Web Page Speed Test Using Pingdom Tools | WP Learning Lab

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Web Page Speed Test Using Pingdom Tools | WP Learning Lab

Having a fast website is important for multiple reasons.

1. The faster your site is the lower the bounce rate will be.

2. If you have an e-Commerce site, the faster it is the higher your conversions will be (Yep, it’s been proven by studies conducted by WalMart)

3. Google takes your site’s speed into account when determining your search engine rankings.

The question is, how to check website speed. The easiest is to use one of the many web page speed tests available online.

In this video I use one called Pingdom. Others are gtmetrix and the Google website speed test.

They all do the same thing.

The load your site and track how long it takes for each element to load. It will tell you how long it took to load:

– CSS
– Javascript
– images
– theme files
– plugin files

It will also tell you how many HTTP requests were made. The results are often shown in a nice cascading gantt chart.

I know that you’re busy, so you want to address the things that will give you a big boost and not waste time with the small fries.

I can tell you from experience that the biggest boosts to WordPress site speed almost always come one of three things. If you can do all three of these you’ll be off to the races.

– Use a faster hosting service
– Use a faster theme
– Use only fast plugins

The first two items on this list are a little painful, I know. But nobody said it was going to be easy. I’ve found that everything else is minor in boosting speed.

If you’re committed to making your site as fast as possible, do those three things.

If none of those are an option then you’ll want to look into doing some or all of these:

1. Install a caching plugin that will also minify CSS and JS
2. Reduce HTTP requests by creating image sprites and combining CSS and JS files

I hope this information helps you! If you have any questions leave a comment below or ping me @WPLearningLab on Twitter.

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