rightfully be called page loading speed. Here we are talking about how quickly the pages of your resource will load in response to a user click. This parameter is extremely important not only for search engines, but also directly for users who want to access the desired information, goods, services as quickly as possible.

Practice shows that the speed of loading a site is directly related to user experience. If a person has to wait for pages to load, then he quickly loses interest and goes to look for those solutions that save him from unnecessary and unnecessary waste of time. But fast pages, on the contrary, will attract attention and make him linger, and perhaps even place an order on the site. As a result, you do not get the desired profit from slow sites, even if your products are really high-quality and useful. It is important to understand that in the case of approximately the same conditions, users will choose the site that loads faster.

That is, the speed of loading a site is a factor that has a significant impact on the promotion of the site in search results, its conversion, bounce rate and many other KPIs that play an important role in business. This means that it is in your interests to control it and take appropriate measures aimed at improving it. If you ignore this and do not implement measures that have a direct impact on optimizing the site loading speed, you can be sure that the audience will go to competitors, and all the efforts that you previously made to promote your online presence will be in vain, empty. Time and effort will be wasted, and you will not achieve the desired result. This will be especially relevant for mobile devices, because their access channels and capacities are significantly inferior to the capabilities of personal computers, and the share of mobile traffic has been steadily growing for several years and does not plan to decline.

Today's review will be devoted to such an issue as site loading speed. In particular, we will tell you how the Google search engine treats this issue, we will provide indicators of this parameter, which can be considered the norm today. We will point out a number of characteristics that should be taken into account when analyzing the site loading speed. We will also introduce you to the services that you can use in practice to determine the loading speed of your site. The information provided will allow you to understand the importance of the upcoming work, as well as select those software solutions that will be most effective and convenient in practice in your case. After studying our material, you will know how to measure the loading speed of a site and will be able to do this work yourself.

Perhaps you will also be interested in such a question as «Fast DNS servers: why speed is so important here».

Why site loading speed is so important: a view from Google

The story of website loading speed and its importance in the promotion of Internet sites began more than 15 years ago. For the first time, the fact that this indicator would be used in the Google search engine as one of the key ranking factors in search for desktop devices was reported by the employees of the corporation Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts in 2010, having issued a fairly large review in a specialized blog for webmasters. We would like to draw attention to the fact that this was not officially announced, that is, if you study the ranking rules of this search engine, you will not read about it anywhere. That is, we were talking directly about indirect influence. But it exists and it must definitely be taken into account.

The developers of the Google search engine decided not to stop there. Since mid-2018, page loading speed has become a key ranking factor for mobile search as well. At that time, representatives of the corporation claimed that such a moment affects only those pages that load the slowest. But practice has shown that this is relevant for absolutely all sites. Today, the importance of tracking this factor for both desktop and mobile traffic has already been officially established.

In parallel with Google, many other search engines have also begun to take this indicator into account, although there have been no official recommendations on this matter yet. But still, every owner of an online site who would like to see their resource at the top of organic search should understand how important it is to optimize the loading speed, as well as ensure regular tracking of this parameter.

What should be the site loading speed: standardized indicators

We will not talk about any standards for site loading speed, since this indicator is not precisely regulated. But still, today we can highlight a number of points that have been established empirically during the analysis of user behavior. Thus, employees of the Amazon marketplace have found that in the case when the site loading speed, due to certain factors, decreases by only 100 ms, the sales level drops by 1%. But the BBC notes that they lose approximately 10% of users when the site loads for 1 second. Mobile traffic was also analyzed. And here the situation was not very rosy either: just 1 second of additional waiting led to the conversion rates dropping by 20%. This allows us to say that slow loading simply drives customers away from your site.

These are just a few examples, but in reality there are many, many of them. But the result is still the same: the faster your online page loads, the more conversions and direct sales you will get from it, and the higher the user satisfaction will be. The number of pages viewed and the total time the user spends on the site will also increase significantly, there will be fewer bounces, and the flow of organic traffic will be in consistently high positions.

Also, by analyzing all these studies, we can make a number of specific conclusions that, by and large, can be taken as the norm in page loading speed:

the optimal loading time is less than 2 seconds;
if the loading speed is more than 3 seconds, then about half of the users will leave your site and will not wait;
conversion rates are affected not by seconds, but literally milliseconds of delay.

