Nowadays, Web search engines show millions of results for any keyword in 2 to 5 seconds and the visitors select any URL on a search engine result page (SERP) in next 10 seconds. After landing to your Website, any visitor takes only 5 to 8 seconds to analyze whether this page serves their purpose or not. If not then they close it and returns to the same SERP from where they came. In nutshell, you just have 5 seconds to attract the visitors to your Website, convert him/her into a reader and then into a potential buyer. Yes, Content is the King and Website design plays a great role in attracting the visitors. Still Page Loading Speed matters. Suppose your Website opens up slowly or take minutes to load its pages, then what will happen? The visitors will close the tab/window having your Website and this will turn into an increase in the bounce rates and thus traffic loss. Your Website should load immediately just after the pressing ENTER key or clicking the any link at the visitors’ browser irrespective of his/her connection speed, platform, and computer performance else you will lose a potential buyer. In this write up, we will highlight the tools to test the page loading speed of your Website. After testing with them, you can use their recommendations to improve performance.

Firebug

Firebug is the one stop solution if you want to analyze the performance of your Website or to test it for errors. It is available for both Google Chrome and Firefox, but we suggest you to go for Firefox Firebug Add-on because here you can install its supported extensions like Google Page Speed, Yahoo! YSlow, and FireCookie.

Google Page Speed

The search engine giant is consistently working on improving the World Wide Web and its access to the end users. It has launched Page Speed API recently. You can visit http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com/ and analyze the performance of your Website.

Want to go in depth? You can install Google Page Speed Extension in Google Chrome by following the instructions mentioned at thisGoogle Page Speed Docs. In addition, Google Page Speed is also available as an extension to Firebug Add-on for Mozilla Firefox.

Yahoo! YSlow

Yahoo! YSlow analyzes the Web pages/sites and suggests the different ways to improve their performance. It is available as a Google Chrome Extension and integrated with Firebug at Mozilla Firefox. We recommend using Yahoo! YSlow on Mozilla Firefox.

Firecookie

Everyone knows that cookies are created on the visitors’ browser and machines. If you want to inspect the cookies for your Website and thinking to check their loading, then Firecookie is here. Like YSlow!, it is an extension of Firebug Add-on.  Firecookie allows you to

1. Inspect cookies
2. Modify Cookie permissions
3. See Cookie Events
4. Check Cookie Expire Time
5. Export Cookies to a text file
6. Use Cookie Clipboard
7. Send and Receive Cookies
8. Sort and Deny Cookies
9. Handle JSON Inspector & XML Inspector
10. Set breakpoint condition and Cookie Breakpoint

MySpace Performance Tracker

MySpace Performance Tracker is an add-on to Internet Explorer. It allows you tracking the performance of your Website and helps in validating with the preset rules of Web development.

IBM Page Detailer

It is a graphical tool from IBM, which helps the Web masters to analyze the performance of their Websites. IBM Page Detailer simulates the manner in which the Websites are loaded inside the browser and displays real-time reports for analysis & improvements. After installation, you can edit the C:\Program Files\IBM\Page Detailer\wd_WS2s.ini file to mention the EXE files of the browser to be monitored. Make sure to browse the correct path where you’ve installed the IBM Page Detailer program.

HTTPD Watch

HTTPD Watch Basic Edition allows you monitoring HTTP and HTTPS seamlessly without messing up with network settings. It also tests the Websites for headers, cookies, page loading, page events, streaming, warnings and error messages. You can download and install the Basic Edition from its Website in free.

Web Page Test

WebPageTest.org provides the free test to analyze the performance of your Website on both Desktop and Mobile browsers. In addition, you can also use its services to trace the route of loading of your Website and get it compared with others’ Website.

BrowserMob

BrowserMob provides different services including Performance Testing, Website Monitoring, and Local Script Validation Services. However, you have to sign up at Browser Mob before using its services.

ShowSlow

ShowSlow is a free and open source tool to test the performance of your Website on desktop and mobile browsers. You can either visit its Website for online test or download it and install at your Web server. ShowSlow collects the results of Yahoo! YSlow, Google Page Speed, and dyanTrace AJAX Edition and displays them for analysis.

Conclusion

Just making a Website, adding features to it, validating it, and launching it does not end your work. You must have to test its Performance just after launching it in the public domain and make necessary change to improve the performance. We invite our readers to add more tools to test the Websites’ fast loading speed.

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