Help Docs Performance Website Optimization Site Performance Testing Tools

Site Performance Testing Tools

Google PageSpeed Insights analyzes page performance on mobile and desktop, offers improvements, and uses Lighthouse; WebPageTest offers detailed diagnostics.

Google Pagespeed Insights

Google PageSpeed Insights which now uses Google Lighthouse as it’s integrated analysis engine,  reports on the user experience of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and provides suggestions on how that page may be improved. Google Pagespeed Insights provides both lab and field data about a page. 

Google Pagespeed Insights Video Walkthrough

Google Lighthouse Tool In Chrome Browser

An alternative to going directly to the Google Pagespeed Insights site, is using Google Lighthouse directly through Chrome as it’s now built into the developer tools. 

To use Google Lighthouse in Chrome:

  1. Download Google Chrome for Desktop.
  2. In Google Chrome, go to the URL you want to audit. You can audit any URL on the web.
  3. Navigate to Chrome’s developer tools by:
    • Right-clicking a page and selecting Inspect.
    • Clicking the three-dot menu > More Tools > Developer Tools.
    • Using the keyboard shortcuts: F12 (Windows/Linux) or Option+⌘+J (Mac).
  4. Click the >> button to the right of the Sources option and select Lighthouse.
  5. Click the Analyze page load button and wait for the report to be generated.

Webpagetest

WebPageTest is an open source web performance tool providing diagnostic information about how a web page performs under a variety of conditions. It offers an online version where each test can be run from different locations around the world, on real browsers, over any number of customized network conditions.

This testing site does rate limit as well except more often. it’s recommended to sign up for a free account using your Liquid Web email account as it will then give you 300 testing runs a month. You can sign up for a free account at https://www.webpagetest.org/signup/2

Was this article helpful?