Free Web Page Speed Testing and Optimizing Tool

WebPageTest.org is the home of a new tool powered by AOL. Simply type in your web address, and this free, open source tool will analyze the speed of your web page.

This can be an eye-opening experience.

Type in the URL you wish to check, and choose a location and the speed at which you’d like to run the test. Your web analytics results will show whether you have visitors using dial-up or not; if so, then you should test your site at that speed to make sure that such visitors can see your site. Otherwise, choose between standard broadband and high-speed.

In the future, there may be more locations and more browsers to try, but at the moment, all the tests are run on IE7.

Push the “submit” button and relax.

The Waterfall Chart

Once your results page is ready, you can explore a couple of different reports. First, there’s a waterfall report which graphically shows the time involved in making initial connections, making requests of the servers, and downloading content.

This chart gives lots of information:

• First Byte indicates the overall health of the platform and the application on the server.
• Start Render tells you how quickly a visitor gets to see the page – one second or less is what you’re after here.
• Document Complete shows when everything has loaded.
• “Requests” refers to the number of items called for by the browser from the server. Bites Served is simply the size of the page.
• The tool will also show you any errors on the page.

In general, you want all the numbers to get smaller over time as you optimize and retest your page.

The waterfall report uses horizontal bars to show the length of time each element of your page requires, with color-coding to distinguish connection and request time from download time. It has vertical lines to show the First Byte and Document Complete points.

The tool will save your waterfall chart, or you can save or send the URL. This allows you to compare it with later renditions, after you’ve optimized for speed.

The Optimization Checklist

Then there’s an optimization checklist, which shows specifically where you’ve failed to choose the fastest options – and therefore, where you can speed things up.

Have you combined all your CSS stylesheets and Java Scripts? If so, you’ll get a nice line of green check marks and a 100% ranking. Have you compressed all your images? If you haven’t done so, then you’ll get red Xs identifying those you missed.

On the same page, below the chart, there’s a narrative optimization report, which gives you a handy punchlist of the steps you can take to speed up your page. You can copy and paste it into Excel and use it to fix the issues.

Once you’ve made the recommended changes, you can come back and run the test again and compare it with your previous results.

The tool is simple, clear, and easy to use. There’s a glossary of terms used and a nice video run-through for new users.

There are some options, too. You can check multiple runs, you can adjust your results to accommodate things like streaming video and chat functions, and you can also compare the new visitor experience with repeat views.

This is designed to be a simple tool, and that’s the beauty of it. Use it to catch the things that are slowing down your pages, and to help you optimize those pages for speed.

• Google's Optimization Plug-in for Firefox: Page Speed
• Speed Up Your Site: eAccelerator Review
• Optimizing Your Website for Speed is Essential
• Easy Tricks to Optimize Your Wordpress Loading Time
• Speed Matters: Google Adds Speed to Its 200 Web Search Signals
• Have You Tried Load Impact's Load Testing Tool?
• How Much RAM Does Your Server Need?