How do I measure my website speed?
Site Speed: How and Why it Matters
Site speed matters.
If you run a website, site speed has an impact on your business.
Google ranks pages based on how fast they load and the importance of site speed is increasing every year.
In addition to decreasing bounce rates, faster loading pages can lead to increased time spent per visit, more conversions, and higher revenue for your company.
If you want to improve your ranking in Google's search results and increase traffic/sales from people who land on your site, learn about site speed.
What is a good website loading speed?
When considering site speed, you should ask yourself how it will affect your business and what constitutes a good website loading time.
In general, the average web surfer would like to see pages load within three seconds or less; however, building websites for e-commerce companies might require shorter page loading times in order to support increased bounce rates.
Client-side factors that affect the website loading speed
- Size and number of images on the page
- Quality, size, and number of assets used.
- Scripts for animations or functionality such as a slider show that has to be loaded each time it triggers an event.
- The amount of AJAX requests made by your website determines how long they will take to load.
- File types and sizes
- Too many Widgets and Plugins (We're looking at you WordPress)
- Bandwidth and traffic volume to accommodate high traffic.
- Hosting company
- Server location
- The number of redirects on your website.
- Page size and load time in all browsers, including mobile devices
- Asynchronous requests: loading multiple assets at the same time to reduce wait times for page loads.
- Browser type (responsive vs non-responsive) and its specific capabilities.
How to check your site speed
PageSpeed Insights analyzes your web page content and provides options for making the page load faster.
- Go to PageSpeed Insights
- Test your site on both desktop and mobile by entering your web page URL.
Improving your page experience with Google Search Console reports
Google Search Console is a free service that provides you with insight into how Google views your site, including the speed at which it loads in all browsers, including mobile devices.
You'll see metrics for desktop browsers and those on Android and iOS phones as well as tablets.
If you have not set up and verified your site with Google Search Console, you can do so by:
- Logging into Google Search Console,
- Selecting Add a site, and entering your website's URL.
- Click on Verify this Site from the dropdown that appears once you enter your site's information.
- Choose a verification method that works for you.
- Use the Core Web Vitals Reports to determine if your site has room for improvement.
Conclusion
It's clear that site speed is important and there are ways to make your website faster.
If these tasks are outside your realm of expertise or you need help determining what can be done start a conversation with our team today.
