What Is A Key Factor To Consider When Analyzing The Performance Of Web Services

xiv Important Website Performance Metrics You Should Be Analyzing

By Cody Arsenault

Updated on June ane, 2017

14 Important Website Performance Metrics You Should Be Analyzing

Creating an optimal user experience for your website's visitors is not an exact science, but paying attention to specific performance metrics tin give developers guidance for how to increase their traffic and user retention.

Meeting the demands of cyberspace users has never been more than challenging. People expect professional graphic blueprint, interactive media and lighting fast load times. Of form, adding more elements to your website increases the likelihood that something volition get incorrect. The only style to decide what works for you is to monitor performance metrics.

Earlier you start tracking website performance metrics

There is more to monitoring website performance metrics than most developers realize. If you take visitors from across the globe, you need to know how your website performs in unlike parts of the world on an increasing multitude of devices. Consistency is key to delivering an excellent user feel, so yous must be confident that all visitors are seeing the same end product.

Because so many variables can bear upon the frontend experience at any given fourth dimension, web developers use a method called multivariate testing to go an accurate picture show of website performance metrics over time. As for which performance metrics you should be analyzing, we've compiled listing of the most of import performance metrics organized by category.

Website speed performance metrics

Attention spans are getting shorter, not longer. Customers brand snap judgments about a visitor's professionalism, so don't permit the first thing they run across be a big, slowly loading blurry logo. To fully empathize user retention, we take to breakdown the user experience piece-by-piece.

To call back the results of many of the metrics below for your item site yous can run a speed test over at webpagetest.org. Note that not all metrics volition be displayed on the summary or performance review pages. To access more granular metrics you lot volition need to download the raw page data report as shown beneath.

The post-obit site speed test results were are taken from a default WordPress exam site running on Nginx and KeyCDN with no special configurations.

1. Fourth dimension to title

The amount of time between the instant a company requests your website and the moment your site'southward championship shows up in their browser tab is called the time to title. Seeing a title right away lets the user know that your website is legitimate, which makes them more likely to wait for the page to finish loading. Time to title is adamant by the speed of delivery from your origin server to the user's browser. As shown in the results below, the time to title for our examination site was 464 ms.

2. Time to showtime render

The time elapsed between a user's asking and the moment when content appears in their browser is called time to start render. This is too a very of import metric to analyze as the sooner a visitor sees content appear, the more than likely they will be to stay for the rest of the page to load. The time to commencement render, in this case, was 1019 ms.

3. Time to interact

The time between a asking and the moment when a user tin can click on links, type in text fields or curl the page is called time to interact. Some elements such as scripts and trackers may go along to load during this menses.

four. DNS lookup fourth dimension

The amount of fourth dimension information technology takes for your DNS provider to translate a domain name into an IP address. Services such as Pingdom or WebPageTest can apace calculate your website's DNS lookup times for each domain it must lookup.

Visit our commodity to learn more about how to reduce DNS lookups. Additionally, check out our listing of best complimentary DNS providers for more information regarding what's available in terms of DNS services.

5. Connection time

The time between a request and when a connection is established betwixt the user's browser and your origin server is called the connection fourth dimension.

Identifying challenges to connectedness fourth dimension can be difficult because it depends on many factors. Too much server traffic, whether it be from users or bots, tin can cause connexion times to spike. Users in different geographic regions are likely to experience longer connection times. Only monitoring your website functioning metrics over time may not give you enough information to address bug; you lot can experiment with load testing tools such every bit LoadStorm or JMeter to simulate heavy server usage. To ensure amend connection fourth dimension, y'all may need to upgrade your infrastructure. Alternatively, you lot could offload some assets onto a CDN or caching server.

6. Time to offset byte

The time it takes for the very beginning byte of data to reach a user's browser after a connection to the server has been established is called fourth dimension to first byte or TTFB. The order in which users receive information is important, and some slight alterations in your code can boost this website performance metric.

Static content that appears the same to all users should be separated from dynamic content that is specific to the individual visitor. This way, users will receive your content right away while waiting for slower personalized content to load. Rigorous metric monitoring and load testing can help developers identify time to outset byte issues. You tin too use the KeyCDN's Performance Test tool to view the TTFB of a domain, or single asset, from 10 different locations.

7. Time to last byte

When the user'due south browser finally receives each and every byte of your website, the last byte time is recorded. The quality of your lawmaking and database queries play a big part in this metric. Other factors that may exist affecting your TTLB include a misconfigured webserver, or if the origin server has reached its capacity.

Content complication and website performance metrics

Keeping track of website operation metrics involving time isn't very useful if yous don't empathise all of the other factors at play. Data about your website's content complication tin help you find ways to ameliorate all of the previously discussed metrics.

