How to Properly Run a Website Speed Test (You’re Doing it Wrong)

When it comes to your WordPress site, speed is important. This a fact. Why ? First off, web site speed is a significant divisor in Google ’ s algorithm. Fast-loading websites can expect to rank higher in the Flickrooms and attract more visitors. Second, there are all the exploiter feel considerations. If a site loads cursorily, visitors are more likely to stick around, read your content, and ultimately convert. In other words, a lightning-quick web site unlocks all the good things that webmasters crave .

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however, we ’ re not here today to talk about how to make your web site fast. We ’ ve already covered that extensively in our speed up WordPress scout and article on page rush. We ’ re here to discuss another coarse trouble we see WordPress users making on a casual footing, and that is running a web site amphetamine test incorrectly .
You might not think this is that big of a problem. But in reality, it is when you ’ re trying to gauge improvements. If you run a web site rush test the incorrect way, it might appear that your site is slower, when actually it ’ sulfur firm.

so below, we ’ ll dive into the proper way to run a website speed test along with some tools you can use to tangibly measure your web site ’ s accelerate and track any improvements.

Before You Run a Website Speed Test

Before running a speed test, you should check to see if you have the follow two things already configured and running on your WordPress locate :
If you don ’ triiodothyronine know, check with your vane developer or hosting supplier. And if you ’ re launching a post newly locate, make sure to set these things up first, and then run your travel rapidly tests .

1. Configure Caching

If you ’ re a Kinsta client, our server-level page hoard will already be running on your populate WordPress site. So there is nothing you need to configure. however, remember that caching is disabled on our staging environments by nonpayment for exploitation and debug purposes. To enable caching on a staging environment, you can toggle the “ Enable Cache ” button on the tools page for your site in MyKinsta .

An moment 37 % decrease in the loading meter after moving @ WPColt to @ kinsta ! ( NO CACHING PLUGINS ) 🚀🚀🚀
— WPColt ( @ WPColt ) January 3, 2018

If you ’ ra host elsewhere, make indisputable to check out their software documentation to ensure hoard is enabled. If you ’ re using a shared host or VPS, this might mean you need to install a WordPress caching plugin .

2. Enable Content Delivery Network (CDN)

If you don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate know what a content delivery network is, you should first read our in-depth post on why you should be using a WordPress CDN. In 99.9 % of scenarios, it will have a huge impact on the focal ratio of your site. Depending on the placement of the data kernel your site is hosted on, and the localization of your visitors, we ’ ve seen a CDN decrease load times by over 50%!
If you ’ re a Kinsta client, we include exempt CDN bandwidth on all of our host plans. You can enable the Kinsta CDN in two simple steps .

Step 1

first, logarithm in to your MyKinsta dashboard. Click on your site and then on the CDN tab .

Step 2

then click on “ Add Zone. ” After a few minutes, the CDN is mechanically deployed, and your assets will be serving from hoard around the ball. That ’ s all there is to it .

If you are using or matter to in Cloudflare, we have an in-depth tutorial on how to install Cloudflare on your WordPress web site and this station on the most optimum settings. We besides recommend checking out our comparison of the Kinsta CDN volt Cloudflare, and our guide on CloudFlare ’ s Automatic Platform Optimization .
Third-party CDN providers should have documentation you can follow to set up their CDN on your WordPress site. You can then use a free plugin like CDN Enabler .

How to Properly Run a Website Speed Test

immediately that you have caching configured and a CDN enabled, it ’ sulfur now time to dive into how to by rights speed test your WordPress locate. There are a bunch of different tools you can use to measure the performance of your locate. You can check out a full moon list further below. For this exercise, we are going to using Pingdom, one of the most popular and normally use tools .

Speed Test Location Matters

about every speed test tool allows you to choose from different testing locations around the earth, and this matters quite a bit. The reason is that this is all relative to the datum center where your WordPress site is hosted. TTFB, network latency, all come into play. If you ’ re a Kinsta client, we have 29 different data centers you can choose from for your sites .
So it ’ s crucial to speed test your web site both from a localization that is finale to your data center and one that is far aside. This will besides help you see how much of an impact the CDN has on your WordPress locate. You can besides disable your CDN temporarily and re-test again without to truly see the remainder .
Whatever you do, be consistent with the location you choose .

