How to measure site speed and take advantage of measurement tools to speed it up

The tool will start by analyzing the speed of the web page whose link you entered, then it will direct you to the results page within a few seconds, where you will notice that there are many detailed and useful information, as the basic information related to the speed is displayed at the top including the overall performance score, the evaluation of the quality of the structure of the page, in addition to Scores for LCP, TBT, and CLS benchmarks that rate page performance based on actual quality of use.

Below the section that includes basic speed information, you will see another section that includes a group of tabs that can be moved between to show more results, details, and other speed criteria values..

Or a tab among them is the ( Summary ) tab, which includes a timeline that shows the page loading speed based on basic speed criteria.

As for the Performance tab , it includes the results of a number of speed metrics, including FCP, LCP, Speed ​​Index, and others. It is easy to identify or remember what each metric represents by placing the mouse cursor on the question mark next to it, where a brief and simple explanation of the metric appears. And also the values ​​at which it is good.

As for the section of problems that affect the speed of the website and through which it is possible to improve the result of measuring the speed, it appears in the ( Structure ) tab in detail, and the most important ones appear in the ( Summary ) tab to the bottom of the time line that shows the page speed.

It is worth noting that the paid plans offered by the tool provide many advantages for monitoring and measuring site speed that cannot be benefited from when using the tool for free, and free registration (a free plan that requires registration without paying money) also provides some additional benefits.

You can learn more about the paid and free features of the tool by visiting the prices page on its official website.

What speed metrics does GTMetrix measure?

GTMetrix provides the results of a large number of important speed metrics that are useful for evaluating site speed based on real-time usage data, including LCP, TBT, FCP, Speed ​​Index, TTI, TTFB, and many others, and is better than most other tools in terms of quantity. and the quality of the speed parameters you measure.

PageSpeed ​​Insights – a tool from Google to measure site speed

PageSpeed ​​Insights is a free website speed measurement tool belonging to Google, which owns the most used search engine in the world, and whose search results algorithms take web page performance into account when ranking results.

PageSpeed ​​Insights rates a web page’s performance on a scale of 1 to 100, the higher the better, a higher score means the page is faster and is likely to be more user-friendly.

One of the most important features of this tool is that it provides speed results on both a computer and a smartphone, which allows you to evaluate the performance and speed of the page for different categories of audience, and thus the possibility of improving the experience of use for the vast majority of your visitors or customers of your store.

How to use PageSpeed ​​Insights to measure site speed

It is very easy to measure the speed of a website using the PageSpeed ​​Insights tool on both a smartphone and a computer. To do this, you only have to enter the web page link in the field provided on the home page of the tool’s website, then click on the ( Analyze ) button.

Within a few seconds, the tool will analyze the speed of the web page whose link you entered and show you the results. You can switch between mobile results and computer results by clicking on the mobile and computer tabs at the top, where all results change depending on what you choose.

Below the page link field, speed-related results appear according to user experiences, and each result is identified as a dot on a line that includes 3 colors: green, orange, and red:

• When the result is on the green it is good, and does not need to be improved.
• And when it’s on orange, it’s not bad but it needs improvement.
• And when it’s on red, it means it’s bad, and it needs to be improved.

By clicking on the phrase (Expand View), more information can be found about the score obtained by the page for each specific metric.

As for the overall score for evaluating the performance of the page, it appears in its own section a little lower than the results shown in the previous image, with hints indicating when it is good, when it is bad, and when it needs improvement, in addition to the values ​​of a number of speed metrics.

Under the overall performance score section, you will also see a set of tips that help improve page speed within a section entitled (Opportunities to improve performance). Download, and estimate how much time you will save from download time if you apply the advice.

What speed metrics does PageSpeed ​​Insights measure?

PageSpeed ​​​​Insights tool measures and provides the results of 9 speed metrics , most of which are important to the actual user experience, and therefore it is considered one of the powerful and effective tools for measuring website speed, and it is recommended to use it.

The speed and performance metrics that the tool measures include LCP, FID, and CLS (the main web performance indicators), as well as FCP, INP, TTFB, TTI, Speed ​​Index, and TBT on both smartphone and computer. The values ​​for some of these metrics are provided in two ways:

• The first is based on the experiences of a number of users who visited the page over the past 28 days using different versions of the Google Chrome browser, on different computers or smartphones, and using various internet connections.
• The second is based on a one-time page load, where an emulator is launched that loads the web page whose link you entered, and during that loading process it measures the values ​​of a number of accelerometers, and on the basis of these values ​​the overall performance score (not the previous values) is calculated.

It should be noted that the values ​​that appear at the top of the results page are the ones that were calculated in the first way, and the values ​​that appear below the performance result are the ones that were calculated in the second way, and as for which results are better, the results calculated in the first way better reflect user experiences because they are based on the basis of their practical experience on the website.

