In the digital age we live in now, the website speed is one of the most important things that determines its success. A recent study found that a one-second delay in the time it takes for a website to load can cause a 7% drop in sales. For a smooth user experience, it is important to make sure that your website runs quickly and efficiently. In this post, we’ll talk about how to use Google Analytics to find website speed problems and how to speed up your website.
Google Analytics is a strong tool that lets you keep track of and measure how well your website is doing. It tells you a lot about how people use your website and where you can make it better. In terms of how fast your website speed is, Google Analytics can help you find problems that may be slowing it down. Let’s look at how to use Google Analytics to find speed problems on a website.
Check Site Speed Report
The first thing you should do to find out why your website isn’t loading quickly is to look at your Site Speed Report in Google Analytics. This report gives you an overview of how fast your website loads, including the average page load time, the distribution of page load times, and the number of pages that load slowly. To get to the Site Speed Report in your Google Analytics account, go to Behaviour > Site Speed > Overview.
Once you’re in the Site Speed Report, you can use the information to find the slow-loading pages on your website. Sort the report by how long each page takes to load to see which ones take the longest. With this knowledge, you can decide which pages to optimise first and in what order.
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Use Page Timings Report
The Page Timings Report in Google Analytics gives you more details about how well each page on your website is doing. This report shows the average time it takes for a page to load, for the server to respond, and for the page to be rendered. You can find the Page Timings Report in your Google Analytics account by going to Behaviour > Site Speed > Page Timings.
Once you’re in the Page Timings Report, you can use the data to find the pages on your website that take the longest to load. You can also see which pages take a long time to load or take a long time for the computer to answer. This knowledge can help you figure out what problems may be slowing down your website and how to fix them.
Use the Page Speed Insight Tool
Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is another great way to find speed problems on a website. This tool looks at your website and gives you tips on how to make it run faster. It also gives you a score for how fast your website works on mobile and PC devices.
Go to https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ and type in the URL of your website to use the PageSpeed Insights tool. The tool will look at your website and give you a report with tips on how to make it run faster.
- Analyze User Behaviour
Analysing how people use a website is another way to find speed problems. In Google Analytics, you can look at measures like bounce rate, exit rate, and time on site to see how people use your site. If people leave your site quickly or don’t spend much time on it, it could be because it takes too long to load.
Go to Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages in your Google Analytics account to look at how people use your site. Look at the bounce rate, exit rate, and time on site for each page on your website. If your bounce rates or exit rates are high and people don’t spend much time on your site, it could be because it takes too long to load.
Once you’ve used Google Analytics to find website speed problems, you can take steps to make your website faster. Here are some ways to speed up a website:
- Optimize Images
Large picture files are one of the most common things that slow down the speed of a website. To optimise pictures, you should compress them so that they take up less space on your computer without losing quality. You can shrink the size of your pictures with tools like TinyPNG or Optimizilla.
- Minimize HTTP Requests
One more way to speed up a website is to reduce the amount of HTTP requests that are made when a user visits it. When a user wants a resource from your website, like a picture, script, or stylesheet, they send an HTTP request. The longer it takes for a website to load, the more HTTP requests it has.
Reduce the number of files on your website to reduce the number of HTTP requests. You can also use a content delivery network (CDN) to spread your website’s resources across various servers, reducing the number of HTTP requests made to a single server.
- Use Browser Caching
By storing frequently used files on a user’s browser, browser caching can speed up a website by a lot. When a user sees your website, their browser can quickly get the resources it has cached instead of asking your server for them. This speeds up the loading process.
You can set the cache-control headers for your website’s files to allow browser caching. If you are using a content management system like WordPress, you can also use tools like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache.
- Minify and Compress Files
You can also speed up your website by making its files smaller and more compact. When you minify, you get rid of extra whitespace and notes from your website’s code. This makes the file smaller. By shrinking the code, the file size can be cut down even more.
You can use tools like UglifyJS or YUI Compressor to make your website’s files smaller and store them in less space. If you use a content management system like WordPress, you can also use plug-ins like Autoptimize or WP Minify.
- Set Performance Goals in Google Analytics
Lastly, you need to set performance goals in Google Analytics to see how well your efforts to speed up your website are working. By setting goals, you can keep track of how well your website is doing over time and see how your optimisation efforts are paying off.
Go to Admin > Goals in your Google Analytics account to set up success goals. You can set goals based on data like pageviews, session length, and bounce rate. Once you have set goals, you can use Google Analytics to keep track of them.
In conclusion, a website’s speed is a very important part of its success. By using Google Analytics to find website speed problems and putting optimisation methods into place, you can give users a smooth experience and make your website run better. Don’t forget to set performance goals in Google Analytics so you can see how well your optimisation efforts are working and continue to speed up your website over time.