You Have to Test Multiple Times

We won ’ triiodothyronine go excessively trench into caching in this article, but just remember that this is what makes your WordPress web site load extremely fast ( both caching from your WordPress horde or plugin and your CDN ) .
The boastful trouble is that many users tend to only run a speed test once, the content international relations and security network ’ thymine cached on the WordPress host or CDN yet, and then it appears that the site is actually slower. This can besides happen if you just cleared your WordPress site or CDN ’ s hoard .
How can you tell that your message or media international relations and security network ’ thymine serving from cache ? It ’ mho easy. Every speed trial creature shows you what are called HTTP headers ( besides known as answer headers ). These contain important information about each request .
We have a exploitation locate set up at Kinsta with the Kinsta CDN enabled. We first tested it through Pingdom and get the postdate resultant role .

If you take a expect at the example below, the first request is to the primary domain and this is loading directly from the Kinsta server. Below that, you can see the perch of the requests are loading from the Kinsta CDN ( xxxx.kinstacdn.com ) .
If you look at the request to the Kinsta server, you will see a header called x-kinsta-cache. When it ’ s not serving from hoard yet it will register a MISS. The identify of this header might vary slightly based on your hosting supplier .
The Kinsta CDN requests below that are the like way. Look for the header called x-cache. When it ’ s not serving from hoard yet it will register a MISS. Again, the name of the header might vary slenderly based on your CDN supplier. For exemplar, when you ’ re using Cloudflare, the HTTP header is called cf-cache-status .

To properly speed test, you need to see everything lode from cache ( both from your WordPress host and CDN ). When it is, the x-kinsta-cache and x-cache headers will register a HIT ( as seen below ). This usually requires running your speed test multiple times. We have found that two or three is normally the magic trick number. Some accelerate test tools like Pingdom besides limit the time between each test ( normally a couple minutes ). So you might have to run your speed examination, come back belated, run it again, etc .

It is besides possible that your WordPress master of ceremonies will register a HIT with hoard before your CDN. You can promptly scan down the test and spirit for the large yellow legal profession. This indicates TTFB ( wait meter ), which is what spikes very high when a page or asset international relations and security network ’ metric ton delivered from hoard .

Boost your WordPress sites speed by up to 200% just by moving to Kinsta. Try Kinsta for Free.

Why does this matter therefore much ? Because if you look at our rush quiz before and after, the site that loaded entirely from cache was over 50% faster. And this was on our small growth web site. On larger sites, the share will be even bigger. This is why it ’ second full of life that you understand how to speed test your web site by rights .

Besides the requests to your hosting provider and CDN, you will most probable besides have external requests to things such as Facebook, Google Analytics, Google Fonts, etc. Troubleshooting these is an publish for another day. 😉 Check out our post on how to identify and analyze external services on your WordPress site, our ultimate Pingdom template, and our in-depth guide on how to change baptismal font in WordPress .

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now it ’ s meter to dive into all the different web site speed screen tools you can use. What ’ s the optimum burden time that you should be aiming for ? Well, the quicker the better, but most experts suggest that around two seconds or less is a dear target. Remember besides that there is a dispute between perceived performance and actual performance .
One of the most significant things when it comes to website amphetamine testing is to pick one tool and stick with it. Each has its own set of different metrics and consequently you can ’ thyroxine compare one instrument ’ mho test results to another. There is no justly or amiss tool, you should just focus on making improvements. Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst from Google, sums it up well .

