WEBSITE SPEED TESTS

performance matters

Web designers are usually concerned for visual appeal, but web-page performance is more important since visitors won’t get to see the visual aspects if they leave before the site loads. The type of great looking sliders, animations, and images that graphic designers like are counter to web performance. A website needs to load fast for good Google ranking; a slow site will rank lower than a fast site because Google places value on speed just as visitors do

Ask your web developer to provide you with a load time of 3 seconds or less. Build this requirement into the design brief rather than trying to repair poor performance and poor search engine ranking later.

Use the tests below, or ask us to.

google Quick test

Download our free checklist to help you to achieve high performance website

22 tips for faster websites

WEBSITE Speed Tests (FREE)

3 seconds, (or less)!

The currently, generally, accepted target for a web page to load is 3 seconds or less on a mobile device. Longer load-times cause more considerable visitor frustration, risk of distraction, likelihood to try something else or give up. Long times provide the visitor with a poor impression of the professionalism of the organisation.

“53% of people will leave a mobile page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.”

[machmetrics reporting on research by Danial An, Google]

Three seconds is a rough target to meet for the ordinary web-site with ordinary web-hosting. The test results require professional review and explanation; there can be good reasons why a score is not perfect “double A” or “100%” but the results provide an excellent foundation to discuss with your web developer.

What’s most important is to achieve apparent action within 1-2 seconds so your visitors know something is happening.

GTmetrix
(TRY FIRST!)

Gives you insight on how well your site loads and provides actionable recommendations on how to optimise it.

The test is done from Canada, so interpret the results with this extra 0.5 second in mind; or sign-up to get a choice of other test locations.

You can register and run more sophisticated tests e.g. we recommend you test under the simulation for a 3G mobile browser in the country most of your website users are based.

Speed test

Google PageSpeed Insight

Make your web pages fast on all devices – especially on mobile devices!

Google PSI provides an analysis of how well written the page is, and lots of suggestions for improvement.

A good Google PSI score is important for search engine ranking of a website – Google ranks better performing sites higher.

Run a test using Google Chrome browser with the Lighthouse extension to get the all important Google view of a web-site.

Speed test

Yellow Lab Tools

We find this one useful for identifying detailed issues especially.

Speed Test

WebPageTest

A very comprehensive test tool for professional use, with an easy and advanced mode. Realistic test scenarios can be created e.g. including real lag in data transfers and for commonly used devices.

Speed Test

Here’s our food delivery web-app compared with Just Eat’s website.

JEJO food App demo site

2.5 seconds starts to display (above average)
5.8 seconds fully loaded

That’s super fast for our standard hosting. Those users on Superfast broadband, 4G, and 5G connections would appreciate speedier load times.
The page is only 581kB, so that’s kind to the user’s network usage too.

Just Eat

4.2 seconds starts to display (below average)
15.3 seconds fully loaded

The page is a heavy 1.02MB.

HOW WE TEST

We perform multiple tests, but have standardised on the one from GTMetrix because it’s easy to explain it to customers, and also for non-technical people to operate.

We choose the connection speed of 3G mobile with a medium quality, for the country (London, UK here) that is closest to the customers.

3G mobile, medium quality connection is not fast, certainly nothing like as good as 4G, 5G, and super fast broadband, but it’s a tough and fair test considering some web-visitors will be in an area with poor network connection or still using older technology.

Many web-visitors will not be using the fastest networks, have poor or erratic connectivity. Only a few will have the super-fast broadband.

Sites we initially test often display in 30 to 50 seconds which is way outside this target, and most can be radically improved with less that 1-hour’s work.

We first use GTMetrix, then Web Page Test, and then Google Pagespeed Insight as we fine tune the optimisation to squeeze every tenth-of-a-second from the page load-speed.

JEJO.BIZ LATEST TEST