Website test: Why is website speed important?

Pages that take forever to load kills your patience. That’s right! 

If one day you run a website test and realize that your site is loading as not fast as it should be, it’s time to focus on optimizing your site and learning tips to make it load quicker. Otherwise, you will end up losing half of the customers. Sound serious! Keep reading this article to know how important the website loading speed is.

Website test: Why is website speed important?

What is site speed?

Website speed refers to how fast a browser is capable of loading fully functional web pages from a given site. Many studies show that a slow-loading website can cause poor search engine rankings, lower overall site traffic, as well as bad user experiences. Conversely, sites that load quickly get more traffic and increase better conversion rates. 

Why is site speed important?

When it comes to website performance, people often pay more attention to design, flexibility, ease of use while loading speeds are things that are overlooked. How sad! 

However, the loading speed has a direct and great impact on the quality of the website and the bottom line of each company.

Put simply, customers these days are not patient enough to wait for your website to load just because it is not fully optimized. 

If your website is slow, there is a good chance that your consumer will find another website that offers them the same thing but with a much faster response time. Thus, focus and get it right the first time. If you don’t want to lose half your target market, focus on your website’s speed. That is definitely the key to gaining customer trust and satisfaction.

Conversion rate:

Many studies have shown that conversion rates are significantly affected by site speed. Compared to a slower site, a fast-loading site have higher conversion rates. Being aware of this, many companies try to reduce the page load time of a few milliseconds, which then improves site performance.

Website test: Does page speed affect SEO

Waiting for a page to load is something that no users expect to have. It causes a feeling of frustration for users and may provoke them into leaving for the other sites. And yes, as you can guess, this creates a bad user experience. 

Bounce rate:

The bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors leaving a website without taking any actions (click the link or ads). If your site experience a high bounce rate, it’s a sign of poor web performance. 

Users tend to close the window if a page takes a few seconds to load. According to BBC, an increase of a second it took for their pages to load can lead to a 10% loss of their total users for every additional second it took for their pages to load.

SEO best practices:

Speed is also an important criterion that Google considers when ranking your website. Google highly appreciates the site that provides relevant information to users as quickly as possible.

How to test the website speed

How to check your website speed?

Run speed website test

Because of the importance of speed, you should test your websites before they are launched. 

You need to have deep insight into how fast it loads on different browsers and all devices (a desktop, mobile, or tablet). 

What’s more,  if you aim to cater to a global audience, don’t run your website speed test locally but you are not encouraged to test the website test speed locally if you aim to cater to a global audience.

There are a lot of companies offering a website speed test that not only provides performance metrics but also identifies individual elements causing webpage to load slowly.

Tools to learn how fast your site loads

What can you do if you do not know what the current speed is? That’s why the first step to improving your site load speed is to run a website speed test. Here are some free tools you can take to do your website test.

• Page Speed Insights

We’ll begin with Page Speed Insights by Google, which gives you not only detailed information on how fast your site loads on both desktop and mobile, but also a step-by-step breakdown of what you can do to improve it ( For example: Reducing file size, improving load speed, and reduce server calls). 

What’s better, with this tool, you’ll get notified which you should take first to improve your overall website performance. 

• MySpeed

Developed by ToHsoft, MySpeed is a tool that allows you to do a website test for free. Using this tool, you not only get detailed information about your website performance but also find out the factors that prevent your site from working smoothly. You can access gospeedcheck.com anywhere, anytime on any device to run a website test.

Website test tools free for 2021

• Pingdom

In addition to the description of how your site is loading, the Pingdom Page Speed tool also gives insight into how to improve your site by breaking down specific fixes. With Pingdom, you can monitor your websites' performance for a better end-user experience.

• WebPage Test

Another tool that helps you understand what’s going on behind your site is WebPage Test. you can use this tool for free to test your website speed from different devices and from different server locations.

Now, you’ve got in mind some free website test tools, it’s time to run a website speed to have a good sense of how fast your site is loading and learn how to speed up your website to improve your site performance.

Here are some important website performance metrics:

1. Page load time refers to the amount of time that an entire webpage takes to appear in the browser. It's calculated from the time you click on a page link to when the page is fully loaded in the browser.

2. Page size is the file size of all the resources that the page needs to load. Page size has a big impact on the amount of time needed for a browser to load the page.

3. Time to first byte (TTFB) is how long it takes to send a browser's request for a webpage and receive the very first byte of the response. TTFB should not be overlooked when assessing website performance.

4. Round Trip Time (RTT) is the amount of time it takes for requests to travel from the origin server and the response travels back to the device. 

Conclusion

So now you’ve got the answer to the question “Why is website speed important?”. Being aware of how important loading speed is crucial for you to focus on improving your website’s quality and performance. But remember, before making any adjustments to your website, you should run a website test to get an overall description of how your page is currently loading.

See more: Speed check: Does a firewall slow internet speed?