The loading speed of a web page is vital to obtain more visits, sales, and other benefits. If the load is slow, a significant drop in views is generated and therefore a negative experience for the user that is difficult to remedy, so it is very important to be able to identify How to measure the loading speed of a web page? , and from there adopt the necessary measures to optimize it and achieve better organic positioning.
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Free tools to measure the speed of a web page
It is possible to find different types of platforms to fulfill this task, but some of the most used by experts are:
GTmetrix
Evaluates the load time of a page and provides recommendations on how to optimize it. Provides a comprehensive report and helps detect where bottlenecks are, features include PageSpeed and YSlow scores and recommendations (a project that analyzes page speed based on the rules of high-performance sites), details of page load, i.e. time, size, and numbers of requests.
Simply entering the link on the page starts the testing process. It is advisable to create an account to take better advantage of the virtues of the site, but it is also key to modify the region where the test will be executed, establish which will be the browser and device, what type of network, among other data of interest.
- The report presents the Performance Scores section, in which the score colors determine the urgency of the required adjustments. However, a comparison is also shown with the average of websites analyzed by the tool in the last thirty days, where an indicator next to the numerical value details whether the page is above or below the average.
- Page Details represents multiple reports separated by guides. Through them, it is possible to identify the points that need to be corrected so that the loading time of the page is reduced. They are PageSpeed (guide with a complete report with all the points evaluated by the tool and ordered by priority), Yslow (similar to the PageSpeed guide report), Waterfall (cascade report), Timings (presentation of a timeline of page load), Video (visualization of the page loading in practice) and History (historical performance of the page).
Google PageSpeed Insights
This Google tool provides us with data on the actual performance of the pages on both mobile devices and computers, as well as tips to improve them.
Web page speed tools like this require the site link to be entered for the analysis process to start and suggestions to be generated.
- Recommendations highlighted in red provide notices of improvements that should be applied to generate more impact on page load time, those highlighted in yellow deliver notices of improvements that do not influence much on page speed and should not be prioritized, while that those highlighted in green refer to the positive points of the page.
- The final report provides data for two metrics: First Contentful Paint (measures the time from navigation to the moment the browser processes the first bit -information- of DOM content) and DOMContentLoaded (it is an event that is fired when the initial markup of a page has been analyzed). The average of each of these metrics is compared with all the pages included in the CrUX report. Once this is done, depending on the position of each metric in the total pages included, they are assigned to one of the categories: fast, slow, or normal.
Google Mobile Test
The Think With Google site maintains that a one-second delay in mobile device load times can impact mobile conversions by up to 20%.
- The tool generates a report of the loading speed of a website on a mobile device. By entering the URL in the field enabled for writing, data is obtained on the loading time, where it occurs (Argentina, Mexico, Chile, etc.), and if it operates with a 3G or 4G network.
- The platform defines whether the loading is slow or fast and suggests that slow sites are those that load in more than 2.5 seconds. It also announces the monthly trend of the website.
At the moment when we ask ourselves, How to measure the loading speed of a web page? It is when we must carry out comprehensive maintenance of it. There are many tools for website speed, but the ones described here will surely save you a headache.