How to Properly Run a Website Speed Test (8 Best Tools in 2023)

Are you concerned that a slow website might be hurting your traffic and conversions? Do you want to optimize your site‘s performance but aren‘t sure where to start?

You‘ve come to the right place. In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll walk you through exactly how to test your website‘s speed the right way and share the best tools to use in 2023.

By the end of this article, you‘ll be able to:

• Run accurate speed tests using best-in-class tools
• Understand what the key metrics mean and how your site stacks up
• Identify the specific performance issues holding your site back
• Implement proven optimizations to make your pages load lightning-fast

Why does website speed matter so much? Consider these eye-opening statistics:

• 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less (Source)
• A 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions (Source)
• 39% of people will stop engaging with a website if images won‘t load or take too long to load (Source)
• 14% of users will start shopping at a different site if page load time is slow, and 23% will stop shopping or even walk away from their computer (Source)

Bottom line – a slow site doesn‘t just frustrate users, it can directly impact your bottom line. Even a 1-second improvement in load times can boost conversions by up to 7%!

How to Properly Run a Website Speed Test

Let‘s walk through the steps to properly test your website speed and get accurate, actionable results:

1. Use Multiple Tools

Different speed test tools use different criteria and can sometimes product varying results. To get the most reliable data, I recommend running tests on at least 3-4 tools and comparing the results.

Some of the best and most popular tools I recommend are:

Each of these tools offers a slightly different set of features and metrics. Using a variety will help you hone in on the key opportunities to improve your site.

2. Test from Multiple Locations

The physical distance between a user and the server hosting your website can significantly impact load times. This is why it‘s important to test your speed from multiple geographic regions, especially key areas where your audience is located.

Most tools allow you to select the test location:

• Pingdom offers 7 regions including Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia
• GTmetrix lets you choose from 30+ servers in over 20 countries
• WebPageTest has over 40 locations and 25+ browsers to select from
  The best practice is to run tests from at least 3-4 major regions to identify an average global load time as well as any location-specific issues that need to be addressed.

3. Analyze Key Pages

Many sites make the mistake of only testing the homepage. But your visitors likely interact with many different pages and sections. For a comprehensive assessment, you should test key pages across your entire site, including:

• Homepage
• Product or service pages
• Landing pages
• Blog posts
• Contact page
• Checkout process
• Account pages

I recommend identifying 6-8 of your most important page templates based on analytics data. Test each one to get a complete picture of how performance varies across your site.

4. Emulate Real World Conditions

It‘s important to test your site as your actual users experience it. With global mobile internet usage continuing to rise, that increasingly means smartphones and tablets.

Source: Oberlo

Be sure your speed tests cover both mobile and desktop devices. Most tools allow you to toggle between different devices and screen resolutions.

You‘ll also want to test various network conditions to emulate users on wifi vs cellular connections. Pingdom, GTmetrix and WebPageTest all let you throttle the connection speed to simulate 3G or 4G mobile networks.

5. Establishing a Baseline

Slight variations and anomalies can occur from test to test. To smooth these out and arrive at a consistent baseline, I recommend:

• Running at least 5 tests per page on each tool
• Spacing out tests over the course of a few days
• Testing at different times of day to account for peak traffic periods
• Setting up automated monitoring to continuously track speed over time

Look for patterns and focus on the median results across your tests. This will give you a solid benchmark to compare against as you work on optimizations.

Analyzing Your Website Speed Test Results

Once you have a reliable set of test data, how do you interpret the results and identify areas to improve? Here are the key metrics to focus on:

Key Metrics to Evaluate

Sources: web.dev, Pingdom

Let‘s look a little closer at the three most critical metrics:

1. Largest Contentful Paint – measures when the largest element on the page finishes rendering. Ideally this should happen within 2.5 seconds. LCP is often tied to render-blocking resources, slow servers, or large/unoptimized images.

2. Total Blocking Time – quantifies the amount of time the browser is blocked from responding to user input because the main thread is busy. Keep TBT under 200 ms to prevent interaction delays. Common culprits are long tasks like heavy JavaScript execution.

3. Cumulative Layout Shift – measures the sum total of all individual layout shifts on a page. A "shift" is when a visible element changes position. Aim for a CLS under 0.1 to prevent content from jumping around as the page loads.

Source: Merald

These three metrics are part of Google‘s Core Web Vitals which measure loading speed, interactivity and visual stability – key aspects of the overall user experience.

Once you know your site‘s performance across these key benchmarks, you can implement targeted optimizations to improve them.

Identifying Areas for Improvement

In addition to raw numbers, most speed test tools also provide specific recommendations to speed up your site. Common opportunities include:

• Implementing caching – reusing previously loaded resources
• Optimizing images – resizing and compressing large image files
• Minifying code – removing unnecessary characters from HTML, CSS, JS
• Minimizing redirects – reducing additional roundtrips to the server
• Using a content delivery network (CDN) – distributing load geographically
• Deferring JavaScript – postponing non-critical scripts until after page loads
• Reducing third-party scripts – limiting external calls to servers you don‘t control
• Improving server response time – upgrading hosting and resources

Look for patterns across the tools to identify your site‘s most prevalent issues. Then prioritize fixes in terms of expected impact and level of effort to implement.

Optimizing Your Website Speed

Now that you know how your site performs and where it‘s falling short, it‘s time to put optimizations in place. Fortunately, there are a number of excellent tools that can help automate much of the process:

Essential Website Speed Optimization Tools

Many of these tools offer "set it and forget it" functionality. You simply install them on your site and they handle the rest. However, it‘s still important to manually audit your pages and continuously test to ensure optimizations are working as intended.

Even with automation, you‘ll likely need to work with your developer to address some opportunities that require code changes. Just keep chipping away, re-testing after each optimization to track the cumulative speed improvements.

Case Studies

Need some motivation to make website speed a priority? Check out these impressive case studies from real brands:

Walmart

Walmart.com reduced page load time by 1 second and saw a 2% increase in conversions. For every 100ms improvement, they grew incremental revenue by up to 1%. (Source)

Mobify

After Mobify improved their homepage load speed by 100 milliseconds, they saw conversion rates increase 1.11% which translated to a yearly revenue impact of nearly $380,000. (Source)

Trainline

When Trainline reduced latency by 0.3 seconds across their site, they saw a increase in conversion rates of 8%. Decreasing page load time further to 1.2s led to a conversion rate increase of 27%. (Source)

AutoAnything

AutoAnything cut page load time in half and saw a 12-13% increase in sales. Bounce rates dropped from about 30% to just under 20%. (Source)

These results speak for themselves. The ROI of making your site even a little bit faster can be huge!

Key Takeaways

• Website speed is critical for traffic, conversions, and overall user experience
• Run comprehensive tests on key pages using multiple tools from different locations
• Know your Core Web Vitals scores and how you stack up to benchmarks
• Use your speed test results to identify and prioritize specific optimizations
• Take advantage of tools to automate caching, image compression, and other improvements
• Continuously test and optimize to ensure your site is always as fast as possible

The key is to make speed optimization an ongoing process, not a one-and-done effort. Put systems in place to monitor performance and jump on issues quickly. Your visitors, search rankings, and bottom line will thank you.

I hope this guide has equipped you with the knowledge and tools you need to test and accelerate your website. Now go forth and optimize!