Do you know that 40% of internet users abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load? Google uses the page loading speed as a ranking signal for finalizing its search results positions. Website speed has become an important user experience metric which affects the overall performance of an interface. Google provides some handy tools to webmasters which they can use to assess their interface’s performance. Here we are discussing how Google Speed Index for WordPress users can prove to be a valuable asset. As a WordPress website owner, you get access to a platform with lightweight code and in-built speed optimization capabilities. However, with the addition of new elements like images and videos, your website can become slow. Tools like Speed Index help you in keeping a close watch on the metric and ensure a good user experience to your visitors.
What Is Speed Index?
Google provides webmasters with a few tools which they can use to assess their interface’s performance. One such solution is Lighthouse which can be used to evaluate a page’s performance. The Speed Index is a metric which can be analyzed with the Lighthouse tool to learn how quickly all the elements of a page are visibly loaded in a browser. Lighthouse finds out whether a page is accessible to all visitors, even those who are using unreliable network connections. It also checks whether a page is being served from a secure location or not. It is an open-source solution which can be accessed in various ways.
How Speed Index Is Calculated?
In order to measure the Speed Index, the Lighthouse tool records a video of a page loading in a browser. It captures 10 frames per second and includes only above the fold content of the page. In case, a page takes 4 seconds to render completely, then there will be 40 frames in total. The first frame will have nothing to show while the last will be displaying the fully-loaded page. Each frame is compared with the final one to ascertain its completeness. Then a graph is plotted with visibility completeness and elapsed time to find the average score. Every individual interval is added to arrive at the overall score. Take a look at the image given below where the blue section represents the Speed Index.
How To Generate Your Website’s Speed Index Score?
It will now be clear to you that Google Speed Index for WordPress users can be an effective tool. Let’s see how you can generate the score for your web pages. There are two main ways in which you can access Lighthouse. We will discuss each one of them here.
1. The Command Line Method
You will have to install the Node command line tool. First, you will have to get the Google Chrome browser installed on your system. Then you will need to install the long-term support version of Node. Then install Lighthouse through:
npm install -g lighthouse
Here “-g” flag will make sure that the tool is installed as a global module. When you need to run an audit, you can use:
lighthouse
In case, you want to view the audit options, you can use:
lighthouse –help
2. Through Chrome DevTools
The above method will be suitable for people with coding knowledge like custom WordPress theme development professionals. Users who do not have high levels of technical proficiency can access Lighthouse through Chrome DevTools. You must have the Google Chrome browser installed on your system. Then open the web page you want to evaluate in the browser. Then you can click Ctrl+Shift+i or right-click in the browser and then choose the Inspect option. You can also click on the three-dot icon in the extreme right-hand corner of your browser after the address bar. Then choose More tools > Developer tools.
Now click on the Audits tab and choose the kind of evaluation you are interested in.
Press the Run Audits tab and soon you will be presented with the results.
Remember the lower your score is, the better it is for your website. There is no definite benchmark score that webmasters can aim at. However, anything below 1000 ms is considered a good figure. In order to find out what is the ideal score for your interface, you must conduct a competitor assessment. This will give you an idea about the target you need to achieve to beat your rivals.
Adopting some best practices like optimizing images before uploading will keep your loading time under control. WordPress website owners can use image optimization plugins to compress pictures without losing quality before they are uploaded. Employing code minification techniques during development to optimize CSS and JavaScript is another helpful tactic.
Conclusion
The Google Speed Index is a handy metric not only for webmasters but also for professionals involved in fields like WordPress plugin development. They can find out whether their creations will affect a website’s speed or not. This will help them in creating efficient products with increased chances of success.
