15 Critical Tools for Website Speed Measurement That Are Accurate

website speed

Website speed correlates with the bounce rate. If you have a slow website, people are likely to abandon it for another site.   A fast website, on the other hand, encourages visitors to stay on and browse its contents.

Having a fast website improves the user experience and boosts your SEO. For this reason, you should always look to increase website speed, such as by improving your website design. The internet has several free and premium tools that allow you to measure the speed of your site and identify the areas that need improvement.

Terminologies Associated With Website Speed

Before you start analysing the speed of your website, it essential to understand the following terms.

Time to First Byte

This is a metric that measures the responsiveness of a web server. It refers to how quickly the server responds when a user keys in your URL on the web browser.

HTTP Requests

These are a series of messages between your website and the server that hosts it. If your site makes many requests, it becomes slow.

website design banner

JavaScript and CSS

JavaScript and CSS are elements that affect the critical rendering path. If your site has many of these, it can hurt the loading speed.

Minification

Minification involves the removal of surplus elements from your website. Its objective is to achieve a minimalist design and improve website load time.

Bests Tools for Website Speed Measurement

Here are the best tools that are useful in assessing the speed of your website.

  • Uptrends
  • Perftool
  • Keycdn Speed Test
  • Dotcom-Monitor
  • Varvy Page Speed Optimisation
  • PageScoring
  • Sucuri Load Time Tester
  • Google PageSpeed Insights
  • YSlow
  • Pingdom Speed Test
  • Pagelocity
  • WebPageTest
  • Google Chrome DevTools
  • Yellow Lab Tools
  • GTmetrix

Uptrends

website speed

Source: uptrends.com

The standout feature of Uptrends is that it has many website speed measurement tools. It then generates two reports; one in the form of a waterfall chart and another in domain groups format.

Waterfall charts show the cumulative effect of the metrics that affect your website speed. Domain groups divide the resources on your website into categories such as ads, social media posts, third-party content, and so forth.

Another exciting feature of Uptrends is real-time browser monitoring, which allows you to experience what a visitor on your website experiences. You can also activate a feature that blocks third-party content that can slow down your website.

Uptrends offers a 30-day free trial, after which you can choose a paid package according to your needs.

PerfTool

website speed

Source: github.com

PerfTool is an open-source tool that emerged as a project on GitHub, a famous online repository. It works by collecting information about a website, analysing it and then generating a report that is easy to understand.

Additionally, PerfTool inspects over 200 elements that affect website load time. It allows you to measure multiple webpages at a go. You can also compare the current speed of a specific page to its speed on previous days using this tool.

KeyCDN Speed Test

website speed

Source: keycdn.com

KeyCDN is one of the fastest tools for analysing website speed. It allows you to measure speed from 14 locations worldwide, including Singapore and New York.

The reports show the number of HTTP requests made by your website and the average loading speed. The tool is responsive to mobile phones and has the features of a standard content delivery network.  

A content delivery network is a network of servers and data centres that are designed to offer speed, scalability and availability to users. Besides increasing the loading speed, the CDN also reduces data loss. These features make KeyCDN one of the best tools for analysing website performance.

Dotcom-Monitor

website speed

Source: dotcom-tools.com

Dotcom-monitor allows you to assess the speed of your site from 25 locations, all at once. With other tools, you have to run the tests one at a time.

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The tool has a simple interface and generates reports that are easy to understand.  The reports show the elements that are slowing down your site and allow you to monitor your website throughout.

Dotcom-Monitor allows you to check and diagnoses errors on your webpages. You can perform a ping test to measure the availability and response time. The best thing is that it is available for free.

Varvy Page Speed Optimisation

website speed

Source: varvy.com

Varvy Page Speed Optimisation analyses your website and generates detailed reports showing issues affecting page speed, JavaScript, CSS, resource diagrams, and services.

The tool is different from others in that it has a designated section for SEO. In this section, you can learn how to optimise your site for a better rank in search results.  You can also learn how to improve site speed by enabling compression, optimising JavaScript and CSS, using browser caching, and minimising redirects, and so on.

PageScoring

website speed

Source: pagescoring.com

PageScoring has an easy to use interface and a minimalist outlook. Its reports cover several aspects of website performance, including website speed, page sizes, domain lookups, connection times, and redirection times.

If you are new to using website performance analysis tools, PageScoring is your best bet. You only need to enter the domain name, and the tool will return a detail report showing how long contents take to load. Even better, it allows you to measure performance in real-time.

Sucuri Load Time Tester

website speed

Source: Sucuri.net

The Sucuri Load Time Tester measures the time to the first byte and then grades your site from A to F.  Besides testing the performance, Sucuri also has back up tools and offers web security and protection features.

Sucuri improves the loading speed of your website and its security features protect your site from DDoS attacks, hacking and other malicious breaches. You do not need to install special software to use this service.

