We’re happy to announce that we've finally released “Response time check” tool to diagnose poor website performance. Speed is one of the most important things in website workflow as it affects not only Google rankings but also your visitor conversions. A recent study shows that visitors aren’t willing to wait more than 3 seconds for a page to load. And truly, we all know how waiting for a slow loading website can feel like an eternity when you’re trying to get some vital information. Actually, a lazy website may cost your business. What really matters is that simply taking a few steps in optimizing website performance can make a very big difference. So, let’s look at some common causes of a slow website and how you can speed these things up.

Which components make up page load time?

1. DNS lookup time - the amount of time it takes a domain name being mapped to an equivalent IP-address to be found. 
2. Connect Time (TCP) - how long it takes to establish a connection to the web server. 
3. First Byte Time (TTFB) - the time it takes to get the server response as well as the interval since the server receives HTTP request till the server sends the first byte of the response back. 
4. Download Time (Content Time) – the time span between start and end of content load.

Note: If you’re using SSL Certificate for a secure connection, you’ll need an extra time to spend on authentication, that means additional time for establishing a link between your web server and a browser.

All these components together stand for the page response time. See, it's quite possible that your website is slow because of the problem with one of the five things mentioned above.

Website speed optimization

Website loading speed depends on several factors and each of them could hold things up. Let's find out the most common reasons why your website speed may be slow.

When something wrong with the website itself:

1. Third-Party Objects. Different third-party plugins hosted on the page can slow down your website. Even though the most powerful services such as Google Analytics integrate these scripts async and seamlessly for website performance, still placing third-party plugins will cause a delay in loading as each one of them adds up to the total number of requests that are being sent. Although the website speed is affected by numerous things, yet it is primarily impacted by the number of HTTP requests your website makes. So the golden rule of optimization is the less weight website to carry, the faster it works.

2. Media From Other Sources. The more external media files on the page, the longer your website takes to load. Such bulky content has not only a negative impact on web page speed but it’s also one of the surest ways to make visitors leave. How can it be avoided? First, place someone else’s media in moderation; Secondly, use proper graphics file formats; Thirdly, leverage reliable local storage. If you do a couple of these things, you’ll see significant improvements in no time!

3. Bulky code/ Inefficient SQL. Inefficient code or unoptimized database queries can have a really degrading effect on your website performance. Consider doing some code optimization like editing some scripts, HTML, CSS code etc; or database optimization like adding some indexes, altering the queries, modifying the structure etc. Problems with code are usually the culprit of dragging your website performance down.

When your hosting is killing your speed:

1. DNS – your website destiny depends on the DNS server choice you make. The faster your DNS server, the quicker content on your page will be delivered.

2. The Data Center Location. Do not neglect geography. It’s important to ensure that your vis­i­tors are hit­ting the near­est data col­lec­tion cen­ter. Understanding the time taken on transmitting information gives you a better awareness of user experience you’re providing, because you know, it takes time for data to be delivered. If the site is a global resource, it is recommended to use CDN (Content Delivery Network), that is, a network of globally distributed web servers which is used to deliver website content to the local end-users as fast as possible. Essentially, it’s hosting your files across all this server network and delivering them from the closest location. It’s worth noting, that in recent years the popularity of cloud hosting has skyrocketed. No surprise as it costs less, provides more and gives the opportunity to benefit from infinite flexibility.

3. Choosing the wrong web hosting service. The reality is that sometimes the biggest problem with your website performance is that it requires simply more resources, than your web host can provide. Consider searching for a web hosting company that best suits your needs. It should go without saying: choosing a good hosting company is a key to high website performance.

How to measure your website response time with HostTracker?

In the Response Time Check window please enter your URL, task name, and specify the Timeout value.

Note: Every time your speed value exceeds this threshold, you will receive a notification.

Armed with this tool you’ll be always updated on how well your website loads - website statistics and history of events are always available in a convenient format (see the picture above).

Hope you enjoy this article! Remember the hardest thing in optimization is often to simply get started.