The Ultimate Hack to Test Website Performance Like a Pro!

Hi, this is Sneha, and welcome back to yet another article that revolves around tech!
I know a hack that you might be interested in🤭.

Okay, have you ever experienced slow website loading or tried to work with the website performance? I know many of you will say, “YES”! But how?

Back in my initial days, I used to face this a lot. Thanks to developer tools, which helped me improve my website’s performance. But those tools only worked on my local machine, and when my organisation tested the live link, the results were different! It used to bother me. How on earth is this happening?
When I am checking, it’s coming nicely, but when deployed on the web, the results are different.

Then, one of my seniors introduced me to “PageSpeed Insights!” Let’s get into it!

To test your website’s performance, SEO, best practices and a lot of other things locally on your system, you might have used “Lighthouse” from developer tools. Given below is a representational image.

Just like how Lighthouse works near the sea to guide ships safely to shore and prevent them from crashing into hidden dangers, the Lighthouse developer tool guides websites toward better performance, accessibility, and SEO by identifying hidden issues and offering clear paths to improvement.
This is a lighthouse data of https://sneha-farkya.vercel.app

But what if you want to test it in real-time? This is where Google’s PageSpeed Insights comes into action. Unlike Lighthouse in Chrome DevTools, which runs audits locally, PageSpeed Insights analyzes your website using Google’s remote servers. This means you’re getting a consistent, unbiased performance report regardless of your personal system or internet speed.

Simply enter a live URL, and within seconds, you'll receive detailed performance scores for both mobile and desktop versions of your site, along with actionable suggestions on how to improve them.

What makes PageSpeed Insights even more powerful is its use of real-world data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX). This field data reflects how actual users experience your website, offering insights into metrics like First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) based on real user sessions. This is especially valuable for identifying performance bottlenecks that might not appear in lab testing. For businesses or developers optimizing sites in production, PageSpeed Insights serves as a reliable, repeatable, and data-driven tool for improving the user experience.

Sharing the insights of the same website, but using PageSpeed Insights👇

So, what are you waiting for? Go on, build that one website, test it locally, and test the live link using “PageSpeed Insights” . Surprise your manager with the results😉!

If you found this article of any help, drop a comment💗
Also, if you're looking to get frontend development or content writing done, I’d love to collaborate with you. Feel free to reach out for gigs, freelance work, or any exciting opportunities at:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sneha-farkya/

• Portfolio: https://sneha-farkya.vercel.app/

• Hashnode: https://snehafarkya.hashnode.dev/

• X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/sneha_farkya

Until next time…