Test the speed of your website

Once you have successfully developed a website, you will need to perform periodic evaluations to ensure that it continues to meet web standards, accessibility guidelines, and is usable on multiple platforms. You can have the most beautiful website ever created, but if it is too slow and crashes a user’s browser, you have lost a visitor, and possibly a customer.

An easy way to test your website’s speed in the worst conditions, is to load it on the slowest computer you can find, on the slowest possible connection. The more single-page text, styles, images, and animations you have, the longer it will take for a browser to process it and display it.

There are also two website speed tool tests you can try: iWebTool has a speed test that will measure up to 10 domains at once. It will download your website’s actual pages and tell you how long it takes. Pingdom has a test that will examine the entire page, telling you the load times for each content item, including images. Both tools are useful, and after you have your results, compare them with other websites of similar size and content. Finally, make the necessary changes to your site, and reap the benefits.