Introduction to Performance Measurement of a Website
The performance measures we are using are from Google Pagespeed, on which you may check your own website at any time for free - just click the link we just provided. Here is what those measures are all about:
Performance
The Performance score gives you a general idea of how well your website performs in terms of loading speed, responsiveness, and stability of content as it loads. This is measured by using a set of metrics called Core Web Vitals, which include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures loading performance, First Input Delay (FID), which measures interactivity, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which measures visual stability. Other metrics considered in performance scoring include Time to Interactive and Speed Index among others. A high Performance score indicates that your website is fast and responsive, enhancing user experience.
Accessibility
Accessibility reflects how well your website can be used by all people, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. This includes things like text legibility, proper contrast ratios for visibility, the presence of alt text for images for visually impaired users, appropriate labeling of form elements, and ensuring that all functions can be performed using a keyboard for those who cannot use a mouse. Accessibility is not only an ethical consideration but also helps in reaching a broader audience and can even have legal implications in some jurisdictions.
Best Practices
The Best Practices score is a measure of whether your website follows industry-accepted best practices for web development. This can include things like whether your website uses HTTPS for secure connections, whether your page's links are crawlable, how your website handles images and other resources, whether your site avoids deprecated technologies, and more. Following these best practices can make your website more secure, more user-friendly, and easier to maintain.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The SEO score measures how well your website is optimized to be found by search engines. This includes the proper use of meta tags, status codes, valid hreflang tags, and making sure that the website is mobile-friendly among other things. A high SEO score means your website is likely to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), which can drive more organic traffic to your site.
We are now going to compare the landing page of this site with Amazon Australia (Gulp!)
Amazon Australia Performance: Desktop
Sydney Business Web Performance: Desktop
Comparison of Desktop Performance
As you can see, the desktop performance of this website is quite comparable to Amazon Australia's - in fact it's a l;ittle better! The main difference is that Amazon of course spends many millions of dollars on its site!
We've done this performance test to illustrate that you too can have a high performance website that can perform technically as well as the 'big boys', but at a very reasonable cost. let's move on to mobile website performance now.
Amazon Australia Mobile Performance: Mobile
Mobile performance is a tough measurement for websites and as you can see, the Amazon Australia website performance is significantly poorer than the desktop performance. However, do note that as you and millions of others prove every day, the performance is good enough!
Sydney Business Web Performance: Mobile
Well now - the landing page on this site is has superb performance as you can see - even better than Amazon. Now to be objective, the Amazon page is more complex, but we are still pleased to conform that we are pretty good at optimization!
Conclusions
The dudes at Sydney Business Web know how to optimize websites, which is a great thing for their customers - and them!