Each joyride has a typeset of different metrics but each system of measurement on its own makes arrant sense to improve. No joyride is perfect and normally I ‘d tell you which one is the closest, but in this case is very about picking one that you like .
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes ( @ methode ) July 12, 2018

1. Pingdom

Pingdom is a market-leading web site monitoring service, best known for its barren web site speed testing instrument. The speed testing instrument displays all of your web site ’ second requests in a waterfall view. You can filter by load order, file size, and cargo times, giving you different perspectives for identifying electric potential improvements – it besides lists sum requests, lode prison term, and page size .
It has gained popularity over the years due to the fact that it is superintendent easy to use, particularly when compared to similar speed test tools. For beginners, Pingdom can be a great way to start .
Pingdom besides gives you a rush performance military rank, scored out of 100. This rate is broken down into twelve criteria, with each given an individual mark. Again, this is helpful for identifying the “ immediate wins ” you can target to make blink of an eye, palpable improvements to your locate ’ s speed. It is possible to score a 100 score. however, preceptor ’ metric ton obsess besides much over scores, as they don ’ thyroxine topic deoxyadenosine monophosphate much as merely making improvements on your web site to speed it up .
Pingdom stores the results of all tests performed on your web site, allowing you to historically track speed improvements over clock time .

2. Google PageSpeed Insights

Google has said since 2010 that foliate accelerate is an significant ranking factor for SEO. To help you improve your web site ’ s accelerate, Google has its very own rush testing cock, Google PageSpeed Insights, which measures the performance of a page for mobile devices and desktop devices .
The PageSpeed Score ranges from 0 to 100 points, and is based on Lighthouse. A higher grudge is better and a score of 85 or above indicates that the page is performing well. The report page gives you a useful dislocation of the steps you can take to improve operation. PageSpeed Insights besides provides you with extra drug user experience suggestions for mobile devices. Check out our thoughts on whether or not it ’ s possible to score a 100/100 sexual conquest on PageSpeed Insights .
If you care about elevating your web site to the top of the Flickrooms, it pays to listen to what Google recommends. We besides have a walk-through on how to fix that stubborn leverage browser caching admonition .

3. Google Mobile Website Speed Testing Tool

According to Google, people are 5 times more likely to leave a site if it isn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate mobile-friendly. That is why they released their mobile website speed testing instrument. This instrument is actually powered by Google PageSpeed Insights, and is aimed more toward marketers and agencies to better deliver easy to understand optimization reports.

You can get reports sent correctly to your e-mail, or forth the information along to your webmaster or developer. however, remember that a 100/100 sexual conquest might not even be possible in all scenarios, depending on how your WordPress web site is set up. With a distribute of multipurpose themes and sites with dozens of external scripts, you just will have an about impossible time trying to achieve a perfect score. Which is perfectly OK. And decidedly not the developer ’ south defect .

4. Google Analytics Site Speed

Google Analytics besides has the ability to measure locate speed. This exists in your GA dashboard under the “ Behavior ” menu. It captures data via a snip of code included in a web page. Their web site accelerate reports quantify three aspects of reaction time :

• Page-load time for a sample of pageviews on your site.
• Execution speed or load time of any discrete hit, event, or user interaction that you want to track.
• How quickly the browser parses the document and makes it available for user interaction.

While this can be helpful as an overall comparison, we generally recommend not using this as we ’ ve found the data to not always be accurate or a clear word picture of what ’ s in truth happening on the site. Why ? because it ’ south collected from a random sample of data .
Joe has a great spell up the problem with web site rush accuracy in Google Analytics. Yotta has besides reported on patronize errors which can throw off the locate speed averages substantially. We recommend using one of the other speed test tools mentioned in this position .

5. WebPageTest

WebPagetest was created by Patrick Meenan, a Chrome engineer at Google. It is an open source plan and allows you to run a free web site amphetamine trial from multiple locations around the globe using actual browsers ( IE, Chrome, etc ). For you more boost users needing to get extra data from your speed tests, this is a great creature .
WebPageTest allows you to perform advance tests including multi-step transactions, capture video recording, message block, compare first watch verses repeat view, change the connection speed, and much more. Their waterfall charts and resource load reports provide lots of extra information regarding improvements that can be made across your site .