Once again, all this confirms the fact that it is in your interests to optimize the loading speed. And in order to understand what numbers we are talking about, this parameter needs to be monitored with enviable regularity.

Additional indicators that play an important role in the analysis of site speed

Along with directly checking the site loading speed, it is also necessary to pay attention to a number of additional points that play an important role in this process. In particular, we are talking about the following characteristics:

TTFB, that is, the time to receive the first byte. This parameter refers to the time interval directly from the start of the page loading until the moment the first information is received. Many people consider this parameter to be one of the key ones during the optimization of the server on which the site is hosted.
Page display start, or as it is also called, the start of rendering, the first page rendering. This is the time interval from the start of page loading until the first bit of content is displayed on it.
DOM loading, that is, the actual loading time. Here we are talking about the costs of loading all the basic elements of the site page, after which it will be able to interact with the user.
Full page loading. This is the time interval during which absolutely all the main and deferred elements on the page will be displayed and processed.

During a comprehensive analysis, it is extremely important to take into account absolutely all of these indicators, since each of them has a significant impact on the final site loading speed. Moreover, a comprehensive analysis will allow you to identify truly problematic elements and understand where exactly the problem is hidden in your case.

Now let's move on to a direct acquaintance with the tools for measuring the site loading speed.

Determining the site loading speed

Not every site owner understands exactly how quickly his site loads for other users. The fact is that the loading speed is affected by a fairly wide variety of third-party factors, including the power of the user's device, the type of browser and its cache, the speed of mobile or home Internet, the distance at which the client is from the server equipment, as well as a number of other points. Therefore, if the site loads quickly enough on your device, this does not guarantee that the same will be observed on other user devices. And this means that it is advisable for you to use special tools to measure the site loading speed in Google and other search engines.

Now we suggest that you get acquainted with the analysis tools that provide fairly accurate and comprehensive results. This is what will allow you to understand how quickly your site works and how it all looks from the user audience.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix is one of the leading services that you can use to perform a site speed test. It uses data from Google and Yahoo search engines as a basis. Accordingly, at the output we get scores called PageSpeed Score and YSlow Score. Here you will see all the indicators that will directly affect the loading speed, page size, the speed of the first and largest content rendering, as well as the number of requests. Google Lighthouse is used to measure performance here.

We would like to draw your attention to the fact that both PageSpeed and YSlow indicators have separate recommendations, some of which overlap. But you should still study each tab and understand what will be relevant when working with each of the search engines. In particular, when checking PageSpeed, the main focus here is still on mobile devices, while YSlow does not provide for an additional division into mobile and accessible gadgets, that is, the assessments here will be identical.

We would like to draw special attention to the Waterfall tab. Here you will find the so-called "waterfall map", which clearly demonstrates the behavior of the page during its loading. It will display the order of entered requests, the status of the HTTP response, information about where the file is loaded from, as well as its size. Detailed information is provided about the file loading time and its execution. This information will be quite sufficient to evaluate the performance of your own site, as well as identify problems, understand the reasons for their occurrence and, as a result, eliminate them as quickly as possible. Conveniently, this service also offers a set of reference documentation that will allow you to correctly interpret the data obtained from the Waterfall tab.

One more thing: registered users will be able to choose 1 of 7 possible server regions available for analysis here. You will also be able to choose the browsers that suit you for testing, be it desktop or mobile Chrome, Firefox. And here you can choose Internet speed yourself. The entire testing history will be saved and, if necessary, you will be able to return to it at any time for a deeper acquaintance. Information about rendering, TTFB data, DOM loading and a number of other information will be available to you in the Timings tab.

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is a free online tool that will allow you to measure the loading speed of a Google site, evaluate the overall performance of the site, and also provide a set of recommendations for its improvement. Here, as in the previous version, Lighthouse-based technologies are also used. Suitable for assessing the speed of page loading on desktop and mobile devices. At the output, we get a score on a scale from 0 to 100 points. If the indicators are low, the tool can recommend you, as an option, to optimize scripts, compress images, etc.

