A website or an e-commerce project can be set up and run successfully, but the job is far from over once the site is up.
Table of Content
Monitoring These Factors Will Ensure A High Website Health Score
PageSpeed Insights from Google
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
First Input Delay (FID)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Blockers for slow pages
Design Elements
Image Enhancement
Animations and supplementary features
PWA Mobile Optimization Solution
Additional Technical Performance Metrics
Uptime
Performance of databases
Hardware for web servers
Search Visibility
Website Caching and Security
Purchase an SSL certificate!
Think About Using A CDN
Setup Web Application Firewall
Verdict
If your website will suffer without proper health and performance monitoring, those effects may go far beyond just a delayed load time.
Let's now focus on a hypothetical, perfect situation in which all websites are operating as they should. Did you know that we will improve the environment in addition to soaring user satisfaction?
In addition to having an effect on those who design or use them, poorly functioning websites also leave a higher carbon imprint.
The typical website page generates 0.5 grammes of carbon dioxide in each view, according to the Website Carbon Calculator, which calculates the carbon footprint of websites. Just the median, then.
That amount increases to 0.9 grammes when taking a look at the mean, which also takes into account highly polluting websites.
In addition to problems on a worldwide scale, a poorly functioning website will cost you time, money, and revenue. Similar to our personal health, a website is simple to neglect and challenging to improve.
To conduct suitable monitoring procedures and speed up processing, you must be aware of the key elements that contribute to the overall health of a website.
Making websites is now simpler and quicker thanks to the development of website builders. All you have to do is register, select a domain, select a template, and presto! Within seconds, you have a website.
Many website owners, however, ignore the reality that building a website is only the first step. Additionally essential are appropriate performance upkeep and health surveillance.
On that topic, let's examine some crucial website performance and health metrics, including what they are, how to track them, and how to make improvements.
Monitoring These Factors Will Ensure A High Website Health Score
PageSpeed Insights from Google
Your Core Web Vitals should be the first metrics you take into account while performing performance testing. These performance indicators demonstrate responsiveness, stability, and speed, enabling you to assess the effectiveness of your website's user experience.
There are various programmes that track your Core Web Vitals, but Google PageSpeed Insights is a popular choice among website owners.
You will be given a report after putting your URL into the tool that will indicate whether you passed the Core Web Vitals test and any other factors you need to pay attention to. The three main metrics you will notice are as follows:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Aim for a time of no more than 2.5 seconds.
If your score is greater than 2.5 seconds, this may mean that your server is running slowly, that resource load times are inadequate, that you have a large amount of render-blocking JavaScript and CSS, or that client-side rendering is taking too long to complete.
First Input Delay (FID)
Aim for a score of no more than 100 milliseconds.
If your score is higher than that, you might need to lower the workload on the main thread, the impact on third-party code, the execution time of JavaScript, the number of transfers, and the number of requests.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Target a score of 0.1 or lower.
Include size characteristics on your visual and video material to prevent unpredictable layout adjustments if your score is higher (or reserve the space with CSS aspect ratio boxes). Keep your content from crossing over, and take care when animating any transitions.
Blockers for slow pages
Your website's load time may be impacted by a number of variables. However, if you're short on time and would like to start by concentrating on the primary offenders, pay particular attention to the following elements:
- Unused CSS and JavaScript code.
- Render CSS and JavaScript code that is stalling.
- Unminified CSS and JavaScript code.
- Large file sizes for images (more on that below).
- Very many reroute chains
Enabling early hints is an additional choice that instructs the browser in the HTTP server response which resources it should begin downloading in order to take advantage of "server think-time" and accelerate page load times.
For website testing:
- Open https://pagespeed.web.dev/ in your browser.
- The URL of the page you wish to scan should be entered.
WebPageTest.org is another useful resource that displays your Core Web Vitals in addition to additional metrics that can greatly enhance the functionality and health of your website. It's also free!
Simply paste a page URL into the site's search box to launch a comprehensive test from the default location.
