How to Use Google PageSpeed Insights

What is Google PageSpeed Insights?

Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a free tool created by Google to analyze the performance of web pages. It evaluates both the mobile and desktop versions of a website to provide you with a detailed breakdown of various performance metrics. PSI rates your site’s performance on a scale from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the better your website performs in terms of speed and user experience.

The tool also offers specific suggestions on how to improve your site’s speed, such as optimizing images, eliminating render-blocking resources, or leveraging browser caching. More importantly, PSI incorporates Core Web Vitals which is a set of metrics that focus on the critical aspects of user experience, including loading time, interactivity, and visual stability. With this tool, we can better understand how a website performs on different devices and networks.

Google PageSpeed Insights will help your team propel your web application toward max performance levels by identifying performance issues you can then work to resolve. There are two datasets involved: first is a free tool called Lighthouse that collects data produced in the lab and combines it with data from the real-world that is gathered with the Chrome User Experience Reports. You’ll then get results that show you how your web application performs and several recommendations that can boost its performance.

Google PageSpeed Insights then audits the data gathered from these two sources to generate its results. Several metrics can be analyzed using Google PageSpeed. Each of these metrics represents a different variation of user perception. For instance, PageSpeed can measure what it calls “First Contentful Paint,” which is a measure of how long it takes for the web application to load the first screen in its display.

These metrics are then weighted to give an average score to Google’s perspective on the user experience of the web application in question. The scores are divided into three broad categories:

A score range between 90 and 100 is obviously what you want to aim for. During the ongoing development of any application, it can be hard to reach a perfect score, so most teams don’t look for that and instead focus on fixing other issues and revamping items on their web application instead of focusing on a perfect score. PageSpeed Insights give you just that, namely insights into how you can improve your websites. 

The Importance of Page Speed Optimization

Web page loading speed is super important for a bunch of reasons. First, it directly impacts user experience and people love fast-loading sites. When you have fast loading sites, users are more likely to stay engaged, while slow sites can frustrate visitors and make them leave. It also plays a big role in search engine rankings since search engines like Google give priority to faster sites which can boost your visibility and bring in more organic traffic. With mobile browsing on the rise, speed is even more critical to ensure a smooth experience on smartphones and tablets. Plus, faster websites often lead to better conversion rates which means more sales and leads, while slower ones can cause potential customers to bounce. And, of course, a fast website gives you a competitive edge by offering a better overall experience to keep your users coming back!

Using Google PageSpeed Insights is Simple

Using Google PageSpeed Insights is straightforward. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Enter Your Website URL:

• • Go to Google PageSpeed Insights.
  • In the input field, type or paste the URL of the webpage you want to analyze and click the “Analyze” button.

2. Interpret PageSpeed Performance Scores:

• • Once the analysis is complete, you will see a performance score ranging from 0 to 100. A score above 90 is considered good, while anything below 50 needs improvement.
    • • Score Range 90-100: Your web page is highly optimized and performs exceptionally well.
      • Score Range 50-89: Your web page has room for improvement but performs reasonably well.
      • Score Range 0-49: Your web page has significant performance issues and needs optimization.

3. Examine the Core Web Vitals:

PageSpeed Insights will show Core Web Vitals metrics, such as:

• First Contentful Paint (FCP): Measures how quickly users see meaningful content on the screen. Faster FCP improves the UX.
• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the time for the largest content element to be fully visible. Optimized LCP ensures fast main content loading.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability as the page loads. A low CLS score means fewer unexpected content shifts for a user-friendly experience.
• Time to Interactive (TTI): Measures how long it takes for a page to become interactive. Fast TTI allows users to interact comfortably with the page.
• Total Blocking Time (TBT): Measures the time the main thread is blocked by long tasks, causing interactivity delays. Reducing TBT improves the user experience.
• Speed Index: Represents how quickly page contents are populated. A lower speed index indicates faster loading and a better user experience.

4. Explore the Improved Recommendations:

• Under the “Opportunities” and “Diagnostics” sections, PageSpeed Insights lists suggestions for optimizing your page, such as:
  • Optimize Images: Compress images to reduce file size without losing quality.
  • Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources: Defer loading of unnecessary scripts and styles.
  • Reduce Unused CSS: Clean up your stylesheets to improve rendering performance.

5. Optimize Your Site using PageSpeed Insight Recommendations:

• Prioritize the highest-impact opportunities. For instance, reducing the time for LCP can significantly boost the user experience. Most of these optimizations can be done by adjusting your site’s code, installing performance-boosting plugins, or working with a web developer.

The Importance of Regular Load Testing

While Google PageSpeed Insights is a great way to begin to make your web application perform at optimal levels, it’s not enough to achieve maximum performance. Google PageSpeed Insights’ only shows you the performance levels of your web application for a single user session. Accordingly it is unable to show you how well or how bad your web application will perform when there is a surge of users that try to access it at the same time. That’s where load testing comes in.

Load testing simulates high traffic to see how your site performs when hundreds or thousands of visitors show up at once. This is especially important during peak times like major sales events or product launches. Without load testing, you might risk slow load times or even crashes during these high-demand moments.

Load Testing With LoadView

A great tool to use for this is LoadView which is a comprehensive cloud-based load testing platform. After fine-tuning your site with Google PageSpeed Insights, LoadView can help you take it a step further by testing your site’s ability to handle real-world traffic spikes. LoadView simulates user activity from different locations and devices, giving you a true sense of how well your site performs under pressure.

By reducing the time it takes to create complex code and scripts, LoadView’s EveryStep Recorder simplifies the process of testing and significantly reduces the time it takes to test and even costs. The ability to start a load test right in minutes after signing up, it gives you the confidence and ability to drill through to other essential tasks that will fulfill your business needs.

With our LoadView platform, you’ll also have access to load testing with the most up-to-date and widely used browsers to simulate actual users’ experience. LoadView provides the most realistic load testing available on the market today, which in turn gives the most accurate and actionable results. LoadView’s ability to test across different geographical locations also gives a much-needed extra dimension your load testing program. With LoadView, you’re able to see why your web application behaves a certain way within a certain location across many different browsers and devices. Your website might perform well in Miami but slowly in Vancouver, and with LoadView you can identify and work to resolve that issue.

By using both Google PageSpeed Insights for everyday performance optimization and LoadView for heavy traffic scenarios, you’ll ensure that your website not only runs smoothly during regular visits but also stays reliable when it really counts. This combination of tools keeps your site fast, stable, and ready for anything!

The Bottom Line: Test Regularly and Smarter

Google PageSpeed Insights is a powerful tool for website owners looking to improve their site’s performance and user experience. By analyzing your page’s speed and following the tool’s recommendations, you can significantly enhance your website’s loading times. Remember that PSI is just one part of your performance strategy. Pairing it with regular load testing ensures your site performs optimally under any conditions.

And don’t forget about Dotcom-Monitor, which offers comprehensive monitoring solutions to keep an eye on your site’s uptime, performance, and overall health 24/7/365. By using Google PageSpeed Insights for optimization, LoadView for load testing, and Dotcom-Monitor for continuous monitoring, you’ll have all the bases covered to ensure your website is fast, stable, and always ready to provide a great experience for your visitors.