Friday, January 14, 2011

Measure Your Page Loading Speed with StopWatch

StopWatch is a free tool that measures the loading time speed of your website, blog, or individual pages. It is written in Javascript and runs on your local PC. To use it:
  • Simply click on this StopWatch link, 
  • Enter your URL in the input field located under the "Enter the URL to be measured:" title, and 
  • Press the Start StopWatch button.
When you do this, a new page or tab will open. At the top of the page is the StopWatch measuring device. It will show the URL that you entered, and a timing button that continues to increment until the page is fully loaded.

At the bottom left of the brower window, you will see the various links that are being opened in the status line. These links are the other sites, advertisements, social networking items, and other measuring devices that you have installed on your page or as widgets in your blog.

Sometimes, you will see that the timer keeps incrementing, but the browser status label at the bottom left stays constant. This means that it is taking a very long time for that URL item to load and is slowing down the loading of your page.

So what is a good page load speed? According to Seo's Average Page Load Time of Top Ranking Websites in Google page, a loading time between 9.82 and 13.84 seconds is considered average. Anything less than 9.82 seconds is very fast. Pages loading between 13.84 and 17.98 seconds are slow. And, pages taking longer than the 17.98 seconds are very slow.

Once you know how long your page takes to load, you can make improvements by either:
  • Removing the items that take a long time to load, or
  • Move those items, or widgets, to the bottom of your page. This will allow the primary content to load and display more rapidly.
We discovered this helpful tool on Blogger. For other tips on increasing your blog's loading speed, visit: How can I make my blog load faster?
Enhanced by Zemanta

3 comments:

  1. Good info. I can't get the Stopwatch page to load. Please email me and let me know the url or any info you have re why it won't load. Thanks. Sandra

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Sandra, and thanks for your comment. It appears that Stopwatch has stopped working for everyone.

    I just found a forum post http://www.freedomlist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=216050 that asked the same question. It appears the site stopped working on February 1st.

    I'll try to find other sites to measure loading speed and will let you know if (and when) the Stopwatch site is back online.

    JL...........

    ReplyDelete
  3. It appears to be working now. I just updated the number of posts that are showing on my blog from 10 posts to 7 posts and it really cut down on my load time. It was under 13 seconds. I still may take a couple more of the widgets off

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Earn Money - Join the Leading Affiliate Program