8. Overall weight

The full number of bytes the user receives is referred to as the overall weight of your website. More important than the overall weight is the relationship between each asset since 1 heavy asset tin can slow down everything else. Furthermore, the growth of spider web folio size has continued to expand year later year, therefore information technology's important to sometimes step dorsum and see which assets are truly necessary.

By separating private metrics such as JavaScript weight, CSS weight, image weight and total asset weight, you can pick out which categories are as well heavy, and and so you can perform a waterfall analysis to place the asset that needs to exist contradistinct or removed.

nine. Overall nugget count

The number of avails you accept obviously affects your website's overall weight, just it'southward important to differentiate betwixt asset count and weight. Every nugget, no matter how small or compressed, has the potential to add more than time to the loading process. Your overall asset count includes your total JavaScript, CSS and paradigm counts.

Encounter how nosotros improved WordPress performance and went from a 532 ms load time to 167 ms by reducing the amount of HTTP requests fabricated.

10. Third party domains

The majority of your website's content is hosted on your domain, but many sites too include third party content such every bit embedded videos or social media widgets. Because these items originate from other domains, you take limited command over their functionality. Therefore, the potential for problems rises with each domain that'due south in play. Only rely on other domains that tin can guarantee impeccable performance, or else a third party could compromise your users' experience.

User beliefs and website operation metrics

Now that we've covered the technical aspects of website performance, let'southward talk over what visitors actually do later clicking a link to your website.

11. Fault charge per unit

The kickoff of import non-speed related metric to go on an eye on is your website's error rate. The average number of problem requests compared to full requests is your fault charge per unit. This metric is likely affected past your number of concurrent users; exam your website's performance under different loads to check.

For instance, you may notice that your error rate starts to increase at a specific point during a load test, such equally when a certain number of concurrent users are attempting the same activity. If you're expecting a sudden surge in traffic due to a special promotion or issue, this information can assist yous prepare. Some errors are inevitable, but keeping an eye on the number of errors your website is encountering tin can help minimize larger issues downwards the route.

If you're using KeyCDN, you tin can use the Reporting department to see how many customer errors your Zone(s) accept encountered over a specific catamenia of time.

12. Bounce charge per unit

If your bounce rate is loftier, that means something is making users turn away without thoroughly exploring your site. Google calls such visits "single-page sessions," and too many of them can bear on your SEO. Possible causes of loftier bounciness rates might include poorly targeted keywords, slow load times or unpleasant graphic blueprint.

If you brand changes and your bounciness rate starts declining, then y'all're doing something right. Bank check out our detailed post about 21 ways to aid reduce bounce charge per unit on your website.

thirteen. Top pages

You can find out which of your pages draws the most traffic by simply checking under the Behavior section of Google Analytics. Knowing where users focus their attention tin give you an thought of which content is helping y'all retain an audition. Keep in mind that the number of views a page receives isn't the only measure of its relevancy; the number of shares a folio receives via social media is also important.

14. Conversion rate

Perhaps the nearly important of all your functioning metrics, the conversion charge per unit is the nigh intimately connected with your bottom line. When it comes to optimizing user experience, your conversion rate is more important than your overall conversion numbers because it lets you know if users are doing what y'all want them to exercise when they visit your site. A Conversion rate is calculated by simply dividing your number of unique visitors by your number of conversions. Google Analytics can rails this information over time, but defining a "conversion" is upwards to you.

The nautical chart below shows the correlation betwixt website load fourth dimension and conversion rates.

Source: Forbes

If your conversion charge per unit is low, you lot may be alluring the wrong kind of traffic, should improve upon your website speed metrics, or might have an inefficient telephone call to action.

Perceived performance vs performance metrics

Sometimes numbers don't tell you everything you need to know, which is why it's important to understand how web users think. Perception is everything, and sometimes at that place is a difference between how long it takes for a folio to load and how long the user "feels similar" information technology's taking.

For example, implementing lazy loading can technically make your website faster, simply adding a progress indicator to individual assets as they load makes users more conscious of the passing time, so they actually perceive the website as loading slowly. If you're going to use lazy loading, be sure to leave out the indicator.

FOUT, or flash of unstyled text, is another event that impacts user perception. FOUT occurs when fonts are loaded toward the end of the Dr. load, so characters appear as blurry blocks before turning into recognizable letters and numbers. FOUT doesn't touch on your website's bodily speed, but it is visually jarring and makes users more aware that they are waiting for the page to load.

To learn more about perceived performance and its effect on user behavior, cheque out the consummate guide.

Using performance metrics to optimize user feel

Companies and individual developers tin benefit from setting personal standards for all of these metrics. Considering the Internet is always evolving, so is the study of website performance metrics. New enquiry well-nigh users' browsing habits volition undoubtedly give u.s.a. more insight into how to better cater to everyone'southward preferences. In the meantime, consider analyzing the metrics above and make any adjustment necessary to aid improve the functioning of these metrics.