You need a site that is optimized to ensure your readers have the best user experience possible. Using performance testing tools can help you identify problems that could be slowing your site.
Don’t just wait until you notice a problem with your site. It’s free and easy to check on the health of your product review site. Having a look at how the site is operating will help you find problems and quickly fix them.
Keep in mind that performance tests don’t usually include security testing. But there are resources to help with that.
If you’re experiencing a slow-loading product review website, you need to try a few fixes to get it running faster. To find out if your site is operating slower than it should be, check out these free performance testing tools.
Optimized Images Tests
Image size is one of the top reasons sites are slow. Even if your product review site doesn’t have a lot of images, they still need to be optimized to speed up load time. It’s a great way to promote things like a KitchenAid Ice Maker.
The easiest way to optimize your images is with an app like Photoshop or any number of online services. These will shrink those images to under 100 Kb.
You can also use a variety of WordPress plugins to assist in optimizing your images further. There are some, such as WP Smush, that will reduce image file sizes by up to 15%.
ShortPixel Compression Test
To check whether your images are already optimized or if you need to reduce the file sizes further, check out the compression test from ShortPixel. Enter the URL you want to test and the compression test will tell you about the page’s performance.
The test will show how much space you can save with compression. It will also offer a comparison between your original images and the compressed versions. This will help you to better understand how much quality you lose with the compression.
After testing your product review site’s images, you can better understand what you need to do to improve. In some cases, you may only need to resize the original images or even shrink the file size before uploading them. Of course, if your site is image heavy, you’ll likely need additional plugins or services to further optimize the images.
Speed Test Tools
While checking on your images is a great idea, there’s more to page speed than just those elements. You have all kinds of data and elements that can slow your site down.
This is where speed tests come in for performance testing tools.
There are a lot of speed tests out there, but not all of them are equal. In most cases, you only need the most basic speed test to understand how your site is performing.
If your website has issues that need to be fixed, you need to understand what those problems are. For a lot of website owners, it can be difficult to understand what the problems mean. Fortunately, there are tutorials and even plugins that can help resolve the issues.
Google PageSpeed Insights
If you want to make sure your website is running fast enough, check out Google PageSpeed Insights. This free service from Google will analyze your site and all you have do is enter the URL.
PageSpeed Insights will give you information about your website’s speed and optimization on mobile and desktop. It provides an easy-to-read analysis of your page, so you can understand its performance.
It also offers suggestions to optimize your site in case you need it to load faster. It even provides links to resources to help you understand what each item is. This is useful because not everyone understands how to minify HTML or CSS.
As PageSpeed Insights notes optimization of your images, it will inform you of whether you should get a plugin to further reduce the image sizes on your site.
Pingdom Website Speed Test
This speed test allows you to set location parameters before performing the test. This will let you know how your site loads in specific areas.
This web tool will provide you with an overall performance grade along with the time it took for your page to load. It also tells you what percent of pages load slower, the page size, and the number of requests. Then, just as Google’s tool, it will give you recommendations for improvements.
Pingdom will even break down all the elements that make up the page size. It will tell you what percent of your page is images, script, HTML, CSS, and other things.
The disadvantage of this site is that it handles multiple requests and can take longer to actually test your site.
YSlow
This is a browser extension that can aid in identifying issues on any website based on Yahoo!’s rules. It is compatible with most browsers, except Microsoft Edge, and needs to be downloaded from the official site.
This extension “Grades web page based on one of three predefined rule set or a user-defined ruleset,” according to its description. YSlow tests for 23 of 34 rules that affect website performance. The app notes that these are the 23 rules that can be tested for.
Like the other tests, it will offer suggestions to improve your site. It also provides statistics on the sites it tests.
Use Performance Testing Tools to Keep Your Website Healthy
A slow-loading website will drive traffic away. It’s important to optimize your site to improve the user experience. The faster your page loads, the more likely your readers are to return.
That’s why you need to utilize the free performance testing tools to find out what may be slowing your site down. If you’ve kept up with the best practices for optimizing your site, the performance tests should not return any major issues.
We offer a variety of helpful tips and services to speed up your site. If you need more ideas to speed up WordPress, contact us for more information on services that can get your site loading faster.
