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Home » The Famous Blog » Are You Watching Your Response Time?

Are You Watching Your Response Time?

February 21, 2011 - Last Modified: February 21, 2011 by Jan Husdal 1,932

Response Time

How long are you willing to wait for a web page to load before you click out and go somewhere else? One second? Two seconds? Five seconds? Ten? While content is king, speed matters also. I am a business blogger, and any site that takes more than a few seconds to load is very likely to never be visited again, regardless of its useful content.

One of the reasons why you are not getting returning visitors or why you have a high bounce rate could be that your site is simply loading  slow. Add to that the fact that Google is starting to pay attention to page speed in search rankings, and you will realize that speed actually matters. But how can you reliably check your speed, and how can you improve it? Luckily there are some free and easy-to-use tools available to you.

One such tool is pingdom.com. It’s free and web-based, so there’s no need to download and install some software on your own computer. It can be accessed anytime from anywhere. Not only can you monitor your response time on a regular basis, you can also monitor your uptime and be alerted immediately when your site goes down so that you can investigate the outage and send a tweet or otherwise notify your visitors and followers about any issues, e.g. when you expect to be back online.

For the lazy people among you, simply go to tools.pingdom.com, type in your website address, remember to check the box that says “Save test”, click “Test Now” and over time you will collect a history of your site’s performance. Below is a screenshot from pingdom.com which shows each element that is loaded, how long each element takes, and the size of each element. This way, you can easily check whether your images may be too large in size or whether you have Javascripts or widgets and plugins that take a long time to load.

pingdom load time

Mind you, this is a snapshot, and the element that loads slowly this time around may be quite fast the next time around, so this is no absolute answer. That said, you should be able to pinpoint the major troublespots that demand immediate attention:

  • Large images
  • Too many images
  • Slow loading widgets/plugins
  • Content coming from other sites, e.g. hotlinked images
  • Javascripts coming from your own or other sites, e.g. stats counters and similar

While I could write several posts on all the issues that could arise, the above are perhaps the more typical problems you are likely to encounter when dealing with slow sites.

I do suggest signing up and creating an account on pingdom.com (it’s free), because then you can set a time span, e.g. every hour or every 6 hours, and pingdom.com will do the monitoring for you. This, however, will only give you the overall response time and not all the details above. For example, in the image below, I have used this monitoring tool too see how different plugins were affecting my site’s response time.

pingdom response time

You will notice that the response time fluctuates slightly from day to day, and even from hour to hour, even without changing anything. Consequently, if you use pingdom.com to do these checks, I suggest you to wait several hours or better several days before reverting to the old settings or making another major change, so that you getter a better picture of the effects of your changes.

A word of caution: While these tools provide an an easy and straightforward way for checking your site’s performance, the actual page speed that any of your visitors see could be very different, as page speed depends on the user’s Internet connection and the amount of traffic on that connection at any given time. A clogged 5-lane freeway can be much slower than an empty dirt road.

In my opinion, pingdom.com is a very useful indicator for checking your site’s performance and to see the effect that different settings, widgets, plugins, caching has on this performance. While there are other tools for checking site performance, e.g. Yahoo’s YSlow, or Pagespeed for Firebug, this tool is much easier to use. The downside is that unlike YSlow or Pagespeed, pingdom.com does not offer any solutions. It just points at the problems, or the absence of such.

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Filed Under: Blogging, SEO, Wordpress

About Jan Husdal

Follow @janhusdal

Formerly a civil engineer, emergency management planner and GIS analyst, now a researcher and blogger in Supply Chain Risk and Business Continuity.

