How To Test Your WordPress Site Speed and Get Actionable Insights

Conversion rates and website engagement are standard terms when it comes to the digital world; however, an important criterion that towers above the others is your website speed. If your website loads slowly, chances are that the person browsing will either get annoyed with all the loading time or lose interest and move on to a different webpage.

No matter how great your U/I is, or how smooth your UX can be, if the webpage loads slowly and has a perpetual lag, you lose out on engagement, and as a result, conversions. One of the primary Google algorithm factors for page rankings in SERPs is speed!

So, how do you test the speed for your WordPress site and get actionable insights into improving its performance and SERP ranking? The answer is - by using several creative tools that help you understand the precise reason for the lack of speed on your website and also indicate clear actions that you can take to improve the same. Often, in-tool solutions are offered to instantly correct these issues and streamline the performance of your website.

Here are a few of the best tools to do this:

Pingdom

With clients like Netflix, Major League Baseball, and Spotify using the Pingdom tool, it's easy to see why this tool is popular. Pingdom can help your WordPress site become efficient, organize the processing of the site in a manner that doesn't compromise with the data provided. While also improving the UI/UX and enhancing user engagement and growth.

This tool has simplified the complex nature of user functions by providing insights into page speed, real user monitoring, transaction monitoring, and Uptime monitoring. Essentially this makes the tool an active website maintenance service that offers actionable insights to the most demanding performance criterion.

They also have a premium alert feature which instantly indicates issues in real-time and offers quick, easy to apply solutions. Pingdom’s services are based on challenges specific to your business or services based on industry-wide requirements to keep your website cluster free and competitive.

GTMetrix

GTMetrix is another excellent tool with a phenomenal UI/UX to help standardize your WordPress site speeds. The tool offers an analysis of how your site performs and which portions of your website load faster or slower. It also renders a detailed history of your website speed and has an alert feature that will notify you when your site's pace slows down below a mark.

GMetrix monitors and gives an insight into the loading speed on over 20 simulated device options. This means you can apply fixes for device-specific portions of your website while not compromising on what already works on other devices.

It offers scheduled tests to ensure your website continues functioning efficiently.

Another vital part of GTMetrix is the ability to enhances your site's performance, based off on targeted regions. It ensures any fixes you apply are region-specific and do not affect the areas where the speed is already efficient.

Google Speed Insights

A tool that is a brainchild of Google, PageSpeed Insights is the most widely used tool for website performance and speed testing. The tool offers numerous ways to apply actionable fixes to critical speed issues by running device-specific and general speed tests for your WordPress site. The coolest thing about this website, that it also provides performance responses based on the screen size of your device and the type of browser used.

It is a lightweight and very user-friendly tool that increases your SERP by streamlining scores for accessibility, best practices, and SEO. Mostly this fits as a one-stop tool for high SERP rankings, which also helps provide actionable fixes like eliminating render-blocking resources, lowering large CSS files, compressing JavaScript. Additional solutions that the tool may recommend is removing unused CSS files, reducing and minimalizing main thread work.

Do These To Improve WordPress Speed Even Further

While the tools provided above already test your site's speed and provide actionable improvements and fixes, here are a few other things you'll need to do to test your WordPress site speed efficiently:

Leverage Caching Plugins

One way to improve your WordPress site speed is by investing in a caching Plugin, this can come in three different kinds to increase the speed of your website. You could choose among site cache, browser cache, and server cache. Caching plugins improves speed by saving static files. These previously-stored files help the website load faster, as the site can recall the page’s data from the previous visit.

Optimize Images

An action that aids your page speed to remain efficiently high is to optimize images by changing their format or by compressing the file itself.

You might be tempted to use high-resolution photos, but you must understand that high resolution means different things to different people. For viewing purposes, you do not need to use pictures that have a resolution that photographers use, or that is necessary for image editing.

Most people also use a range of mobile devices to view sites. These devices will not be able to apprehend high-resolution images and will lag due to large files. But most sites have the option of uploading pictures in a size and format that is optimized for your needs.

On An Ending Note

Speed optimization has many advantages that lead to a significant and positive impact on your site. It contributes to an improved conversion rate, mainly if you are selling products. Smoother customer experience also results in a positive brand image, leading to retention of customers since no one wants to deal with a sluggish interface.

Many studies have shown that a slow interface is one of the leading causes of cart abandonment. However, one of the most significant advantages is a higher ranking on Google Results, as the algorithm favors sites that are speed optimized. The page load speed is an essential determiner of SEO ranking, which is crucial for your site's visibility.

Most of the steps you can employ for speed optimization are simple enough without having to rely on coding experience. With the tools mentioned, you can ensure that your site is hitting the benchmarks and is on its way to being more visible and customer friendly.

About the Author:

Kesavads is a technical team leader at ClaySys Technologies, dealing with UI development for WordPress based websites.