Website Speed: How to Test and Improve Page Loading Time

Unlike some may think, websites optimized for search engines, such as Google, aren’t based solely on content marketing strategies. A crucial point is the website’s speed, i.e. the loading time of images, text, files and internal pages.

Your visitors want the convenience of viewing your content within a few seconds. The faster your website’s deliverability, the more satisfied your users will be.

The users’ browsing experience directly affects the performance of the website, and one of the ways to ensure good access is to make your business’ page faster and more functional.

Would you like to learn why a page’s loading speed affects its performance in search engines and how to improve this indicator? Well, keep reading this text and check out our tips.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this article:

Why is website speed so important?

Website speed is important because it helps reduce user bounce rate. 

According to Google/SOASTA Research 2017, a page load speed between 1 and 10 seconds has a 123% bounce rate. In other words: people end up leaving the page before it even opens. 

The result is different for pages that open between 1 and 3 seconds: the bounce rate drops to 32%. This would be the ideal loading time for websites nowadays. 

A web page’s bounce rate interferes with Google’s results, further hindering organic traffic.

For search engine algorithms, a high bounce rate can be a sign of low-quality content or a poor browsing experience. As a result, these websites end up losing positions in search results and consequently, attract fewer visitors.

In other words, those who want good results on the Internet, generating visitors and conversion, need to take care that user experience be as best as possible.

What affects a website’s speed?

A number of factors affect a website’s speed. Some of these are due to non-optimized images and HTML, CSS or JavaScript files.

Depending on the size and format of these files, the page may take longer to load than desired. A poorly designed website with coding errors also affects the performance and loading speed.

How do you measure your website’s speed?

Several tool options perform website speed diagnostics and make optimization suggestions for adding improvements to your pages.

Page Speed Insights

Page Speed Insights is a free speed meter. By entering your website’s URL, the tool will provide desktop and mobile speed information, mobile user experience, and a score from 0 to 100 that indicates whether your website is slower or faster.

Website Speed (Google Analytics)

This tool is part of Google Analytics, Website Speed delivers a full assessment and optimization suggestions from the analysis of some points of the website’s speed, such as execution and page loading time.

Google Test My Website

This speed meter will specifically analyze your online page via mobile devices.

It’ll provide you with a report of how the pages perform on its mobile version and suggestions for improving the loading time.

Pingdom Website Speed Test

Pingdom is a very comprehensive tool that evaluates speed performance in various locations around the world. Through it, you can evaluate page size, loading time, and have a score with the results of the speed test.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix combines analysis criteria from Google and Yahoo speed meters to provide a more consistent and detailed result.

You can also test your page’s speed on slower connections and see how your website performs in different locations around the world.

WebPagetest

Another tool that offers the possibility of speed testing in various parts of the world, this one from other browsers, such as Explorer or Google Chrome itself.

It’s also possible to track the time from start to the end of loading, and after the check, receive a report with suggestions for optimizing your website.

Web Page Analyzer

An option for those looking for a good speed analysis. Web Page Analyzer checks the size of the page and each type of component present in it.

Finally, it provides suggestions for improvements to the page according to recommended optimizations and benchmark data.

Website Speed Test

With Website Speed Test, you can analyze your page’s speed in up to 14 different locations, and receive a detailed website speed report with an evaluation of the requests made.

How do you make your website load faster?

If you’ve used the tools we have recommended, and were surprised by a negative result, don’t panic. Not everything is lost. You can take a few actions to improve the loading of your pages:

Optimize images

Upload smaller-sized images while maintaining good quality. The format and size of image files influences your page’s loading speed.

Be careful when using editing programs and always save files in web format. Compress images through editors or programs that have this feature. 

Finally, there are certain plugins in WordPress with features that help compress and optimize the images that will be used on your page, such as Imagify Image Optimizer and ShortPixel Image Optimizer.

Enable browsing cache

The cache will keep the data from a particular website saved on your device or browser and make loading much faster.

To enable website browsing caching, you can use WordPress plugins, such as WP Fastest Cache or W3 Total Cache. These two options offer features to save images, videos and other files from your website to the users’ browsers. 

Reduce the number of redirections

Redirection has the purpose of taking users from one address to another in order to open a certain page.

Although redirects are important for tracking access metrics or for directing people to the new location of certain content, too many redirects end up slowing down the website.

Monitor these redirections and find alternative solutions that reduce their use as much as possible, using them only when it’s really necessary.

To assist you, plugins like Yoast SEO manage redirects on WordPress websites.

Use tools to compress CSS, Javascript and HTML files

Use plugins that provide the compression of CSS, Javascript and HTML files. The Autoptimize plugin is one option for compressing these files through WordPress, but the Minifycode website also provides a compression tool. 

Your codes will become sleeker and as a result, your website will load faster.

Use a CDN

CDN means content distribution network. CDNs are easily integrated into WordPress websites and host your content on a network of servers around the world. Therefore, distribution is faster, improving your website’s speed.

Choose a quality hosting service

The hosting service has a huge influence on the optimization of your web page, because even a good website will have speed problems with inferior hosting.

A quality hosting service has high-performance servers that boost your website’s performance by making it load faster.

Perform a search and learn which website host offers the best services for your needs and the needs of your business.

Conclusion

With the internet reinventing itself and providing increasingly more content, the time users spend online needs to be put to good use.

Good website loading speed ensures that your visitors stay longer on your page, and guarantees a full and positive experience during access.

With a loading of a few seconds, your page will rank better on Google because the search engine will understand that the website bounce rate is small and will know that it’s also relevant to other users.

Being well ranked on Google results increases your website’s organic traffic and generates more conversions. As well as website speed, SEO is also key to having a better-optimized website on search engines. 

Check out this post about SEO and how you can use it to improve your business’ page performance!