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{ 50 Responses }

  1. Scott Bateman says:
    I find a good way to use Pingdom is to check it at least a couple of times a day. When I see a spike on one of my sites, I'll go to Cpanel to look at Latest Visitors and the raw logs to find out if a rogue search engine is hitting the site too hard. Then I'll block that site in htaccess. It has helped reduced unwanted traffic quite a bit.
  2. Karan says:
    I think keeping a minimal layout and using an optimized framework can cut down on your loading time without compromising with user experience or SEO benefits.
  3. Brankica says:
    The worst thing is that the slowest loading thing on my blog the other day were Facebook Like box and Gravatar images in a widget. I removed the box which is a bad move in sense of people liking my fan page and thinking of removing the Gravatars...Thanks for the tool, I like how it showed my speed and what loads faster and what is slow.
  4. Nishadha says:
    My blog averages about 3.5 seconds, I guess it is not bad since I have some graphics as well, certainly a nice tool to analyze which affect loading time the most
  5. Bican Valeriu says:
    After few tests the averange load time is 5 seconds !
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hello Bican, It's hard for me to judge whether 5 seconds is good or bad, but considering that you are using a premium theme with very little graphic content I would expect it to better.
      • Bican Valeriu says:
        Thanks
  6. Bican Valeriu says:
    On my site the Total loading time is averange of 3 seconds ! Is good or not ?
  7. Mani Viswanathan says:
    Site Performance has a great effect on both your visitors as well as Search Engines. So it's necessary to optimize things nicely.
  8. StevenPapas says:
    hey Jan, that was very usefull and informative. Indeed, Google now takes into account the loading speed of a blog and ranks it accordingly. Thanks, I ll be checking mine now to enhance its performance.
  9. Timo Kiander says:
    Hi Jan! Yes, it seems that the site loading time depends of the day. I'm currently struggling with some performance issues, so hopefully I can get some indication where the issue resides. I have already compressed my images by using WP Smush.it, but have to keep on working.
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hi Timo. You're right, your site does load slow when I tried pingdom-ing it. Not sure why...could it be the theme?
      • Timo Kiander says:
        Hi Jan! I removed for example my Twitter widget and couple of others from my right-hand sidebar, smushed some images and limited the amount of posts on the front page to 5. Result: Page loading time now 5 seconds at it's fastest, yesterday it was 16! Also, do you have any recommendations for a tool for compressing the JavaScript libraries?
        • Jan Husdal says:
          Good job! As to JavaScript I suggest WP-Minify. It worked wonders on my site, although it did mess up my theme files slightly, so I had to remove it in the end anyway.
  10. Tinh says:
    I am stick to YSlow to measure my blog loading time and I don't trust pingdom at all and I can not agree more on this as site speed will keep our readers stay and google loves it too :-)
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hi Tinh and thank you for your view. That's an interesting statement. YSlow is a good tool, since it explains a lot more than Pingdom does.
  11. Phil says:
    Love this post Jan! I also like fast loading sites without too much content squeezed together. Simple and sweet that loads fast and easy to browse is the way to go! Not heard of this tool before though, I will check it out. :)
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hi Phil. You're absolutely right. If a page loads fast, I am more than willing to come back to it. If it's a slow loader I will probably not come back, regardless of how interesting the content is.
  12. Alex says:
    Hello Jan, You are right about page load speed. I use firebug with Yslow and Google's Page Speed and I must say that following their advices that they give on their websites is enough to decrease a website's loading speed by at least 50% if not more. Although, not all points can be met, like the cdn network, it's still helpful.
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Setting up a CDN is a bit tricky, and not for the faint of heart. I've been able to do it on a small scale for individual files, but never for a whole site.
  13. Bilal Ahmad says:
    Pingdom is looking very nice tool. I am going to evaluate my blog now. Thanks for sharing.
    • Jan Husdal says:
      You're welcome, Bilal. Me, I couldn't do my blogging without it :)
  14. Sandeep says:
    Hey Jan, Good post. I have worked with pingdom and agree that it's a great tool. With page speed being included in google's ranking factors... it importance only increases.. The loading time of your blog will mainly depend on your web hosting provider and other factors like to no. of plugins and what function they play on your blog... never knew that you could sign up on pingdom and get consistent tracking of your loading speed... thanks for this!
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hi Sandeep and thank you for your comment. Page speed is only one of Google's many ranking factors, but no factor should be underestimated, and from the user's/viewer's/reader's point of view, speed is what matters most...in my opinion.
  15. Jenny says:
    Although the broadband and high speed connections are common, it doesn’t really mean that we should be using heavier files. This is a common misconception.
  16. Steve says:
    pingdom seems like a pretty awesome tool. Thanks for all the information and sharing this with us.
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hi Steve and thanks for adding your thoughts. It's a simple tool, but it works very well. For me, it helped me realize that WP Super Cache on it's own or in combination with WP-Minify loads my blog a lot faster than W3 Total Cache, which is a bit puzzling since the latter is supposed to be the better cache, but what demonstrably works best is what I'll use.
  17. TJ McDowell says:
    I had a retweet plugin that occasionally slowed load speeds for posts down to almost a minute a post. My bounce rate went WAY up. I know I wouldn't wait a full minute for a page to load. After we swapped out that plugin with a regular tweet plugin, the load speed went down to a few seconds, and the bounce rate is back to normal. The only thing I can't fix now is all those people who were disappointed with my site performance while I was using the old plugin.