Additionally, you may sign up as a user and select from a list of locations to test your website across various nations, devices, and browsers.
WebPageTest will provide you with a Performance Summary that is divided into four main sections: Opportunities and Experiments, Observed Metrics, Real User Measurements, and Individual Runs. This Performance Summary will show you exactly where your website stands in terms of performance and what might be slowing it down.
We at UCRAFT employ a variety of tools, including PageSpeed Insights, Chrome Dev Tools, WebPageTest, and others, to identify performance issues with our website. This is important because the SaaS sector is already very competitive.
Design Elements
We often delegate concerns about website performance and health monitoring to the tech staff.
But what if I told you that your website's design and the components you use can determine how well it performs?
It's time to involve the design team, that's correct.
Image Enhancement
Although images are excellent, if they are not sized correctly, they may cause your website to load slowly. Resize your photographs before posting them, and don't upload huge files if they won't be displayed in full.
Similarly, instead of choosing bulkier JPEG or PNG files, compress your photos and experiment with various file types like WebP, JPEG 2000, and JPEG XR.
To ensure that images load when the user views them rather than all at once, think about implementing native lazy loading.
The loading="lazy" tag on img> or iframe> tells the browser to load them when the user scrolls closer to them, and almost all browsers, including Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, support it.
Avoid lazily loading above-the-fold images as this will lower your page's LCP score. Google suggests using the fetchpriority="high" tag on images above the fold to raise LCP.
You don't need to preload the images if you use that attribute. Images above the fold should either be preloaded or assigned to "fetch priority" attribute.
Additionally, use the "srcset" attribute's responsiveness to load images that are appropriately sized for the screen size and prevent loading redundantly big images on small displays. This will significantly raise the LCP score.
Fonts
Although customers with 20/20 vision may find it difficult to read extravagant bespoke fonts, they can also significantly slow down your website.
Replace fonts that are hosted externally with more web-safe fonts, and consider using Google fonts - provided that they are hosted through Google's CDN.
Moreover, since this font standard can drastically lower font file sizes, think about implementing changeable fonts into the overall design of your website.
Preload your fonts, please.
Animations and supplementary features
It goes without saying: Don't overdo it with the sliders, animations, films, special effects, etc.
A few interactive components here and there are good, but overloading your website with moving graphics can be annoying for both visitors and servers.
Avoid using non-composited animations since they require the page to be painted again, which adds to the main thread's workload and makes the website appear visually unsteady as it loads.
PWA Mobile Optimization Solution
Why not go all out and create a Progressive Web App (PWA) from your mobile site?
PWAs load cached material faster since they are designed with service workers. Additionally, PWAs are similar to native mobile apps, which are excellent for performance and user experience.
Additional Technical Performance Metrics
Uptime
Your website's uptime demonstrates how well it is operating.
Your website's user experience, Google rankings, and ultimately your revenue will suffer if it frequently crashes or goes down.
Aim for a 99.999% uptime if at all possible, and test your website from many locations.
Monitoring uptime instruments:
- StatusCake.
- Pingdom.
- Better Uptime.
- UptimeRobot.
Performance of databases
Your website may be responding slowly because of poor database performance if you've examined the fundamentals yet nothing seems to be working.
This may be verified by keeping track of how quickly your queries are responding and identifying the particular database queries that are taking the longest.
When you've finished, start optimising! You may find solutions based on precise data and rapidly identify bottlenecks by using technologies like Blackfire.io.
Hardware for web servers
If your disc space is overflowing with log files, photos, videos, and database entries, your website can lag. Maintain regular CPU load monitoring, particularly after implementing updates or making design modifications.
By effectively monitoring and debugging your entire stack, tools like New Relic may assist you.
Search Visibility
Many of the metrics that were previously addressed have already had a big impact on search visibility.
Therefore, by optimising your website pages with Google PageSpeed Insights, you are also taking vital steps to improve your SEO.
