At Portent, we are constantly auditing and working to improve page speed on our sites because we know how important it is. And while there are a myriad of tools out there that can be utilized, the list below describes our go-to tools for helping us measure and improve page speed and Core Web Vital scores.
- WebPageTest. One of our go-to page speed testing tools. Actively updated and has a lot of features, including waterfall graphs, page rendering ‘film strips,’ Core Web Vitals scores, server response best practice checks, and much more.
- Google Page Speed Insights. Google’s own page speed test. They provide Core Web Vitals scores and lab data, page speed recommendations, compressed images, minified code, and more. They also now include a link to their scoring calculator tool which gives insights into how their algorithm scores results.
- Pingdom. Quick page speed test. Super simple. Great for impressing (or depressing) clients.
- Squoosh. Online image compression and optimization tool. Super straightforward and easy to use.
- Imageoptim on the Mac. Far and away the best easy-to-use image compressor you’ll find. They also have a web service.
- Caesium on the PC. Image compressor that is not quite as easy, but still awfully good.
- Lighthouse. Google’s automated page speed testing tool available in a variety of formats. Insight Chrome DevTools, via command line, as a node module, or on the web. It’s the backbone of Page Speed Insights.
- Critical node library. Include this library in your gulp or grunt or webpack front-end preprocessing system to extract and generate critical CSS.
And since technology is changing all the time, we’ll continue to update this list now and then.
Great List of Tools Andy. Thanks for sharing. Site Speed is very important especially when it comes to SEO Because if your site loading time is more than 2 seconds users would definitely not visit your website and look for another website that is quick in load time. Keep up the great work of providing valuable information to your readers.