To check website performances in order to optimize them

It is always hard to compare websites using objective criteria. Indeed, every website has its own features: design, capabilities, etc. Yet, on a performance side it is easy to compare all websites. This aspect is very interesting since we can see how our website is performing but also what is wrong with our websites (bandwidth, number of requests, image size, etc.). It is a task that every webmaster should perform in order to get rid of basic mistakes / shortages. In this article, I am trying to give you some possible way of improving existing websites. After reading this article you will be able to test your website on your own with fabulous web tools.

• Web tools

Many tools are available for free on the Internet. They are easy to use and give feedback to improve your score. The scores are numbered (percentage) or use letter (A, B...). The most important thing is feedback we get from those tools that allow you to correct simple mistakes such as image size (not web friendly - too big / heavy) for instance. If feedback seems non-understandable, you can use your favorite search engine to get more information (for sure you will find more explanation on the web).

Google PageSpeed Insights

I think it is useless to describe Google! It is pretty simple, when we speak about web services Google is in the game!

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Pingdom Website Speed Test

Pingdom is a Swedish company founded in 2007. Their business is around monitoring website performance and infrastructures.

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

GTmetrix

GTmetrix is a tool developed by Gossamer Threads. It is a Canadian company who works in the web field.

http://gtmetrix.com/

Those three tools have different criteria but they come across the same issues (image size, server response time, etc.). The main advantage of the Google tool is that we have feedback about mobile usage (speed and user experience).

• Results

Creating my website Monsieur Informatique, I have used those three tools in order to improve global performances. Here are the results about my website's homepage performance (January 2015) - you can click on picture to enlarge them:

Google PageSpeed Insights

• Mobile use :

• Computer use :

Pingdom Website Speed Test

GTmetrix

The results are really good according to those tools. But we need to keep in mind that even if a website is "optimal" (from any web tool), it is not worth it if your website is not visited...