Website designers are tasked not just with creating websites that look good, but websites that function at a high level. Simply put, it matters very much the kind of user experience your website provides. A website that is too slow or too difficult to navigate may cost you conversions. It may elevate your bounce rate. It may even impede your SEO rankings.

There are several tools available to help designers and marketing teams access website performance, and not all of them are created equal. One tool that’s generated a lot of discussion lately is GTmetrix. In this post, we’ll tell you what this tool can do, and help you decide whether it’s worth your time.

What is GTmetrix?

Simply put, GTmetrix is a web-based tool that allows you to analyze the speed of your website.

The tool will evaluate how long it takes your site to load, along with the overall size and number of requests associated with your website, then give you a basic score. Along with this score, you’ll get some recommendations to improve your site speed and performance.

GTmetrix has already gained a lot of popularity among website designers as well as SEO pros, who know just how valuable it is to optimize a site for speed and usability.

How Do You Use GTmetrix?

If you want to give this tool a try, you just need to go to the GTmetrix website. You don’t have to create an account, though doing so will offer you a few advanced features (including the option to edit location, browser type, and other variables).

From there, you just provide the URL of the website you want to analyze. GTmetrix will generate a full report, including your score and recommendations.

Helpfully, GTmetrix breaks down your areas of improvement by topic, prioritizing them in terms of their overall impact and also providing some comparison points with Google’s Core Web Vitals.

What Does GTmetrix Evaluate?

You’ll notice that there are a few different tabs included in your GTmetrix report. Here’s a quick summary of what you’ll find in each of these tabs.

The Performance Tab

This tab will display insight into some basic, performance-based metrics, including your overall site speed but also CLS and a number of browser-specific analytics.

The Structure Tab

This is where GTmetrix recommends you start. In this tab, you’ll find a full audit of all the issues you could improve with regard to your website performance. It even tells you what level of website experience is needed to make these optimizations.

The Waterfall Tab

The best way to think about this tab is that it allows you to see which of your website features or resources takes the longest to load, which can be helpful as you think about making speed improvements.

The Video Tab

You’ll need an account to use this tab, but if you do, you can create a video of your website loading, providing a chance for you to review footage and pinpoint additional opportunities for optimization.

The History Tab

This tab allows you to track your progress over time, which can be really useful if you use GTmetrix to actively pursue website improvements.

Is GTmetrix Useful?

There’s a wealth of information to be gleaned from this tool, but can you actually put any of it to use?

No matter how deep you want to dive into these reports and metrics, we think you’ll find something of value. A lot of users will just want to check their GTmetrix Grade, a basic assessment of site loading time and architecture. This grade will let you know if the fundamental structure of your site lends itself to snappy loading times, or if some foundation-level work is required.

We also really love the Web Vitals section, which helps you to understand your site’s speed and user experience in light of the metrics that Google itself uses. This can be an especially helpful feature for SEOs, or for anyone who wants to assess the overall stability of their website.

The bottom line? Website speed is something that anyone who works in SEO or marketing should care about. There are certainly other speed test sites out there, but in terms of sheer breadth of information, along with ease of use, GTmetrix is one of the top tools available right now.

Seek Continuous Improvement

We hope some of our readers and clients will find this to be a useful tool as they think about enhancing some of their own website strategies. On our end, we’ll continue to focus on building websites that have superior SEO and UX hardwired into their DNA. And, we’ll keep you in the loop about any other tools we think are worth your attention. Reach out to enCOMPASS with any questions.