The main metrics that can be assessed in the PageSpeed Insights tool are:

FCP, that is, the first content rendering. This is the time interval that the loading will take until the moment the first bit of content from the DOM is displayed. Here is a percentage distribution of information based on page loads over the past month. The following are used as standardized indicators: speed up to 1 sec is high, 1-3 sec is average, over 3 sec is low.
FID, that is, the first input delay. This is the time from the moment the user first interacted with the site until the moment the browser is able to respond to his request. Here you will also see the output information as a percentage. Based on this parameter, the speed will be considered high if it is up to 100 ms, average if it is in the range from 100 to 300 ms, and low if it is over 300 ms.
Page loading simulation. Here you will receive information on such indicators as the first content loading time, content loading speed index, loading time for a sufficient portion of the material, the end time of the central processor, the maximum possible potential delay after the first input, and the loading time for interaction.

We would like to draw your attention to the fact that the report will contain not only simulated data, but also real information taken from Chrome user activity reports. This is what will allow you to get a more objective picture at the output. Recommendations here will be grouped into separate categories, offering an effective solution to eliminate the identified problems and speed up the site loading.

Conventionally, the entire audit of this service can be divided into 3 separate categories:

Optimization. In this section, you will find a list of recommendations for improving page loading speed, as well as approximate data on the indicators that can be achieved by using this or that advice from the site.
Diagnostics. Go to this tab to find information about the compliance of the page you are checking with the system recommendations in the context of the site's online development.
Successful audits. Here you will find data on all checks, the results of which were highly rated by the service.

PageSpeed Insights offers a truly comprehensive approach to determining the site loading speed. It is constantly improving its own evaluation algorithms, requirements in accordance with current requests from search engines and the user audience. If necessary, you can use it in conjunction with other analysis and optimization methods.

Pingdom Tools

Pingdom Tools is an online service that allows you to analyze the loading speed of websites and check their performance. At the output, you receive detailed information about the loading speed of different page elements, its size, and a number of other parameters. The information provided will allow you to track the response time, site availability, and identify problem areas that slow down the work. When the speed test is complete, you will receive a report, among other things, including information about the loading time of each element, page size, and the number of requests that were sent to the server.

You will be able to run testing from servers in 7 regions. The report will also contain recommendations for 7 key indicators. Each of them will be given a grade: “A” is excellent, “C” and “D” is good, and “F” is bad. You will also see what content is predominant during loading, be it style files, images, scripts, and also learn their size and number of requests. And you will also see from which site more scripts or certain data are loaded. Here, by analogy with GTmetrix, a "request waterfall" is implemented, containing detailed data on each of them, be it file size, response header, download time. If desired, you can additionally sort requests by the order of their loading, type and response time, as well as other parameters.

Pingdom Tools will notify you of problems with the availability or performance of the site by email or SMS. Users highly appreciated the simple and clear interface of the application, the provision of visual, detailed information for site owners and developers, the ability to conveniently generate performance reports, as well as the availability of recommendations to improve the existing picture.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest – an open-source online tool that allows you to perform a comprehensive analysis of website performance and provides recommendations for optimizing their performance. With its help, you can quickly and comprehensively assess how quickly your site's online pages load on different browsers (both mobile and desktop), devices, in different geolocations in America, Asia, Europe, Australia and even Africa. That is, you can create a simulation of real site usage conditions, and then perform an in-depth analysis. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that real browsers will be used here. You choose the Internet speed at which the testing will be performed.

There is a fairly impressive list of advanced settings here. For example, you can see what the loading speed will be in the event of a repeat visit to the tested page. The basic settings provide for 3 consecutive tests, as a result of which the worst indicators will be collected and provided for subsequent analysis. But by and large, you can study detailed information on each option. At the top of the page, you will see ratings for the most important characteristics. In particular, “A” and “B” will indicate excellent results, “C” - average, and “D” - poor. We are talking about the following parameters:

time to first byte;
use of Gzip compression;
keep-alive, i.e. constant HTTP connection;
use of CDN for static content, be it css, js, images;
caching of static materials in the browser;
compression of images.