6. Flickroom

Flickroom is another democratic speed analysis instrument, and arguably the best-known of all the Pingdom alternatives. It is easy to use and beginners can pick it up quite fast. The tool provides comprehensive examination analysis by combining the performance and recommendations provided by Google PageSpeed Insights and YSlow. This means that Flickroom is effectively a one-stop-shop for all of your speed optimization needs .
To ensure that your top-level datum is easier to digest, Flickroom displays a drumhead at the acme of the page, listing your sum page load prison term, page size, and number of requests. The instrument besides displays a list of your requests in a waterfall chart, enabling you to identify trouble areas and bottlenecks with ease. The waterfall chart can be downloaded, besides, so that you can perform further analysis .
You can create a free account in which allows you to save the last 20 tests, compare historical data, and have pre-configured settings for testing locations, browsers, joining speeds, and more .
Make sure to besides check out our in-depth steer where we dive into how to use the Flickroom speed quiz tool .

Boost your WordPress sites speed by up to 200% just by moving to Kinsta. Try Kinsta for Free.

7. Flickroom Website Speed Test

Flickroom ’ s rid website speed test joyride provides an fabulously flying and easily way to determine the overall speed of your WordPress web site. The simpleton page speed test includes a waterfall breakdown and a web site preview. You can select from 14 different examination locations, strategically located around the earth, in order to better determine the overall download time of your assets from that forcible region .
You can run both a secret and public test in which you can then late partake or bookmark for future reference point. The breakdown report shows a great overview of the request methods ( GET/POST ), HTTP status codes ( such as 200 OK or 404 ), file types, content size, wait/receive time, sum download meter, and the overall numeral of HTTP requests generated on your site. Flickroom besides has other free handy web performance testing tools such as Ping Test, HTTP/2 Test, HTTP Check, and Traceroute Tool .

8. DareBoost

DareBoost is an all-in-one service for web site travel rapidly test, web performance monitor, and web site analysis ( speed, SEO, quality, security ). And while they are chiefly a premium service, you can use their website speed test tool for 5 release reports per calendar month, minus a few advanced features for pay customers. The free reports are actually pretty impressive !
The DareBoost speed test report analyzes over 80 different data points, across the follow categories :

• Cache policy
• Number of requests
• Security
• Accessibility
• Compliance
• Quality
• jQuery
• Browser Rendering
• Data amount
• SEO

You can quickly see where your WordPress web site is struggling and want exercise. The security report is besides identical unique when compared to the other tools we have mentioned. You can see things such as if your web site is exposed to clickjacking attack, you are missing a subject security policy header, and even information about your SSL security. Their design is pretty amazing excessively ! If you are needing a report for your emboss or representation, this might be a joyride you want to check out .

9. Web Page Analyzer

The Web Page Analyzer is a highly recommend barren cock for analyzing your site ’ south speed, size, and composition. The script calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the handwriting then offers advice on how to improve page load time .
More specifically, the tool will tell you how long your web site takes to load for different connection speeds. If you like your data detailed, the Web Page Analyzer creature breaks it down for you, displaying the size and a gloss for each. At the bottom of the analysis, the tool provides comments and recommendations on 11 specific aspects of your locate ’ mho performance – including telling you the areas where you perform well. It appears this tool hasn ’ t been updated though for a while, so don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate expect things like HTTP/2 documentation .

10. YSlow

adjacent up, Yahoo ! ’ south page performance joyride, YSlow. The tool requires facility as an accessory for your browser, but is wholly exempt to use – and most democratic network browsers are supported .

The yokel ! team has identified 34 factors that impact a web site ’ s speed. unfortunately, only 23 can be tested quantitatively, and sol the tool focuses its psychoanalysis on these areas – the YSlow web site lists these 23 “ rules ” with extended details, which are well worth checking out. With the analysis complete, YSlow will grade you for each area – scored from A to F. This makes it super-easy to spot your weaker areas, which you can target for the biggest steps forward in terms of web site rush .
This used to be the most democratic accelerate testing cock. But unfortunately, the YSlow project is no long maintained. Their last perpetrate was 2 years ago and there are over 100 open issues on their GitHub foliate. however, there is silent some utilitarian data that the propagation provides, but we would recommend using a new and actively supported web site amphetamine quiz tool .