Google PageSpeed Insights

website speed

Source: developers.google.com

Google PageSpeed Insights is perhaps the best website performance tool on the internet. It serves as the source of information for the majority of tools that measure website speed.  It is available for both desktop and mobile platforms.

PageSpeed measures the time it takes to load above-the-fold content and a full webpage. It then returns a rating in percentage format, with anything above 85% considered to be an excellent score. The mobile version of the tools measures user experience and gives suggestions on how to optimise elements such as font size, button sizes, and so forth.

It is worth noting that the performance reports generated by PageSpeed Insights are relative. This means that they are based on factors that are not affected by the network, such as configuration, internal resources and HTML.

YSlow

website speed

Source; yslow.org

YSlow is Yahoo’s answer to Google PageSpeed Insights. It is an open-source platform that assesses all factors that affect your website speed and the returns grade for each of the factors.

Pingdom Speed Test

website speed

Source: Pingdom.com

The Pingdom Speed Test is one of the most popular analysis tools on the internet. It generates four types of reports – page analysis, page history, performance grades, and waterfall charts.

The performance grade reports give suggestions on how to improve your website.  The page analysis reports are more detailed and offer insights into the health of your website and the loading speed.

Pingdom also allows you to filter and sort the information in the reports. You can broadcast your results using the inbuilt sharing functionality.

Pagelocity

website speed

Source: Pagelocity.com

Pagelocity uses a unique approach to test the performance of websites. In addition to rating sites out of 100, the results factor in code, SEO, social media, and other resources.

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You do not have to sign up to use this platform.  When you create a free account, you access more features like comparing your site to rival websites. This feature allows you to see your strength and weaknesses as compared to your closest competitor.

Pagelocity analyses all elements on your webpages, including headings, keywords, alt text, images, and so forth. Its reports are presented in attractive graphics formats that are easy to digest. The tool is available on all major platforms.

WebPageTest

website speed

Source: webpagetest.org

WebPageTest is an exhaustive testing tool that includes 40 different locations and 25 web browsers. It grades websites from A to F, based on metrics such as caching, compression and time to the first byte. 

Other features included in this tool are content blocking, disabling JavaScript, video capture, and so forth. This service is suitable for global websites, as it targets people living in various locations around the world.

Google Chrome DevTools

website speed

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Source: developers.google.com

If you are familiar with Google’s Chrome web browser, you have probably heard of the inbuilt Chrome DevTools feature. You can access it by opening the browser and pressing F12.

DevTools has a panel that shows the elements that take the most time to load on your website. The network panel allows you to record and analyse network activity and view the loading information for your website and its elements. You can also see the resources that are blocking the critical rendering path.

Yellow Lab Tools

website speed

Source: yellowlab.tools

Yellow Tab Tools measures website speed and returns a score based on page size, HTTP requests and server configuration. It allows you to simulate the loading of your website on desktops and handheld devices to see how it performs on each platform.

Yellow Labs is an open-source platform that is free to use.

GTmetrix

website speed

Source: gtmetrix.com

GTmetrix sources its data from YSlow and Google PageSpeed Insights to provide a detailed report of your website performance. It then grades your site from A to F.

Another exciting feature of GTmetrix is the ability to test across different types of connections, including cable, dial-up, wireless and fibre optic. Other advanced features include the ad blocker and video playback.

The ad blocker simulates the speed of your website if it had no adverts running on it. The video playback feature shows you the elements that your website loading speed.

You can use this tool without registration, but a free account means that you get access to more powerful features. You can save the reports on a CSV file that is downloadable.

Lastly, GTmetrix offers many options to monitor your website – you can track it hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. This tool is reliable, and it is used by leading companies such as HP, Nike, and PayPal, and so on.

Conclusion

The options mentioned above are the best when it comes to measuring website speed. Most of them give suggestions on factors that slow your website down and how to remove such factors. Some of the most common remedies to slow load times include image compression, reducing HTTP request, using a quicker web server, and caching.

Regardless of your choice, always make sure that you are aware of the latest developments in the industry. If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, your site must always load fast. 

Get in touch with us for more tips on how to optimise your website in Singapore. Our team will help you get ahead of the competition by create a custom web design for your brand. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author

tom koh seo expert singapore

Tom Koh

Tom is the CEO and Principal Consultant of MediaOne, a leading digital marketing agency. He has consulted for MNCs like Canon, Maybank, Capitaland, SingTel, ST Engineering, WWF, Cambridge University, as well as Government organisations like Enterprise Singapore, Ministry of Law, National Galleries, NTUC, e2i, SingHealth. His articles are published and referenced in CNA, Straits Times, MoneyFM, Financial Times, Yahoo! Finance, Hubspot, Zendesk, CIO Advisor.

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