The first law of success is tracking. By tracking where you are coming from, you will be able to better understand where you are now, and where you want to go. This applies to everything in life, including page speed.
The backstory
With a clearer focus on webmaster services going forward, it’s time to start gaining a better insight to the website’s page speed results. The website’s page speed is a critical component in Google’s determination whether to deliver the page to their users.
The tasks performed
The following list summarizes what was tested and how it was tested.
- Site: Staging
- Tools
- A2 Optimization
It is important to note that access to the staging site is restricted. As a result, only the Google PageSpeed Insights tool is available for testing purposes. The A2 Optimization plugin includes this tool as part of its’ reporting system.
Action: Gathered data
First-level analysis: Page Load Speed
The A2 Optimization dashboard begins with the Page Load Speed Score (PLSS).
PLSS is a high-level overview of the site’s page load speed on mobile and desktop devices. alongside with their Optimization status.
Date | Mobile | Desktop | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2022-02-17 | 97 | 100 | Initial test |
2022-02-21 | 94 | 99 | Slight decrease |
Second-level analysis: Web Performance
Web performance relies on two things.
- Your website
- Your server
Google PageSpeed Insight tool provides a way to break it down between mobile and desktop devices. We will display the results in the same manner for the sake of keeping things simple.
Mobile
Mobile
Server Speed
Date | Time to first Byte (TTB) | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|
2023-02-17 | 131 | None | Initial check |
2023-02-21 | 184 | Up 53 | More time to first byte is not an improvement |
User Perception
Date | First Contentful Paint (FCP) | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|
2023-02-17 | Not available | None | Not documented |
2023-02-21 | 2485 | None | Initial documentation. The shorter the time, the better. |
Page Load Speed
Date | Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|
2023-02-17 | Not available | None | Not documented |
2023-02-21 | 2525 | None | Initial documentation. The shorter the time, the better. |
Visual Stability
Date | Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|
2023-02-17 | 0 | None | Initial documentation. |
2023-02-21 | 0 | None | Less than 0.25 is good. |
Website browser speed
Date | First Input Delay (FID) | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|
2023-02-17 | 0 | None | Not documented |
2023-02-21 | 58 | None | Initial documentation. The shorter the time, the better. |
Desktop
Desktop
Server Speed
Date | Time to first Byte (TTB) | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|
2023-02-17 | 198 | None | Initial check |
2023-02-21 | 128 | Down 70 | Less time to first byte should be an improvement |
User Perception
Date | First Contentful Paint (FCP) | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|
2023-02-17 | Not available | None | Not documented |
2023-02-21 | 794 | None | Initial documentation. The shorter the time, the better. |
Page Load Speed
Date | Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|
2023-02-17 | Not available | None | Not documented |
2023-02-21 | 817 | None | Initial documentation. The shorter the time, the better. |
Visual Stability
Date | Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|
2023-02-17 | 0 | None | Initial documentation. |
2023-02-21 | 0 | None | Less than 0.25 is good. |
Website browser speed
Date | First Input Delay (FID) | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|
2023-02-17 | 0 | None | Not documented |
2023-02-21 | 20 | None | Initial documentation. The shorter the time, the better. |
Third-level analysis: Server Performance
Web performance
Web performance
WordPress Database Response time
Date | My host | Fasted shared | Average of all plans | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023-02-11 | 1.132 | 1.606 | 2.32 | None | Initial documentation. |
2023-02-21 | 1.296 | 1.606 | 2.32 | Up 0.164 | Slight increase in the database response time. |
Server performance
Web performance
PHP Response time
Date | My host | Fasted shared | Average of all plans | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023-02-11 | 1.171 | 1.068 | 2.19 | None | Initial documentation. |
2023-02-21 | 0.964 | 1.068 | 2.19 | Down 0.207 | Slight decrease in PHP response time is good. |
Mysql Response time
Date | My host | Fasted shared | Average of all plans | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023-02-11 | 1.73 | 1.907 | 1.95 | None | Initial documentation. |
2023-02-21 | 1.858 | 1.907 | 1.95 | Up 0.049 | Slight increase in Mysql response time is okay. |
File input/output Response time
Date | My host | Fasted shared | Average of all plans | Change | Note |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023-02-11 | 4.011 | 2.503 | 7 | None | Initial documentation. |
2023-02-21 | 4.001 | 2.503 | 7 | Down 0.010 | Slight decrease in server disk response time is good. |
Results: Summary
It is clearer that the overall page speed scores have decreased slightly.
A decrease is never a great confidence booster. However, it is clear that the site is still generating favorable scores in all areas. In fact, the page ranks in the top third among all the page speed results. That is good.
There is a need to gather more information in order to clarify the results. Some burning questions can be used to frame the context further.
- Which page(s) was tested?
- What changes were made between testing?
It is possible only the home page was tested. Beyond that, there were several changes made across the board. The following list summarizes the changes in general.
- Style sheet – An analysis and clean up of the default style sheet is in progress.
- Code snippets – There are a total of five code snippets that were added separately from the child theme
- Child theme – New templates were added for the CSS Grid loop feature on the archive pages
Further testing will be performed next week.