Alternatively, you can choose a website crawling tool that best meets your needs, such as Semrush, or Sitechecker.pro, Screaming Frog, or DeepCrawl.
Crawlers for websites can help with a variety of difficulties, including:
- faulty links
- and broken pictures
- track essential web metrics.
- reroute chain
- mistakes in structured data.
- no indexable page
- headers and meta descriptions are absent.
- diverse content
Make sure you're prepared with regard to the following issues:
XML sitemap: Verify that your sitemap is formatted appropriately and determine whether any updates or a new submission of your sitemap through Google Search Console are required.
Robots.txt - Use a robots.txt file to better regulate crawl traffic on your web pages (HTML, PDF, or any other non-media formats that search engines can read), especially if you worry that Google's crawler may be overtaxing your server.
Website Caching and Security
Purchase an SSL certificate!
A secure website is one that is in good health.
Even if your website loads flawlessly and has a perfect score, visitors (or search engines) won't trust it if the address doesn't begin with https://.
An SSL certificate is essentially a piece of code that runs on your server and creates an encrypted connection, ensuring the security of user data.
Although obtaining an SSL certificate is not very challenging, the manual process can take a while.
However, if you are working with a reputable hosting company like BlueHost, your provider will almost certainly be able to give a free SSL for your name.
Think About Using A CDN
Distributed servers working together to provide content quickly over the internet are called content delivery networks (CDNs).
In other words, a CDN is a solution that, regardless of a user's location, accelerates the performance of your website by maintaining its content on servers close to that user. Caching is another name for this.
A CDN is essential if you have a global presence! By spreading out traffic and increasing security with features like DDoS mitigation, it will speed up page load time, save bandwidth costs, spread out traffic (cutting the likelihood of your site going down), and increase traffic.
Leading companies in the sector include Google Cloud CDN, Amazon Cloudfront, and Cloudflare. To choose the finest CDN for your website and business needs, conduct your homework as there are many alternative options available.
Setup Web Application Firewall
By excluding questionable HTTP traffic, a Web Application Firewall (WAF) safeguards web applications. It aims to shield apps against assaults like:
- site-to-site forging.
- Cross-site-scripting (XSS) (XSS).
- Including a file.
- injection of SQL.
The most well-liked and reliable web application firewalls are listed below:
- WAF for Cloudflare
- Google Firewall
- Google Azure.
Or, if you use WordPress, you might think about adding plugins like:
- WordFence.
- Sucuri.
- All-In-One Security (AIOS).
Verdict
It's all done now! As you can see, a number of factors affect the functionality and health of websites.
Checking your Core Web Vitals to identify where you can make improvements should be your first logical move if your website is running slowly. Additionally, you can examine additional technical metrics and make improvements to them.
The health of your website depends on SEO as well, so look at your links, search visibility, and potential load blocks to determine where you can make improvements.
Don't forget to use caching and your SSL certificate as well.
Your website's design can also affect how quickly and effectively it loads, especially if you or your designers like to use heavy design components.
Keep in mind to optimise your photos, stay away from dense typefaces, and utilise animations sparingly.
Additional sources
- How To Use Chrome UX Report To Boost The Performance Of Your Website
- Six suggestions to boost Google Display Network performance
- Detailed Instructions for Advanced Technical SEO
Which tool do you use to keep an eye on your website's performance?
To assist verify the availability, functionality, and uptime of your websites, web apps, APIs, and IT infrastructure, Dotcom-Monitor offers load testing and performance monitoring solutions. Top qualities: dashboards that show the monitored devices in real-time. There is a smartphone app available.What are the techniques for performance evaluation?
Using your own eyes is one of the best ways to keep a check on a worker's performance. A few minutes spent observing an employee engage with a customer will reveal more about the individual's customer service abilities than a collection of customer satisfaction questionnaires.
What different kinds of web performance monitoring are there?
Synthetic monitoring and real user monitoring are the two main categories of web performance monitoring.
