Learn about website speed

Learn where to check and how to improve the loading speed of your website

Updated over a week ago

Page speed is very important today – no one wants to wait minutes for a site to load. It also greatly affects SEO. As it depends on many factors, it's significant to know what can harm and what can improve your website's loading speed.

How to check page speed

It is highly recommended to use PageSpeed Insights – it's developed by Google and is one of the most trustworthy tools.

Simply insert the URL of your page, and click Analyze. You can view both mobile and desktop versions:

Keep in mind that it is perfectly normal for the mobile version to be slower than the desktop, because:

  • Mobile devices have slower processors

  • PageSpeed Insights stimulates the cell network at a slower speed

  • Mobile devices have specific CSS rules (e.g., for re-sizing images)

Other similar tools that measure Web Vitals usually use Lighthouse. The use of Lighthouse may be a bit complicated and not entirely trustworthy because it shows results depending on the particular user's location; e.g., if the internet connection is excellent in your area, you will get better results than average.

The most common metrics

There are many metrics available in page speed tools, but the ones listed below are the most common.

Initial server response time (or Time to first byte)

It is the time the browser takes to receive the first byte in response to the browser request. The ideal response time should be between 30 and 100ms. When this metric is low, it automatically reduces other metrics, e.g., LCP (Largest Contentful Paint).

Note that you may get poorer results because, while checking your website performance, your website is not cached on the page speed tool. It means that your site is always tested like it’s being accessed for the first time ever. The page will actually load slightly faster for real users.

Such JavaScript code may either be not required anymore (but present) while loading the page, or may contain remnants imported from other modules that aren't referenced anymore. It is usually caused by 3rd party integrations that are added to a website.

All image files you upload to your Zyro website are optimized automatically. The exceptions are:

It is a sequence of requests that depend on each other, and are essential for page rendering. Long critical request chains can drastically slow down a page. However, websites made with Zyro do not have critical request chains – this could only occur due to third-party tools or integrations, the removal of which would definitely improve the page loading speed.

It is always suggested to use a CDN. For this reason, Zyro websites' assets are by default served via Cloudflare, so if you receive such a suggestion, the issue is related to third-party tools or integrations on your page. You may check what specific component causes the problem and remove it from your site.

This issue is generally caused by image gallery elements, especially if there are many images added – there are simply a lot of images to render.

General tips and notes

There's no need to worry about the size or format of images that you upload to your Zyro website. Unless it’s a .GIF – they are just naturally very heavy. As image files have a significant influence on a site’s speed, we use pretty smart ways to always deliver maximum quality images with the lowest size for that resolution. We even choose the best format to show to your website's visitors, according to their device, resolution, DPI, etc.

It's recommended to disable unnecessary integrations. Integrations make an inevitable impact on every website, no matter the way or platform that has been used to build it. Every extra piece of code, be it Google Analytics or a simple embedded Twitter post, makes it a bit slower. If you have added integrations that you don’t really use, we advise removing them from your site.


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