Firstly, a fast website provides a better user experience than a slow one. Research has shown time and again that people don’t buy as much from slower sites. Users don’t read or engage as much on slower sites. That in itself is enough reason to make sure the speed of your site is as good as can be. So, in this optimization article, we’ll share and explore the top best tools and suggestions to improve your website speed and performance.
Top Tools To Improve Website Speed
Moreover, website speed is one of the factors which determines whether you get a good ranking in Google. As a result, improve website speed tools are a ranking factor, and its importance keeps growing.
How Tools Check Your Website Speed?
Here are just a few of the common ways websites speed test tools are used:
- Firstly, pinpointing scripts, fonts, and plugins causing load time issues (HTML, JavaScript, CSS)
- Secondly, checking minification of your scripts
- Finding large images resulting in bottlenecks
- Determining if you have render-blocking JavaScript or CSS
- Testing Time to First Byte (TTFB)
- Analyzing total load times, page sizes, and number of requests
- Checking performance from different geographical locations
- Checking rendering speed in different browsers
- Analyzing HTTP Headers to collect info and improve site speed
- Measuring the performance of your content delivery network
- Finally, verifying that assets are loading correctly from your CDN
The Best Options To Measurement to Improve Website Speed
Let’s try the following tools to test the time taken to load the web page globally, excluding China. They all give you actionable information along with the following to optimize your website for fast loading.
- Time is taken to load the page
- Page size
- Number of requests made to load the page
- YSlow score
- PageSpeed Score
- Waterfall chart Website Speed optimization
So, Let’s see the website speed test tools
- Firstly, Website Audit
- Secondly, Dotcom-Monitor
- Speed Test by Uptrends
- SUCURI Load Time Tester
- GTMetrix
- Pingdom
- Web page test
- Website Pulse
- Dareboost
- Finally, Site 24×7
- Google PageSpeed Insights: This indispensable tool offers a performance score and improvement suggestions for both mobile and desktop versions of your site.
- GTmetrix: GTmetrix provides a detailed analysis, including YSlow scores, fully loaded time, and total page size, along with optimization recommendations.
- Pingdom Tools: With its user-friendly interface, Pingdom offers speed testing, uptime monitoring, and performance insights.
- WebPageTest: This tool allows for advanced testing including multi-step transactions, video capture, and content blocking.
Content Delivery Network CDN
A CDN is a geographically distributed group of servers that store content like HTML pages. Moreover, javascript files, CSS files, images, and videos to improve website speed.
CDNs cache the content from your website on multiple servers in different locations. As a result, the CDN delivers content to your site visitors through the server that is closest to them, bouncing to the next closest server if the closest server is down.
- Cloudflare: It provides a global CDN service that speeds up and protects millions of websites.
- Amazon CloudFront: Integrates with AWS services for a seamless content delivery solution.
- MaxCDN: Known for its powerful network and compatibility with various platforms.
Top WordPress Plugins to Improve Site Speed
- Autoptimize – Firstly, a really clever JavaScript/CSS/HTML optimization, though no full page caching (should work well with a dedicated full page caching solution)
- WP Rocket – Very powerful, but hard to customize. Designed to be simple – very few configuration options. No free option.
- W3 Total Cache – extremely powerful, and extremely flexible. Designed to be comprehensive. Hundreds of checkboxes and options.
- WP Optimize – A good middle ground, with basic full page caching, and some sophisticated database + media optimization tools.
- WP Super Cache – Finally, a basic solution which offers full page caching, but lacks other/advanced optimization techniques.
Advanced Image Optimization Tools to Improve Website Speed:
- Adobe Photoshop: Use its ‘Save for Web’ feature to reduce image file sizes effectively.
- TinyPNG: Compress PNG and JPEG images while maintaining visual quality.
- ImageOptim for Mac users: A tool that optimizes images by removing unnecessary data.
- Squoosh by Google: An online tool for quick and effective image compression.
Regular Performance Audits and Software Updates:
- Semrush Site Audit: Provides a comprehensive SEO audit, including site speed.
- Uptime Robot: Monitors your site and alerts you about downtime, which can impact speed.
- Sucuri Load Time Tester: Measures how long your site takes to connect and fully load.
Conclusion
Optimizing website speed is an ongoing endeavor that requires a combination of the right tools and regular maintenance. By utilizing these tools and staying informed about the latest trends and best practices in website performance, you can ensure that your site offers a fast, efficient, and enjoyable experience for your users.