Below you will find quantitative test results for such characteristics as first byte time, download time, start of rendering, number of DOM elements. For parameters such as “Document Loading”, i.e. the actual page loading speed, as well as “Full Page Load”, you will find additional information on both the time itself and the number of requests, the size of the downloaded information.

The “Waterfall” itself is presented on the “Main” page with the test results. Here all requests coming from the page will be listed sequentially, as well as detailed information on each of them, namely:

The “Content Breakdown” tab will contain information on the number of requests and downloaded bytes, distributed depending on the file type.
The “Performance Review” tab offers to study data on Keep-Alive support, compression, compression, caching, CDN.
The Request Map tab will allow you to get a clear and quite interesting picture, presented in the form of a request map. Alternatively, this can be a list of services that were connected via Google Tag Manager.
The Domain tab contains information on the number of requests and the number of bytes, but here an additional breakdown of the domain used is already provided.

It is convenient that this tool also allows you to track performance trends. In particular, you will be able to access information for the last 13 months, as well as a set of recommendations for solving identified performance problems. This is what will allow site owners and developers to improve the user experience as quickly and easily as possible.

Chrome DevTools

Chrome DevTools is a set of tools built directly into the Google Chrome browser. Its capabilities cover the scope of activities of web developers, software testers, site owners and many other specialists. Here you can simulate different devices, track errors related to loading the site, identify their cause. You can use this tool to solve a wide range of tasks:

debugging program code: studying and editing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, identifying and correcting errors in real time;
testing adaptability by emulating different devices and screen sizes, making sure that the site is displayed and works correctly on each of them;
checking network requests by monitoring traffic, monitoring site loading, analyzing server responses;
instantly making changes to markup, style directly in the browser with their simultaneous display.

Among other things, you can also check the site for loading speed in Chrome DevTools. Lighthouse technology is also used here, although the display of results here will be slightly different from other similar services. In particular, here you will see 5 main metrics along with detailed information on each of them.

You can open this tool directly in your Google Chrome browser by clicking on the key combination Ctrl+Shift+I (for Windows) or Cmd+Opt+I (for Mac). You can also call it through the main menu, going to the "Additional Tools" tab, and then to "Developer Tools". If you need more detailed and extended information, go to the Network tab. Here you will be presented with information about the size of the downloaded data, the number of requests, the download time, as well as detailed data for each individual request.

Dotcom-tools

Dotcom-tools is a set of free tools designed to perform testing and control over the performance of sites and servers from around the world. With its help, you can evaluate the loading time and a number of other indicators that directly affect the efficiency of the site. This solution will be useful in the work of webmasters, site owners, marketers and a number of other specialists. In particular, with their help you can check the loading speed from several points in 25 cities around the world. Thanks to this, you will be able to understand where your site loads quickly and where it loads slowly. Moreover, the speed will be checked not only during the first visit, but also during the return visit.

Before starting the testing, you can choose the most suitable browser for yourself, such as desktop Chrome, Firefox, IE, as well as mobile analogs for Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone operating systems. In total, over 70 device variations are available to users. The test results will show the average page loading speed for each of the cities studied. You will also receive information about the page size, as well as the number of different server responses.

The main advantages of this tool, according to users, are:

Free to use. All tools that will allow you to perform comprehensive testing of the site's performance will be available free of charge.
Ensuring global coverage. With a variety of geographic locations, you can see a detailed picture of your resource's performance in different operating conditions.
Comprehensive approach. You are provided with an impressive set of tools that allow you to comprehensively evaluate the operation of your site and identify weak points.

If you go to the Page Speed Insight tab, you can get additional information from this service. By clicking on the "Waterfall" button, you will get access to a waterfall of queries for each individual city. For more convenient and quick perception, fast and slow queries are highlighted in color.

