How to benchmark your website speed against other websites
08 April 2010
A fast website is an excellent way to make sure your customers are more likely to look at more of your content, view more pages, and be more likely to act on your calls for action.
There are many ways to improve your website, but it can be tricky to decide how fast it is compare to other websites of similar size.
In Google Webmaster Tools, you can easily judge how your website speed compares with other similar websites. This service is completely free and doesn't take much effort to implement. You don't even need to install any software since Google runs this service on the web. You will only need to authenticate that you are authorised to collect data on your website by either adding an html file to the root of your website or a meta tag on the homepage.
Sample website performance benchmark
Here's a sample graph that shows, over a period of time, how fast a website responds when benchmarked against other websites of a similar size:
The data won't be available instantly, so it's a good idea to setup this tool as soon as your website is live. Over time, this will provide you with valuable information on your website performance.
Once you have registered with this free service, this information can be found under Labs > Site performance:
How to further improve your website performance
Over time, Google will even build a recommendation on specific webpages that could be improved, with a detailed view of what needs to be done and how much lighter, therefore faster, your webpage will be:
All this data can be collated without downloading any software, but should you need further advice on a wider range of webpages, you can download the free Page Speed browser. This tool only works in Firefox but it will provide you with an analysis of any webpage instantly and will give you hard data on how to improve its speed.
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