Web Load Speed: Best Tools 2020 | ®

From we return to the fray with a topic that is having more and more importance when it comes to : The web loading speed.

We all know how tiresome it is to have to wait for a web page to load. In fact, such are our desires for speed, that a load greater than 3 seconds seems eternal to us and we tend to leave the page in question before it has even loaded. And if it’s on a mobile device even before…

Google is aware of this and therefore considers it a very important factor when it comes to showing us the search results that it considers most appropriate. But Do we really know what the loading speed of a website is and what factors influence it?

“I’m 30 minutes from there, I’ll be there in 10” (pulp fictionQ. Tarantino – 1994)

What is the loading speed on a website?

The loading speed is the time it takes for a website (understood as a package of files) to appear before a user from his request through a certain browser and going through the response of the server where that website is hosted (hosting). There are several elements or phases within what is considered an optimal charging rate.

Relevant factors of web loading speed

In short, we must attend to several actors that participate in this process, important, as we will see, if we want to improve or optimize the loading speed of our website. The actors are the following:

• Server
• web code
• Browser
• Cache
• Images

We must not forget, however, that this loading speed depends on a fundamental external factor: the speed of the Internet connection used by the user. Taking this fact into account, the tests carried out by external tools to analyze the loading speed of a website always start from a standard connection speed, which will be the scale from which all the factors involved in it are evaluated. It is important to know in advance what this scale is (3G, 4G…) in order to relativize and better understand the evaluation data of our loading speed.

All of the above elements can be optimized to get better ratings in the tools and thus be approved by Google, which will almost certainly cause us to rank better for the key search terms of our business.

Tools to measure web load speed

GTmetrix

We start our list with possibly the most well-known tool: In this, the location that appears by default to measure the website loading speed It will be Vancouver, Canada.

Therefore, to have more accurate data, it is convenient to register completely free of charge on the page. In this way we can change the location to the closest one, which in the case of Spain is London.

We can also select the type of browser on which we want to measure and some other options.

To analyze the URL in question, we just have to enter it in the box enabled for it and press the “Analyze” button.

Once the diagnosis is made, some general performance scores of the URL will appear. It will also show us different results depending on the tab that we select and what actions to carry out to improve them.

The “Waterfall” tab of this tool should be highlighted, in which we can see the time it takes to load each of the elements of the entered URL and be able to optimize it accordingly.

All these characteristics make it one of the tools par excellence for Measure web load speed.

PageSpeed ​​Insights

This is a tool developed by Google itself and it gives us the possibility to see the results of each URL differentiating between computer and mobile.

It should be noted that it will show us a general score for each device and a series of optimization opportunities to improve web loading speed. It will also give us a diagnosis with the different aspects to be corrected and, finally, a report called “approved audits” in which we can see what aspects the tool considers that we have well optimized.

light house

This time it is a . To do our analysis with this tool, we must first of all install it in our browser. Later we will enter the URL to be analyzed in our browser, we will click on the extension icon and we will click on “Generate report”.

A new browser window will open where the report in question will appear.

We highlight in this web load speed report the sections about the accessibility of the page and good practices. It will also show us the valid elements for a PWA () and a very general diagnosis of its SEO (This last aspect is so basic that it cannot be considered a reliable indicator to measure its real quality).

Bonuses:

By using this extension we will only get results for the mobile version. If we want to obtain results for the computer version, we must go to the page in question, right-click “inspect” and click on the “Audits” tab. In the devices section we will click on “Desktop” and we will click on the “Run audits” button.

webpagetest

To use this measurement tool website loading speed We must enter the URL in the box enabled for it. Here we have numerous options to configure, with a wide variety of geographical locations and devices from which to perform the measurement or the type of browser.

We also have a multitude of advanced options to configure the tool to our liking before proceeding with the measurement.

Once these options are configured, we will click on the “start test” button and wait for it to finish. It may take a while for the report to return, depending on how we have configured the tool and what queue we have before parsing our URL.

An option that is interesting to activate is the “First View and Repeat View” box.. In this way, it will show you in “First view” the loading times of the page without counting the cache stored in the browser, and “Repeat view” will load the page a second time but this time without emptying the cache. In this way we can see the difference in load times between the two views and determine the number of elements that are cacheable on that page.

Pingdom Website Speed ​​Test

We end our article with this simple but very useful tool for measuring website loading speed.

To start using it, we just have to enter our URL and select the location from where we want the measurement to be made and press the “start test” button.

At the end of the analysis, it will show us a series of results and actions to follow to improve them in a very visual and simple way.

It is worth noting about this tool the fact that it organizes the calls to the server according to their weight and content, giving us information that can be very useful in some cases.

conclusion

When using these tools you will realize that each one will give you different scores and recommendations, since each one is based on specific aspects to determine the scores and recommendations.

That is why none of these tools should be used exclusively, but it is convenient to use several of them to be able to delve into the aspects that are really slowing down our website and be able to work accordingly.

We hope that our selection of tools to measure the website loading speed and, if you have any questions or something else to contribute, do not hesitate to leave us a comment.

Until next time!