Experts Blog

Top 6 Tools To Check Website Loading Time – And Why This Matters

By Shelly Kramer on Sep 01, 2011 - 10:27 AM

When you’ve clicked on a website from which you seek information, resources or services, few things are more frustrating than when that website takes eons (translation: minutes) to load.

Website load speeds aren’t just important from a convenience factor. Research shows that customers are less likely to return to a website that’s slow to load, meaning a sloth-like site could cost you business—and money.

Need more convincing? I’ll let the facts do the talking. Strangeloop published a fantastic infographic based on a 2008 survey by Aberdeen that examined the impact of application and website performance on various metrics.

Among the findings:

  • 1-second delay in page load time = a 7% loss in conversions
  • 11% fewer page views
  • 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

How does this translate to dollars? According to Strangeloop, if your site earns $100,000 a day, this could mean a $2.5 million LOSS in sales in one year. Yikes!!! Time really is money, isn’t it?

Now you’re (understandably) concerned about your site’s loading time, but you’re not sure how to check it. Don’t fret—instead, consult our list of 6 handy tools that will help you check your site’s performance.

Top 6 Tools To Check Site Load Time

LinkVendor

Enter your website address and get the loading time duration. From there, you can determine if your site is in need of some optimization or if you should swap out a slow ISP. One of the great features of LinkVendor is that it will calculate estimated load times using a variety of connection speeds (from modem to T3) so you get an accurate picture of your site’s load time.

Internet Supervision Web Server Monitoring

If your website has a sizable international audience, this is a must-use tool. Plus, we love the resulting global graph that pinpoints the various test cities and coordinating load times.

Web Optimization Analyzer

You’ve got to love a tool that does the legwork for you. Not only does Web Optimization Analyzer generate a complete picture of your site’s load time, including average download times per object types, but you’ll also get analysis and recommendations that will give you helpful hints and guide your site optimization improvements.

iWebTool Speed Test

Feeling competitive? Not only does iWebTool calculate your site’s loading time, but it allows you to compare your site to up to 10 other sites so you can see how your loading time stacks up with your competitors. Your results include the website’s size, load time and the average speed per KB, so you’ll have an accurate picture of your site’s performance.

Site-Perf

If you’re a data freak like me, you’re going to love the oodles of info generated by Site-Perf. Not only will you ascertain your site’s load time, but you’ll also get a list of how many objects are on your site and their byte size, including CSS, HTML, images and scripts, among others. By loading all of the elements on your site, the tool emulates the experience of an average user so you’ll have accurate data that may help you identify areas of improvement. You’ll also get an average download speed, as well as an average compress ratio. And if you want, Site-Perf also lets you decide the test server location before you run your site test.

Pingdom Tools

When you input your site address into Pingdom Tools, the result is a comprehensive graph that shows the load time of each site element. This is a great way to check for any bottlenecks that may be occurring on your site, whether with a multimedia object or something else. You can also sort the results by various criteria, whether you prefer to rank by load order, load time or file size, among others. If you’re in need of other web testing tools, Pingdom also offers DNS health testing and the ability to monitor your site’s uptime and response time using Ping and Traceroute.

Now that you have a list of top (free) tools, what’s stopping you? Go forth and test! When you’re done, feel free to share which tools you used, as well as your results. And if you have a recommendation for a site loading time tool that I missed, be sure to include it in the comments.