Website speed has a huge impact on user experience, SEO, and conversion rates. Improving website performance is essential for drawing traffic to a website and keeping site visitors engaged.
Studies show that a 1-second delay in page load time equals 11% fewer page views, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and 7% loss in conversions. This means it is critical that your website be well optimized and load as fast as possible.
With all the different components that go into making a complex website function, optimizing the speed and performance can often be a daunting task, even for experienced developers. Tools like GTmetrix and PageSpeed Insights aim to simplify this process by analyzing your website to provide a report on what is slowing it down and how you can improve it.
Here we cover how to analyze your site using GTmetrix and use that information to optimize the site's performance.
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GTmetrix
- Visit gtmetrix.com and enter the domain or URL you want to analyze
- Wait for the scan to complete and provide a report
- Review the information in each tab
- Performance: Here you'll find various statistics and how they rate in comparison the average website
TIP: Clicking the question mark (?) beside each metric will provide more details of the metric and how low the value should be for a good user experience. - Structure: Here you'll find specific details of what is hindering your site's performance
TIP: Clicking each of these will expand it to provide a description and list individual site assets affecting that particular statistic. Clicking the Learn how to improve this button will take you to a page with detailed instructions on addressing the issue. - Waterfall: This provides a request-by-request visualization of the page load, including the order in which website content loaded and how long each item took to load
- Video: Registered users can record a video of the page loading and pinpoint exactly where bottlenecks and stoppages occur
- History: Compare the current test to previous tests you've run on this domain or URL
NOTE: It is recommended to work with a qualified web developer for assistance with addressing website performance issues. If you are using a website building software such as WordPress, you can often find plugins to help improve many of these statistics, but their effectiveness may vary and adding additional plugins often results in decreased performance.
- Performance: Here you'll find various statistics and how they rate in comparison the average website