Website loading speed plays a crucial role in enhancing the user experience and is a key SEO factor determining the trust search engines place in your site. Drawing from my extensive experience in web design and development, I believe the tools listed below are sufficient to measure page loading speeds and pinpoint the files that prevent you from achieving top marks in Core Web Vitals tests.
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Best Free Tools to Accurately Measure Website Speed and Performance
Our team has compiled a guide on the best free websites and tools to precisely measure website speed and performance, helping you identify slow files and enhance the user experience.
1. Google PageSpeed Insights
Remember, this tool is official and managed by Google, so it utilizes a vast server network to obtain detailed reports about your site’s performance across all devices. Testing your site on PageSpeed Insights will provide you with comprehensive reports about every file, from images, scripts (CSS and JS), to fonts. It’s also the official tool for measuring your site’s compatibility with Web Vitals standards, which Google uses as a benchmark for analyzing user experiences over the last 28 days.
Your PageSpeed Insights reports are continually included and updated in the user interface of Google Search Console. Therefore, it’s essential to periodically review them and address any issues impacting page load times. The example below demonstrates the loading speed test for one of our blog pages, which received a perfect score.
If your site receives a red indicator after testing, it means the user experience is poor, and improvements are needed ASAP. The more you neglect Web Vitals indicators, the more your site risks being sidelined by search engine algorithms. It’s worth noting that most website loading delays often relate to using subpar hosting or a theme with unoptimized codes.
To delve deeper into this topic, I invite you to read our detailed article about the best web hosting companies, which will guide you in selecting quality servers at a cost-effective rate. It will also contribute to enhancing your technical knowledge about hosting solutions, leading to better-informed decisions to ensure an optimal user experience.
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Our team comprises true professionals. You can verify our expertise by testing our blog’s links on all the site speed measuring tools. Moreover, if you’re planning to launch a new online project, I advise you to read our guide about the steps to create a website from scratch, where we detail every phase comprehensively.
2. Web Page Test
Web Page Test is among the best free, open-source website performance monitoring tools. It also allows you to process results from the Lighthouse test related to the Chrome browser and Core Web Vitals on a single platform, making comparisons and priority file identification easier. This tool is highly advanced, and you’ll only need its services when you’ve met all website acceleration criteria, such as using professional templates, optimizing images, and scripts.
Personally, I used it when I encountered an issue with hosting Google fonts on a local server. I couldn’t understand the problem until I utilized this tool.
3. GTmetrix
GTmetrix is a reliable tool for analyzing website performance. Its reports provide all the information you need about template files and how they consume server resources over the loading time. One of GTmetrix’s standout features is the ability to conduct tests from servers located in various geographical areas. It also offers the WaterFall feature, which presents a detailed report on each file, making it easier to pinpoint troublesome files causing slow page loads. It’s true that the tool comes with a cost! However, the free services available are sufficient to identify the weak points of a template and subsequently improve loading speeds at minimal cost.
Conclusion
There are several other tools that were overlooked either because they don’t offer sufficient reports on web page files, or because they are paid services. Personally, I see no compelling reason to allocate a budget for website performance reports when Google and the other sites mentioned above offer them for free. It’s also advisable to focus on investing in one of the fast WordPress templates, which are carefully designed with simple code files to suit modern browsers and don’t consume significant resources when loading pages.
