Subscribe to our Newsletter!
By subscribing to our newsletter, you agree with our privacy terms
Home > Monitoring Toolbox > Tools to monitor the Performance of Websites
August 08, 2022
With this tools, you will be able to verify many aspects of your current website. We prepared a list with all the key metrics for you to better understand what each of the indicators mean:
The digitization of industries worldwide has filled the digital world with a plethora of websites. With 1.9 billion websites, and counting, there is no limit to the saturation of the website market. So how does a website stand out among an ocean of other applications?
The answer lies in the quality of a website. Thanks to performance assessment technologies, organizations are constantly working on improving their web performance quality. Unfortunately a green signal from an analytical tool is not enough. Because at the end of the day, it’s the users who decide which websites are worth their time.
A website’s quality assessment from a user’s perspective is the motivation behind user-centric performance metrics businesses use today to enhance their website’s user experience. To save time on user testing, these performance metrics provide a precise, quantitative measure of a website’s quality.
Let us discuss some of today’s most popular tools and performance metrics that are being used to ensure the development of high-quality and safe websites:
Chrome Security Status is a website security metric by Chrome that notifies users about the security status of the website they are visiting. The security status is depicted as an icon to the left of the web address. There are three icons associated with the following three categories of Chrome’s security status:
By clicking on the icon, users can view a summary of their security status that determines whether or not they have a secure connection with a website.
Mozilla Observatory is an http/s website scanning service by Mozilla that scores a website’s security practices. It is a quick and free observatory tool that takes the website URL as input and delivers a grade as an output. The grade of a website reflects any potential vulnerabilities in the configuration of its application, web server, or encryption. The Mozilla Observatory is designed for developers, administrators and security experts of a business to configure safe websites.
Google Lighthouse is an open-source website auditing service by Google. It runs automated tests against a web page that evaluate the page’s quality and returns the results as a report. The report covers the web page’s quality measured according to:
A failed test is a direct indicator of what improvements are required from the website. Lighthouse’s quality assessment guides developers in the right direction to create high-performance and high quality websites.
First Contentful Paint (FCP) is a speed measurement metric that evaluates the page load speed of a website from a user’s perspective. It measures the time duration from a user’s navigation to a page, to the rendering of the first piece of content on the page. The content included in FCP evaluation includes any DOM elements such as:
A slow FCP indicates chances of a higher website bounce rate. Whereas a fast FCP makes users stay under the reassurance of some action taking place in the background.
First Meaningful Paint (FMP) is a speed measurement metric that evaluates the loading speed of a web page’s primary content. It is an indicator of a user-perceived website loading experience. FMP measures the time duration between a user initiating a web page load and the rendering of primary page content. Primary content varies for different kinds of websites, e.g.:
Basically any content that holds meaning to a website’s user is considered for evaluating FMP. Users are more inclined to stay on a webpage with fast FMP as the primary content keeps them glued.
Speed Index (SI) is a website performance metric that evaluates the page load speed of a website. It depicts the average time it takes for a web page’s visible contents to display. SI of a page is expressed in milliseconds and varies according to the size of the page’s viewport.
A website with a lower SI indicates that upon loading, its web page quickly populates with content. A higher SI represents slow websites with a prolonged display of a blank screen.
First CPU Idle is a non-standard web monitoring metric that evaluates the time it takes for a web page to become minimally interactive. It measures the time duration from a ‘loading’ webpage to a ‘loaded’ webpage. A web page becomes minimally interactive after:
FCI is also known as First Interactive. A fast FCI indicates quick availability of the webpage’s main thread to handle user input.
Time To Interactive (TTI) is a web performance metric that evaluates the time it takes for a web page to become fully interactive. A web page becomes fully interactive when:
TTI is a useful metric to track for websites to make sure that page interactivity does not fall too far behind page visibility. A slow TTI indicates a fully loaded but non-interactive web page. Whereas a fast TTI translates to happy customers who received quick responses to their interactions with the page elements.
Estimated Input Latency (EIL) is a performance metric that evaluates the lag in a web page’s response within 5 seconds of page load. It is measured in the time window between First Meaningful Paint and 5 seconds after Time to Interactive.
An ideal web page should respond in under 50ms. A web page with an EIL of less than 50ms is considered fast with a quick response to user input within the busiest 5 seconds of page load.. An EIL higher than 50ms indicates a laggy web page that can frustrate users.