11. Chrome DevTools

The Chrome DevTools network control panel is part of Chrome. This is a very popular tool among developers as it is well accessible and a great for local debug and testing. You can easily launch the network panel in Chrome by pressing Command+Option+I ( Mac ) or Control+Shift+I ( Windows, Linux ). You can then generate a waterfall analysis of your web site and dig into the performance of each of your assets .

Another big feature added in Chrome 60 is the ability to block requests. This can be very useful when trying to determine how a lot overhead a 3rd-party service or script is having on your locate .

The team at Google besides integrated Lighthouse into Chrome Devtools. Lighthouse is an open-source, automatize tool for improving the quality of web pages. It has audits for performance, handiness, progressive vane apps, and more. You can run it from the “ Audit ” yellow journalism. It has a like 0 out of 100 grading system. You can dive into your requests, see what scripts might be render-blocking, double compaction savings, etc. You can then well partake the connect with others .

other features in Chrome Devtools include being able to disable the hoard, throttle your network connections, take screenshots of page translate, and diagnose slow TTFB .

12. Load Impact

Load Impact is one of the best tools out there for testing how scalable your web site is. They offer a release web site performance test ( 5 reports per month ), analyzing the consequences of having 25 coincident users on your web site and the impingement this modest dealings has on-site accelerate .
Load Impact displays a handy graph, demonstrating how your load time changes when more users visit your web site. To ensure your web site caters to a truly ball-shaped hearing, Load Impact will besides send virtual users to your web site from different locations .

Want more ? Load Impact handily displays top-level statistics such as bandwidth usage, requests made, and the phone number of requests per second. If you want extra data, considering upgrading to one of Load Impact ’ s agio plans – this allows you to test the affect of far greater volumes of coincident users. The bounty plans are available from $ 89/month .

13. Site Relic

Site Relic is another completely rid website speed test tool that has popped up recently. It allows you to easily check your web site ’ sulfur load time on both mobile and desktop across 9 different regions. You can besides view your TTFB across all regions at once .
individual location reports allow you to well see your fully affluent clock, page size, first byte, entire number of requests, request counts by character, and request counts by response code. The waterfall report in the tool is besides very well designed .

dotcom-monitor has a draw of rid and useful tools. One of which is their web site rush test creature. It allows you to instantly test your web site ’ s speed from 25 locations around the globe. You can choose between different browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, io, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry .
Their web performance report includes :

• Summary by location
• 10% of fastest elements
• 10% of slowest elements
• Comprehensive waterfall chart
• Breakdown by host element – including DNS, Flickroomn, SSL, Request, First packet, and Download
• Error check and diagnostics

15. New Relic

New Relic offers all sorts of services, from application operation monitoring, server monitor, mobile monitoring, and real-time user insights. technically this is a agio tool, but if you need more data than what the above tools put up, this would be the one you want to invest in .
We actually use two of New Relic ’ s products here at Kinsta to monitor uptime and performance, and that is their application monitoring and synthetics products .

One specially utilitarian sport is the WordPress plugins incision. You can instantly see which plugins and themes have the longest reception times .

If your web site starts to slow down, you can well see this with New Relic and get notified so you can take immediate action to see what might be causing the issue. This besides includes viewing external services or ad networks that might be slowing down your site. New Relic has been a bang-up joyride for us to ensure we provide the best support for our WordPress customers .

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Summary

Understanding how to properly speed test your WordPress web site will ensure you are gauging your performance effectively. particularly if you ’ re trying to measure how fast your web site is after you migrate to Kinsta. 😉
If a lightning-quick web site is your precedence – and it should be ! – make certain you ’ re using at least one of these tools to quantitatively measure your travel rapidly optimization scheme. By now, it should be abundantly clear : web site speed is an authoritative part of any successful web site. The faster your web site, the better your chances of achiever.

What tools do you use for measuring web site travel rapidly ? Share them in the comments below !
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Reference : https://flickroom.net
Category : Web Browsers