When it comes to analyzing a website’s PageSpeed performance, as a website owner you have many options: GTmetrix is one of them.
In order to achieve a good conversion rate, one of your top priorities should be providing a fast loading website to your user. But how to know whether the website is performing well or not. Here, to make things easier, you can analyze the website’s PageSpeed performance in GTmetrix.
In this guide, we will discuss everything that you need to know about GTmetrix, including what GTmetrix is, how to analyze website performance in GTmetrx and the GTmetrix report. Finally, we will discuss the powerful techniques to improve the GTmetrix score.
What is GTmetrix?
GTmetrix is an online PageSpeed monitoring tool that you can use for analyzing your website performance. GTmetrix allows users to customise the PageSpeed performance test by choosing the test location, browser, and network type.
GTmetrix grades your website based on performance score (60%) and structure score (40%) on a scale of A to F, where A denotes the best performance and F indicates poor performance. Additionally, in GTmetrix, you can see the suggestion to improve the performance of core web vitals as well as PageSpeed performance.
Note: It’s always recommended to keep your grade in A. If it’s not, optimize your website’s performance immediately to enhance the user experience. To effortlessly do this, take the help of any optimization tool like RabbitLoader.
The main advantage of using GTmetrix is you can see the PageSpeed performance of each web page in its premium version.
How to analyze website performance in GTmetrix?
Here, we will show you how to analyze a website’s performance in GTmetrix.
Go the the GTmetrix site, enter your website’s domain name, and click on the Analyze button. In order to customize your website performance test, you must choose the test location, browser type, and network speed.
Interpret the GTmetrix report
If you are using GTmetrix for the first time, it might be difficult for you. Here we will interpret the GTmetrix report that may help you understand this easily.
In GTmetrix, you can see six sections:
1. Summary
2. Performance
3. Structure
4. Waterfall chart
5. Video tab
6. History
Let’s explain every tab for your better understanding.
Summary
The summary tab allows you to see a complete snapshot of the website's loading performance. Here, you can see the top issues of the web page, total page requests, and total page file size.
Performance
In the performance tab, you can see the performance of the Core Web Vitals, such as First Contentful Paint, Largest Contentful Paint, Speed Index, Total Blocking Time, Time to Interactive, and Cumulative Layout Shifts.
Structure
The structure tab allows you to see the GTmetrix suggestion for improving the website’s pageSpeed performance.
Waterfall chart
The waterfall tab shows the loading behavior of each element and their loading order; so that you can easily understand which element takes more time to load. If you want to know more details, you need to hover the timeline of the element.
Video tab
The video tab allows you to see the loading behavior of your web page for analyzing the issues of your website.
History
From the graph of the history section, you can understand the difference between the perious performance and the latest performance.
How to improve the GTmetrix score?
Improving the GTmetrix score is essential to active a good conversation rate. Here, we will discuss some easiest ways to improve the GTmetrix score, which include:
1. Image optimization
2. Implement browser caching
3. CSS optimization
Image optimization
While adding eye-catching images is essential to improve the on-page SEO, it also can harm the website’s pageSpeed performance. Image optimization can speed up your website. You can reduce the image without losing quality by converting it into next-gen formats.
An image optimization plugin such as RabbitLoader, ShortPixel image optimizer, or others you can use to compress your images losslessly.
Implement browser caching
Browser caching is one of the PageSpeed optimization techniques that speed up a website by storing static files like images, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files locally. By implementing browser caching, you can render the website’s content quickly.
Several browser caching plugins are available, like WP Rocket, and RabbitLoader, that can be used for implementing an efficient browser caching mechanism.
CSS optimization
CSS optimization is essential, especially if you are aiming to achieve a good score. The most effective two CSS optimization techniques are: generating critical CSS and reducing unused CSS.
A few WordPress plugins can reduce the unused CSS. However, while you are using RabbitLoader, it will optimize your CSS file by reducing the unused CSS and generating the critical CSS.
Conclusion
Understanding the GTmetrix report can be helpful for you to make your decision. Here, we have discussed every detail of GTmetrix and also explored some effective ways to improve the GTmetrix score, which leads to enhancing the user experience.
