💻 GTmetrix Vs PageSpeed ​​Which one do I use to measure web speed?

The Google algorithm and the user have one thing in common. They both love that your website loads quickly. That is why the optimization of the website speed It will do double duty. On one side, improve organic ranking on googleand on the other, provide a good user experience.

In this post, we want to talk more extensively about what it means for a website to have optimized loading times, since it can be a factor that conditions the success of any website.

And you, do you know if your web page loads instantly? Have you ever done any website speed test? Today we tell you everything you need to know about two online and free tools to measure the speed of a web page: and . Continue reading to learn more about these tools.

What is web speed?

It is very likely that as a user it has happened to you on more than one occasion. You find a link or web page that you find interesting, click on it, and then you get a blank screen that takes several seconds to respond. What happens then? You will probably leave the website, before having viewed its content, going to the following link that resolves your query.

This, which is more common than you think, occurs because web load times, they are not optimized. For this reason, a user that we have managed to attract organically, or recommended, to our website, has abandoned it because we have taken too long to offer him our content, and therefore, he has gone to look for it on other pages of the website. competition.

We can define web speed, as the time it takes for a web page to download all the content and display it in the user’s browser window. An acceptable web load time is around 2-3 seconds. If your website exceeds this time, it is recommended that you can optimize it.

Why does loading speed influence the success of a website?

• Minimize bounce rate

It refers to those visits that arrive at your website, and leave it, without having interacted with it. One of the main factors that affects having a high bounce rate is web speed. As we mentioned before, the user does not usually wait more than 3 seconds for the website to load completely.

• Get user loyalty

When a user has a bad experience on a website, it is quite common for them not to interact with it again. For this reason, a good load optimization can end up retaining our users, making them recurring.

• Loading speed influences conversion

If your loading speed is slow, it is very possible that your conversion rate is decreased. As we have mentioned, the user can abandon the purchase process if he detects that he must wait a long time for a website to load.

• Improve mobile usability

Mobile device users are much more demanding when it comes to loading speed. Therefore, if we are looking for a good mobile user experience, we must take into account the maximum optimization of our loading times.

GTmetrix VS PageSpeed

If you are thinking of improving the loading times of your website, there are some online tools that allow us to carry out a free speed test for web pages, offering recommendations on how to improve it. Next, we will talk about some of them

GTmetrix

It is a complete tool that will allow us to analyze a website in depth, creating personalized reports. It is possibly one of the best known and used today.

It does not require registration to be used, however, if we choose to register we can obtain a historical on the URLs that we analyze and thus verify the effectiveness of the measures that we apply. The first thing you should do is enter the URL you want to parse.

Next, we will get a complete report of our site on different factors that affect the loading speed. Do you know how to interpret this data? We tell you some of the main indicators used by this tool.

1. Test Server Region: The location of the server from which the tests are performed.
2. Using: The most recurrent browser, and therefore, where the tests are being carried out.
3. Connection: The type of connection that the test would be simulating.
4. Analysis Options: You can include a video in the simulation, or in the event that you want to prevent ads from your website from being taken into account.

The next thing we will find, will be what we can call “performance score” either “Performance Score”. In this section, we will find different points that will have to be analyzed.

1. PageSpeed ​​Score: This is the total score out of 100 that your website has obtained. If you have a type A score, it means that your website is optimized in the eyes of Google, in terms of web speed. From that score, B, C onwards, it will show you some recommendations.Based on what parameters is this obtained? punctuation? We review the most important messages provided by the tool to improve your web speed.
   • Combine Images Using CSS Sprites: GTmetrix will show you a series of URLs for each image that you must improve, for this reason it recommends the installation of a plugin or the implementation of a CSS code.
   • Defer Parsing of JavaScript: It is related to those animations implemented on your website. GTmetrix will recommend us to install a plugin that solves the blocking of the Javascripts loading.
   • Serve Scaled Images: It has to do with the scaling that we are using on the images that are uploaded to our website. This can happen because you upload an image with a size much larger than the one that will be displayed on the web, so it is recommended that you adjust that size.
2. YSlow Score: It will refer to the total score out of 100, but in this case for yahoo. YSlow Score will provide us with information on more than 34 parameters that affect web performance, including Javascript, server data, cookies or images.

Next, the section called “page details” either “page details”, will provide us with some more information about our website.

1. Page Load Time: This is the loading time of a page measured in seconds. The lower this value, the better a website will be considered. In order for our analysis to be as reliable as possible, it is recommended to carry out this analysis 3-4 times, being able to take the average of these results.
2. Total PageSize:It will refer to the total size of your page having as a reference measure the Kylobytes or Megabytes. The elements that usually increase the weight of a URL are videos and images.
3. Request:Indicates the number of requests that are necessary to completely build the URL that is being analyzed. They are a set of warnings that we must carry out to improve some aspect of the web.

Both to analyze the website on Google and Yahoo, GTmetrix will offer us a series of parameters and recommendations, which we must follow to improve our loading speed. These will be found in a dropdown, following the same punctuation mentioned above. Those recommendations that have a grade A, will mean that we are already carrying them out. On the contrary, from score B, C, D and onwards, it will mean that there is still room for improvement.

PageSpeed

In Pagespeed Insights, we found a very powerful tool that Google puts at our disposal to analyze the performance and loading times of a website. Like GTmetrix, it has been one of the most used today. The first step will be to enter the URL to analysis.

The first thing we find is that this tool offers us two versions, the analysis of the web load through a mobile device, and on the other hand, through a computer.

For each of them, it shows us a score out of 100 about our web speed. The data will be shown as follows: In red, those that we must correct, in yellow those suggestions that we should take into account and in green those aspects that you are already doing correctly. Next, we find some metrics, which will be interesting to analyze.

1. Field data: It indicates a first approximation of the loading time of the web during the last period, around 30 days. This data will compare it with the performance of other websites included in the Chrome User Experience Report. The results will be displayed through a color scale, representing how the web has loaded for different users.
2. Experiment data: The tool will simulate a load test, offering some metrics on web performance.
   • First render with content: Indicates the time at which the first image or text is rendered.
   • Speed ​​index: Measures how quickly content blanks are filled
   • Time until it is interactive: How long does the website take to be 100% interactive?
   • First significant render: The time it took for the website to load the main content.
   • First CPU idle time: The first time the main page thread is idle long enough to receive user actions.
   • Maximum potential latency of the first interaction: The first interaction latency that users might experience when the longest task occurs.
3. Opportunities: In this section, the tool shows us a series of recommendations to optimize our web performance. It also includes an estimate of the speed that would be gained if these improvements were implemented.
4. Diagnosis: This section includes some more technical improvements that have to do with web development.
5. Approved audits: Finally, it will show us a summary of those tests that the website has successfully passed. That is, parameters that our website has already optimized.

Comparison GTmetrix Vs PageSpeed

The time has come for both tools to enter combat! We want to check the strengths and weaknesses of each of them. To do this, we have carried out an exhaustive analysis of the data provided by each of them.

Overall score

Both differ in the way they display results to the user. Although both tools use a color system When indicating each of the scores, it is necessary to highlight how wide the range is for each of them.

In the case of PageSpeed, we observe how the results are categorized into three different colors, indicating what we must correct (red), suggestions to improve our loading speed (orange) and those aspects that we already do correctly (green). For GTmetrixthis range of scores will be wider (A, B, C, D, E, F…), establishing in this way,…