Additional tools for determining site loading speed

Along with these services that we listed above, the option to determine site loading speed is also presented in many other tools. In particular, to obtain the necessary information, you can also use the following software solutions:

Google Search Console. With this tool, you can track the loading speed indicators for both mobile and desktop versions of sites on a time scale. This information will come here directly from the report “Ease of use of the Chrome browser.”
Think with Google - Test My Site. A platform that allows you to run a test of the loading speed of the mobile version of the site. At the output, you will receive information about the current and average loading speed, collected over the past month. If necessary, you can manually add competitors' sites here, which will allow you to compare your and their indicators. It is convenient that here you can also roughly determine the potential income of the site, indicating information about monthly traffic, conversion rates, and income received. That is, here you can assume how much your income will increase if you increase the site loading speed by literally half a second, a second. At the beginning of the review, we already said that even milliseconds play an important role here.
Google Analytics. The service has extremely broad functionality, including the provision of information on the loading speed of sites in the Google search engine. Along with this, you can also get data on each individual page, as well as on the deviation of indicators from the average data depending on which browser, city, country, provider is being used. To get such information, you need to go to the "Behavior" tab on the service, and then select the "Site loading speed" option here.
Uptrends. Using this tool, you can quickly check how your site loads in the mobile and desktop versions, get a Google Page Speed score based on the size of the loaded page and the number of requests. When starting testing, you can choose 1 of 10 available cities. If we are talking about checking the loading speed of the mobile version of the page, then here you can additionally specify the smartphone model (about 20 options are available), as well as the high-speed channel, be it 2G, 3G, 4G. In the case of working with desktop versions, here you can select the browser screen resolution and high-speed channel during testing. There will also be recommendations for troubleshooting errors and problems. They are identical to what we talked about in the context of the PageSpeed Insights tool. It is also possible to use a waterfall of requests, statistics on the number of requests based on the size and type of the object.
Site24x7. Unlike other tools presented in our selection, here you can check the site loading speed for more than 100 different locations from different countries of the world. Upon completion of the test, you will be shown the speed by PageSpeed, as well as the page size, number of requests, and loading time. The request waterfall will also be present here, although in a more compressed form. You will also be able to analyze the types of files being loaded and the recommended materials that will be directly pulled from PageSpeed Insights.
Sucuri Load Time Tester. This service will come in handy when you need to quickly and easily find out the time before the first byte is loaded, as well as the time it takes to fully load the site. This can be done with reference to 16 different locations. There is also a request waterfall here.
Load Impact. Using this tool, you can test the performance of your site and understand what load it can withstand. Here, user activity on the site is emulated for several minutes, and then you are provided with a graph of response time fluctuations based on the number of requests and the number of connected users. If you do not make any custom settings, then such a test will last about 3 minutes and emulate the work of up to 25 virtual users. After registration, you can make adjustments to these settings, increasing the test time to 15 minutes, and the load - up to 100 virtual users. The ability to increase audience activity is available only in paid tariff plans.
Yellow Lab Tools. This service is designed to identify problems with website performance and the quality of its program code. A graph of the dependence of the loading time of all scripts is provided as a separate report, which will allow you to identify existing errors and warnings. You choose the type of device whose operation you want to test, be it a personal computer, tablet or smartphone. The final information will be provided by loading the page through PhantomJS, as well as collecting various metrics. This tool is more suitable for optimizing the site code, although the information provided will also include page loading speed.

Now you know what tools for analyzing site loading speed the modern market offers and you will be able to use them in your practice.

Let's summarize

Site speed is a really important factor for both search engines that rank sites and for ordinary users. It plays a serious role in mobile and desktop search, and has a direct impact on site conversion rates. Despite the lack of strict standards, it is still important to understand that waiting for 1 second is an excellent indicator, while 2 seconds can be considered the norm, and 3 and more are already bad numbers that should make you think about optimizing your site.

As you can see, the modern market offers a huge variety of tools that will allow you to perform the appropriate analysis and find out the necessary numbers. But not all of them will be available to all of you. In particular, today there are a number of restrictions for users from certain regions of the world. And here we recommend additionally connecting mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service to work, which will allow you to bypass these restrictions.

Moreover, this solution will provide you with the highest possible flexibility and functionality of work on the Internet, effective bypass of regional blocking, protection from hacker attacks, guaranteed confidentiality. You can learn more about mobile proxies at the link https://mobileproxy.space/en/user.html?buyproxy. Also at your service will be specialists of the round-the-clock technical support service, who will help to eliminate difficulties and problems in the operation of the product as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Share this article:

Choosing reliable proxy apps for Android: solutions worth considering