WebPageTest – a tool that allows speed testing in various conditions

WebPageTest measures website speed like many other tools do the job, but it offers for free many powerful features that other tools only provide for a fee or do not provide at all, as the speed test can be performed in various conditions that are determined by you , You can specify:

• The geographical location from which the page will be loaded is among more than 30 different sites, including two Arabic sites.
• The browser that will be used to visit the page and collect data, as well as a smart device from a group of devices.
• Internet connection type and speed, where you can make the connection fast or slow, and change its type between 4G, 3G, 2G, and others depending on what you want.
• The dimensions of the browser window in which the web page will be opened.
• The number of speed tests to run for the page before results are shown in order to make the results more accurate.

Plus many other test environment settings. In order to speed up and facilitate the measurement of site speed using the tool, it is also possible to choose one of the preset conditions and click directly on the test button to complete the process as simple as other tools.

How to use the WebPageTest tool to measure website speed

To measure the speed of a page of your website using this tool, you must go to its home page , enter the link of the page whose performance you want to test, and then build the test environment from the Advanced Configuration options or choose one of the pre-built test environments from the Simple setup options ( Simple Configuration ), then click on the ( Start Test ) button.

The tool will start analyzing page performance within a few seconds in most cases, and after the analysis is finished, you will be taken to the results page, which includes a text description of page speed, usability, and resilience. This description is a summary of page performance based on the results of the measurement process conducted by the tool.

The exact values ​​of the different speed metrics that the tool measures are shown below the performance summary with a timeline showing changes to the way a page is displayed within the browser window as it loads.

The tool also provides a lot of other detailed page speed information within the performance results page itself, as well as on other pages that can be navigated through the View drop-down menu at the top.

The Opportunities & Experiences page is one of the most important because it offers detailed, customized tips that are very helpful in improving website speed.

It should be noted that the WebPageTest site speed measurement tool also provides paid plans that give you a lot of additional benefits, and it expands many of the features that are available for free, so if the free options provided by the tool are not enough, you can view the plans page and their prices and purchase one of the plans to get more Options and features.

What speed metrics does WebPageTest measure?

WebPageTest measures the values ​​of a large number of website speed metrics, including but not limited to Core Web Vitals, FCP, TTFB, Speed ​​Index, On Load, Page load time, etc. Accelerometers in different ways help to understand it better.

Google Search Console – includes a report showing the performance of the site’s pages

All previous tools do not provide the ability to monitor the performance of a large number of website pages for free, but the Google Search Console tool that provides a lot of data reports and information about the site does so, as the basic web performance indicators report appears within the tool control panel the values ​​of each of the LCP The FID and CLS of all indexed URLs.

The report displays the values ​​of the three key performance indicators on both smart devices and computers, and provides many options that help to study the data and solve problems related to the basic web performance indicators, but it does not show the values ​​of other measures, and therefore it is not sufficient to rely on it only in order to study and solve problems. Other tools that measure speed are more detailed.

The method of using Google Webmaster Tools (Google Search Console) differs from the rest of the tools that we explained above, as there is no need to include a link to a page, but it is sufficient to visit the report page within the tool control panel to obtain speed information for all the pages of your site that have been indexed There is a sufficient amount of data around.

But if your site is not linked to Google Search Console webmaster tools, you must first link it with it, by following the method we explained in our next article ( Explanation of webmaster tools and how to link it to your WordPress site) .

It should be noted that this tool does not allow you to see the values ​​of the KPI metrics for the pages of a site that you do not own or manage, which means that you will not be able to measure the speed of your competitors’ websites through it, it can only be used to measure and improve the speed of your website.

How to speed up a site based on speed measuring tools

All high-quality website speed measurement tools provide a set of tips that help improve and increase site speed to provide a better experience for users, and by applying these tips, it is possible to significantly and effectively increase the site speed, but unfortunately the tools do not provide detailed explanations on how to apply Speed ​​boost tips.

Therefore, if the site speed measurement tools show that your site has low performance and needs improvement, then you should look for detailed explanations on how to apply each of the tips offered by the tools on our WordPress website and WordPress, which are two of the strongest Arab references about WordPress, and they have many One of the articles that explains how to apply it in detail and illustrated.

If you searched using multiple keywords on how to implement one of the tips on our sites and did not find what you want, you can ask about how to apply the advice in practice on your site in the WordPress Forum , as you will receive high-quality answers tailored to your case by specialists in the WordPress content management system .

We would also like to point out that applying the best practices for increasing site speed that we explained in our comprehensive article ( Best and Most Effective Practices for Speeding Up Your WordPress Site (Comprehensive Guide) ) will greatly shorten the number of tips offered by site speed metrics, especially if you have not previously taken action To improve its speed, so review it and make sure to apply all the practices mentioned in it as much as possible.

Conclusion

With this, we have come to the end of our comprehensive article, in which we introduced you to the importance of measuring website speed, and explained how to measure website speed by using a set of powerful tools that not only allow you to know the values ​​​​of various speed parameters, but also provide customized advice, the application of which helps to improve the speed of the website.

If you are the owner of a Wordpress site or a WooCommerce store, it is necessary to measure the speed of your site or store with these tools and be keen to improve your site to obtain high scores in speed measurement tools, because this would contribute to increasing the number of visits to your site, raising conversion rates and increasing profits.