Website speed test and website performance review
Webpagetest.org Test a website’s performance
WebPageTest.org
Ok, so we are down the last testing website which I’ve been using lately, mainly due to the time-to-first-byte check that’s doing and I deliberately tried to fix this on my website. It does have a a simple form for checking the website, like the others we’ve talked about for that matter, however, compared to the lasts ones, you are allowed to choose from which location to make the test and also using what browser you wish to test it with. This is a nice idea really, it is also giving you a video feedback to see exactly the load time after checks are complete.
I myself left the default test location and default wordpress, Chrome. The result of the test will show in a few seconds as it is bellow:
As you can see after fixing the cache plugin for my wordpress website, I was able to get the A score for the first-byte-time. Regarding the two F scores, these are from facebook images which I have no control so I had to leave them be.
What it is nice with this testing website is that you can use it to generate compressed and progresive images directly for your website. This is really great when you need to follow all the optimization suggestions. I also like how “it knows” that I’m using google or MaxCDN for all my resources so avoids me of any confusions.
This website is probably the most detailed performance review I have came across, probably not the best for beginners but it does really do its job well. Bellow you will see a more detail report regarding my website:
Performance review
Overall I see that it is most important to have:
- Keep Alive
- Gzip compression
- Compressed images
- Progressive jpeg
- Cached static
- CDN
Most of the testing websites have been checking all these 6 features. From YSlow, we also note that including the above would should also keep in mind of:
- Minimize HTTP Requests
- Use a Content Delivery Network
- Avoid empty src or href
- Add an Expires or a Cache-Control Header
- Gzip Components
- Put StyleSheets at the Top
- Put Scripts at the Bottom
- Avoid CSS Expressions
- Make JavaScript and CSS External
- Reduce DNS Lookups
- Minify JavaScript and CSS
- Avoid Redirects
- Remove Duplicate Scripts
- Configure ETags
- Make AJAX Cacheable
- Use GET for AJAX Requests
- Reduce the Number of DOM Elements
- No 404s
- Reduce Cookie Size
- Use Cookie-Free Domains for Components
- Avoid Filters
- Do Not Scale Images in HTML
- Make favicon.ico Small and Cacheable
The above are the most important things that we should keep in mind and optimize on all our websites!
