Web Performance
GTmetrix: A Tool to Measure Site Speed
If you want to create high-performance, fast and reliable websites from the point of view of user experience, I recommend using GTmetrix . That is, one of the best tools for testing speed online.
Using it is simple, just enter the link of the page you want to analyze and you will be provided with scores and recommendations to evaluate the status of your website with regards to speed and Core Web Vitals .
The suite has many options and offers both free and paid features. Furthermore, by registering you can access some additional features, always free. Want to learn more? Continue reading.
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What are the best alternatives to GTmetrix?
Why Check Your Sites With This Tool
How GTmetrix Speed Test Works
Go ype the URL of any web page, internal or home page. Once the software has scanned the link you can get a report in a few seconds with a series of information:
GtMetrix Score.
Core Web Vitals Results.
Performance and structure.
Main problems.
Page details.
To assist you, as with other tools for measuring the loading speed of a website, there are colors and shapes that will help you understand at a glance what the level of performance is :
Red: Below average.
Orange: You can still improve.
Green: Above average.
Letter: degree of optimization.
GTmetrix Page Speed provides an overview of your website's performance. It includes Lighthouse rules with more consistent testing: page load times now depend on the hardware resources (CPU) of Panama Phone Numbers
the device, mirroring the real-world experience of Google Web Vitals metrics .
The GTmetrix tool logo.
The GTmetrix tool logo.
Want to improve your pagespeed score? For each of these recommendations, the tool shows you a description in English to suggest improvements to make in order to optimize your score.
Next to it is a blue button with the words “ What's this mean ?”, when you move the mouse over it you will be given a short description and a link to a web page where you can further explore the issue. In the main problems section there is a summary where you can identify the type, priority and difficulty of the problem to be solved .
How to Read and Use the GTmetrix Tool
Previously, GTmetrix had Pagespeed results for Google and Yahoo's Yslow . Now everything is summarized in the GTmetrix Grade, a synthetic indicator that combines the speed of execution of the internet page.
GTmetrix Score - Mirko Ciesco
Here you find loading, interactivity and visual stability with technical aspects of the front-end and real perception of the performance recorded by users . In the first tab the compliance of the page of this parameter is evaluated. Which represents a weighted average of the two new basic scores.
Website performance
In the performance section (which accounts for 70% of the final result) you will find items that go beyond the work of measuring page loading speed. Specifically, you can observe 6 decisive metrics :
Page loading (45%)
First Contentful Paint (10%)
Speed Index (10%)
Largest Contentful Paint (25%)
Interaction with elements (40%)
Time to Interact (10%)
Total Blocking Time (30%)
Design stability (15%)
Cumulative Layout Shift (15%)
The colors and numbers help guide the final evaluation. A score above 90% is considered a fast and performing site, 50 to 90 is considered average and below 50% is considered a slow website . GTmetrix specifies that the parameters are continuously improved.
Portal structure
30% of the final evaluation of the site concerns its structure. The tool performs a complete scan of the page to analyze all the components (images, scripts, style sheets, etc.) and generates a score for each rule and provides an overall grade . Here is some of the information you can get:
Image optimization.
Minify CSS and JavaScript.
Effective cache policies.
Redirects between multiple pages.
Using CDN .
Gzip compression .
Optimizing HTTP requests.
Header expiration indications.
In short, here you have a series of basic information to improve on-page activity. Technically defining a series of steps that can often significantly improve navigation.
A recent GTmetrix update detects HTTP/2 usage, so the report doesn't flag unnecessary errors like the use of CSS sprites and inline CSS and JavaScript, which are typical problems for HTTP/1 connections.
Google Web Vitals
Another section of Gtmetrix is dedicated to an in-depth analysis of Web Vitals, a set of metrics useful for evaluating the experience of your page. Each metric indicated in the tool represents a decisive aspect of the experience of the page: loading, interactivity and visual stability. Here we have:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
Total Blocking Time (TBT).
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
By clicking on the performance label, you can expand this section and dive deeper into the performance of internal activities using performance data from Lighthouse and those recorded by the browser.
You can get data on DOM Content Loaded Time , Fully Loaded Time and everything you need to optimize even quite technical aspects of the performance of a website or an e-commerce. In addition, you can check the speed by choosing between screen resolutions and device orientation.
Must Read: Tracking Core Web Vitals in Looker Studio
The benefits of using GTmetrix PRO
If you want to take advantage of all the features of this tool to measure the speed of the site you have the option to upgrade to the PRO version of GTmetrix . You can choose between different plans:
Individual
Basic
Alone
Starter
Growth
Business
Champion
Team
Enterprise
Custom
In the paid versions you have a great variety of tools. But already in the free solution with registration you have some interesting benefits such as priority access without having to queue your analysis. You can also simulate tests from different geographical locations and do On-Demand Test.
The benefits of using GTmetrix PRO
Choose the connection type for analysis.
Advanced Options, available for PRO users, allows you to test your page's responsiveness on various devices: you can select from over 20 popular smartphones and tablets and perform a 3G or LTE speed test. You can save the analysis options as presets for faster and easier testing.
If you use analytics tools like Google Analytics , you can check which browsers, devices and sizes are most commonly used to visit your website and ensure it is optimized for your visitors .
4 Things to Consider When Analyzing on GTmetrix
GTmetrix users are often interested in getting the highest percentage score and a reduced website loading time. Now I will try to explain why some aspects are less important than others and why you should not focus your efforts in an early optimization phase.
Serves scaled images and optimize images
If you are lazyloading images on your site, you may not want to take GTmetrix’s advice into consideration. If some plugins do not allow you to serve resized images or optimize images below the fold (such as the author image at the bottom of the post), don’t worry.
This does not affect the actual loading speed of the site as the image will usually load when the user scrolls to that specific section of the page.
Pay attention to the difference between the first and second visit
Are you familiar with Leverage browser caching, Add expires headers and Specify a cache validator? These features indicated by the speed test do not affect the speed of the first visit
But on to the next one. You can add header expirations and specify the validity time to allow browsers to take full advantage of caching.
For PHP sites you