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hello TJ and thank you for sharing your experience. Plugins is what amkes WordPress so great...most of the time, but not always. Sometimes you just have to sacrifce a gadgety design for better user experience. And the users who really like your posts will know how to retweet by other means anyway.
  18. Mavis Nong says:
    Hi Jan, Thanks for sharing this great tool. It's really important to speed up your blog as visitors don't like to wait. All the best, Mavis
    • Jan Husdal says:
      You're welcome, Mavis, and thank you for supporting this post.
  19. James - Intrahost says:
    Hello Jan, Interesting enough I written an article on website/blog download speed last week. Pingdom.com looks a great piece of software. From a technical point of view, WordPress is excellent, but every time a new plugin is installed it has to conduct a HTTP request. This is when the web browser needs to communicate with the web server. WordPress is full of PHP. A programming language that web browsers need assistance with from web server. Consider the web server to be a translator for the web browser. Those who are able to do HTML coding can shave off some HTTP requests by using HTML instead of PHP. Although the broadband and high speed connections are common, it doesn't really mean that we should be using heavier files. This is a common misconception. In addition, shared hosting can slow your website down as well. If you have an unreliable and slow hosting plan, this could be costly to your website or blog download speeds.
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hello James and thanks for an insightful response. As a matter of fact I started my website in the late 90's, when most people were still using a dial-up modem and optimizing your site for page speed was perhaps THE key element of designing a website. And in my opinion it should still be that way, which is why I eventually decided to take most plugins off my site, and which is also why I am using a dedicated server instead of a shared host. It costs, but I think its worth it.
  20. Robert Dempsey says:
    I agree that Pingdom is a great tool. I also use it to monitor the uptime of all of my sites. Pingdom has monitoring centers in numerous countries so it can give you a good lay of the land view. Another tool I use is webpagetest.org. I like this site as I can choose from centers all over the world, along with different browsers and connection speeds. So it takes monitoring your site load time to another level.
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hello Robert and thanks for pointing at another tool. I've used it before and it certainly gives a lot more information than pingdom.com, but it's a bit unintelligible for the non-techie average web site owner. For the more advanced user it's definitely the tool I would use.
      • Robert Dempsey says:
        I agree on that point - not for the faint of heart.
  21. Priya says:
    Hi Jan, Pretty useful site it is, actually I was looking for such kind of site for some time and finally got to know about it. Thanks for your essential post. ;)
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hi Priya and thanks for chiming in. I'm glad you found my post helpful.
  22. Lennart Heleander says:
    Hi Jan, It is very important with the loading time. I have worked with Pingdom for a long and I have between the 1.4 to 1.9 seconds loading time. It is always my photos which take the longest to download, but I must have them on the page, because I have a real estate web site.
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hi Lennart and thanks for your comment and congrats on your great load time. I really dunno what I am doing wrong, since I rarely seem to get below 4 seconds on the Ping test. The response time monitor when signed up and logged in on the other hand shows a consistent +/- 2 seconds.
      • Lennart Heleander says:
        Hi Jan (Norge) I have look at your web site; http://www.husdal.com/ and found that you have too many WP-plugin who take time, some of your ad also take time to load. You can take down your site easy 1,5 – 2,0 seconds by little work. //Lenny -Lennart (Spain-Sverige)
        • Jan Husdal says:
          Thanks for looking into this. I'd be more than happy for you to contact me directly and discuss the details of your findings.
  23. DiTesco says:
    Great tool. just been over there and even signed up for it. Fortunately my website only has some few "external" calls that can be fixed without any problems. Will be monitoring in the next couple of weeks to see any improvements. Thanks for letting us know about pingdom. I like it better than the current tools I am using
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hello Francisco and thanks for your comment. External call can be a problem, but not necessarily. That's why regular monitoring is a good thing. Nice website, btw.
  24. Ryan Biddulph says:
    Thanks for sharing the site Jan. My blog is fairly light weight but it's helpful to have this free tool in my arsenal. RB
    • Jan Husdal says:
      You're welcome, Ryan. Even lightweight sites can benefit. In my case, it helped the realize that in terms of speed caching wasn't not doing much for my site, but removing some not really needed but nice to have plugins did the the trick.
  25. Delena Silverfox says:
    This is an amazing little tool! I always like free and web-based. =) Smush.It is also another really fantastic tool, as Murlu mentions. I keep forgetting to utilize it, though! I think this afternoon I'll be running a Ping test or two. Thanks for the advice! Delena
    • Jan Husdal says:
      You're welcome and good luck with your coupon-ing :)
  26. Murlu says:
    A really great tool to use in tandem with Pingdom is Smush.It which will let ya compress your images without messing with the image quality - even though you may only be shaving off 1-3kb or so off each image it really makes up for it when you consider there are probably 50 - 100 images throughout a page (as a guess). Cut your response time down by .5s may not be much to you but it's a ton to servers :D
    • Jan Husdal says:
      Hi Murlu and thanks for your comment. I hadn't heard about Smush before, so that's a new resource for me. I usually go with imageoptimizer.net, which let's you set the quality of your optimization in several increments from high to low. I just ran a test, and Smush didn't shave off as much as imageoptimizer, but Smush gives a better looking result.

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