What You Need to Know About PageSpeed Insights

What You Need to Know About PageSpeed Insights

This is a website performance testing tool that has been designed to analyze the load time, visual stability and responsiveness. This is applicable for a certain webpage on a desktop or mobile. This tool is used for the purpose of free audits according to both field and lab data, to offer an estimated performance overview and the subsequent suggestions accordingly. So, what do we mean by Lab Data and Field data? Let us find out:


The Field Data: This is also known as the Real-world or Real User Monitoring or RUM that showcases what the real users are experiencing at your website. This data is generally extracted from the Chrome User Experience Report. 


The Lab Data: This is also known as the synthetic data that showcases the manner in which the artificially predefined users interact with your website. Here the lab data is collected within a controlled environment. Its main function is to resolve the performance problems. Lighthouse, which is an open-source tool, is used for the collection and analysis of this data type. 


Bear in mind that both these data types are used for the Web Page performance reports. 


The PageSpeed Insights and Business


Every year there are websites that lose about $2.6 billion in losses because of slow-loading. Moreover it also takes about 10.5 seconds for a certain website to load. This is about 8.5 seconds more than what a visitor might prefer to spend over a certain website. However, surprisingly, it is this gap where a considerable 61% of the sites are being challenged in terms of web performance. 




While there are plenty of performance measuring tools available in the market today, nevertheless, it is the Google PageSpeed that manages to stand out. The reason is that the tool offers the users with the required solutions and to be able to execute the data-driven decision. So, how important is the Google PageSpeed Score? Well, let us find out:


The Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) score: Why it Really Matters


To begin with, it matters a great deal. It is within the Pagespeed insights reports that you will be able to take a look at the performance of a certain website. This is quite beneficial, as if the load speed is bad, you can be risking about 6% of the revenue losses along with 11% less pageviews for every 1 second of the wait time. Here the low PSI score implies various technical problems with your website. It is here that you need to apply the PSI for the purpose of debugging. However, bear in mind that it is useless to chase the 100 score that is almost non-attainable. 


The experts recommend focusing on a better user experience, relevance and good content. Lately, after further update, the Google PageSpeed Insights is also offering a more intuitive and modern UI. Also, a finer difference between the field and the lab data, and a more clear Core Web Vitals-CWV assessments. This is the reason that the CWV panel is placed at the top of the PSI report. Finally, it has been emphasized by Google that the CWV metrics are quite important if you wish for your visitors to stay on your website and convert. 


The Measurement of the PageSpeed Insights Scores

The PSI comprises of four different Score types to watch out for:



As mentioned earlier, the Performance score is offered more priority by the PSI in terms of both data-wise and visually. Here the Performance score is an average of the following metric scores:



Also, all the metric scores have been calculated based on the lab data according to Lighthouse. The weight of a website in the overall performance score is derived using the lighthouse calculator. 


How To Run the PageSpeed Insights Test


It is quite easy to run the PSI Performance testing tool:


  1. Go to the PageSpeed Insights website: Pagespeed. Web. dev



Next copy and paste the URL of the webpage you wish to test within this field.



Click on ‘Analyze’ option. 



  1. Finally you simply have to allow the tool to do its job as it gathers data from both the Lighthouse API and Chrome User Experience Report CrUX. 
  2. There are chances that the PSI report might have trouble loading and you will receive the error as below:

This can be resolved by running a simple page refresh. Now look at the main reasons why this might be happening:


You can explore the possible solutions within the open GitHub thread. However bear in mind that if the error persists, then you need to contact a developer. 


The Google PageSpeed Test Results: How to Read them


There is a tri-color system available in the tool that will help you identify if your webpage is performing well. 


Green: is a good performance.

Yellow: There is room for improvement.

Red: Shows poor performance.


The Mobile the Desktop Report Versions


At the very top of the PSI report you can easily switch between the desktop view and the mobile versions of the webpage. However, it is the mobile view which is displayed first by default. 



Also, the lower Mobile PageSpeed Insights score is quite a normal encounter. Now, let us take a look at some of the reasons for this:


Next is the Core Web Vital Assessment, let's find out more:


The Core Web VItal Assessment


As mentioned earlier, Google prioritizes the user experience and offers measurement through the performance metrics as shown below:



Here you can switch between the two views located at the top right side of the panel: 



This URL: displays the results for the Core Web vitals results for a certain page. 

The Origin: Offers results for the complete domain.


The Core Web Vitals can be declared either as passed or failed.To get a good score, it is necessary that you pass all these metrics. 


CONCLUSION

Hopefully, this will offer you a A Better Understanding to the pagespeed insights. Let us know about your opinion on the article and we would love feedback on the same.