Uptime.com’s Page Speed Test offers extensive insight into your website’s performance. As such, there are a number of items being delivered in every report that you should be aware of.
This article will help define and explain the Page Speed Report, the underlying metrics, and the data made available within the Uptime.com account.
Our Page Speed Check, metrics, analysis, and terminology are built on the Google Lighthouse framework.
- Introduction to the Page Speed Report
- Navigation Report
- Uptime Grade
- Core Web Vitals
- Share and Edit
- Summary
- Performance
- Audits
- Waterfall
- History
- Metric Time Trend Graph
- Reporting
- Final Thoughts
Introduction to the Page Speed Report
The Page Speed Report is a series of audits performed on your webpage breaking down how fast your page loads, what could be improved, and how your webpage has performed over time.
To find your page speed report, you will need to navigate to Monitoring > Page Speed, then select More Options > Pagespeed Report.
Included with your report are individual tabs that display your webpage’s metrics. Summary, Performance, Audits, Waterfall, and History all provide an in depth look into your webpage’s performance to show you where you stand.
Navigation Report
The Navigation Report is displayed at the top of the screen, and it includes the basics of the most recent results of the Page Speed Check. Details such as the date/time of the test, server location, screen size, and connection are all displayed here.
Uptime Grade
Uptime Grade is a comprehensive evaluation of your page’s performance, encompassing both its loading speed for users and its optimization for optimal performance.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are a concise set of essential metrics that serve as key indicators of the speed and overall user experience your website provides to visitors.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Total Blocking Time (TBT), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) are the main three indicators on a webpage’s performance and whether it can be improved or not.
For a more detailed look into what defines each of these metrics, please see our Definitions & Terminology documentation.
Share and Edit
You will notice towards the middle of the report, there are options for sharing, downloading, and editing.
Share Report provides you with a public URL that you can copy and send. Once shared, your public link is accessible for 3 months, after which you will need to create a new link to share.
Download PDF provides a formatted PDF document with all of your metrics, audits, and graphs. Once you’ve downloaded your PDF, you can print and copy as needed.
Edit Check will navigate you to the Edit Check window for this specific Page Speed Check to edit or update settings as needed.
Summary
Each of the below sections shares an in-depth look at the different aspects of your webpage being audited.
Speed Visualization provides you with screenshots of your page as it is being loaded, showing what appears on your page at every step in the process.
Opportunities to Improve Performance scores certain aspects of your website and grades them while providing recommendations for improvement.
The Performance section is all about load metrics. This includes how quickly specific content on your page loads and which aspects took the longest to become fully interactive to the user.
Audits score your webpage around a few key metrics and performance standards, including load times, search engine optimization (SEO), and others. .
The Waterfall is a breakdown of the duration of all requests being performed on a webpage.Your History is displayed in two graphs for both overall performance and individual performance. Each graph provides an aggregated look into your webpage’s performance over a given time period.
Speed Visualization
With webpage performance, we understand that it is important to see what is happening with your webpage while it's loading, which is why our Page Speed Test takes screenshots every step of the way.
This array of images and timestamps shows each stage of page loading. This data can be crucial to understanding what needs optimizing on your page. With the Page Speed Test, you can determine what is loading first so you can begin troubleshooting and optimizing.
Opportunities to Improve Performance
Opportunities to Improve Performance section gives greater insight into the specific items that our Page Speed Test found, which could help optimize your website’s performance. Items such as images that need to be resized, unused Javascript, and server response time are all performance checks that our Page Speed Test checks to ensure you are getting the best service possible.
There are three ratings that each item checked can be categorized as:
Poor - Performance score that is 49% or lower.
Medium - Performance score that is between 50% and 90%.
Passed - Performance score of 91% or higher.
Each score is determined by an individual metric relevant to the item. For example, image size is calculated by comparing the size of the rendered image against the size of the actual image. If the rendered size is at least 4KiB smaller than the actual size of the image, then the image will be assigned a less than passing score.
Every opportunity is scored on standard best practices and results can differ from website to website. It is important to view and analyze each opportunity to maintain desired website performance.e.
Selecting any of these “opportunities” will open a larger dropdown containing more in-depth information detailing exactly which element and/or URL could potentially be optimized.
The following data points can be found on this report:
- The current resource size
- Transfer size
- Time spent
- Potential Savings
Along with the URLs for each opportunity, you can choose to open the URL to see exactly which endpoint, image, otherwise could potentially be slowing down your website.
Performance
Performance Metrics
Your Performance Metrics, using a similar grading system as the Opportunities to Improve Performance, shows how well your site is performing regarding user satisfaction.
- Total Blocking Time - Commonly referred to as TBT, is defined as the sum of all time periods between FCP (First Contentful Paint) and Time to Interactive, when task length exceeds 50ms. Accounts for 30% of your Performance Score.
- Largest Contentful Paint - This metric marks the time at which the largest text or image is painted. Accounts for 25% of your Performance Score.
- Cumulative Layout Shift - Measures the largest burst, or consecutive, movement of visible elements within the viewport. Accounts for 25% of your Performance Score.
- First Contentful Paint - Marks the time at which the first text or image is painted. Accounts for 10% of your Performance Score.
- Speed Index - Shows how quickly the contents of a page are visibly populated. Accounts for 10% of your Performance Score.
Informative Metrics
The Informative Metrics show three data points describing the time it took to load certain aspects of your website.
- Observed Load - The time it took to load the page and all of its resources.
- Observed DOM Content Loaded - The time it took to load the HTML page.
- Observed First Visual Change - The time it took to load the first visual change.
Analysis
The Analysis section visually breaks down load performance into different components of your webpage. Each graph displayed shows you a different section of your webpage and what resources are being allocated where.
The breakdown is both color coded and utilizes percentages for readability and quick analysis.
Audits
The Page Speed Test performs audits on a number of different attributes on your website. Performance, guidelines, accessibility, SEO, and progressive web apps are all areas on which your site will be tested.
Similar to both the Opportunities to Improve Performance and Performance Metrics, the items being audited will be assigned a grade upon completion. Good, Medium, Poor, Failed, and N/A are the range of grades that can be assigned to any item.
Please note: Items marked with N/A are simply informative and will not impact your overall performance score.
Selecting any of these items will provide you the same drop down provided in Opportunities to Improve Performance, displaying a detailed report of what the cause is and the potential amount of savings per item.
Waterfall
The Requests Waterfall, similar to Uptime.com’s Transaction Check, provides detailed information on the duration of all requests that happened while testing your website.
Utilizing the waterfall can help provide a deeper understanding of which assets are causing delays in load times, ultimately slowing down your site.
History
Under the History section are two graphs that easily allow you to track the performance of your website over a specified period of time.
Result Score Time Trend Graph
This first graph plots your Performance Score versus the Best Practices scoring over a set period of time. Using this graph will show you whether you are above or below the best practices scoring model, performance trends, and a visual representation of your performance for easy analysis.
Metric Time Trend Graph
The second graph displays a chosen metric from the dropdown menu, located in the upper left corner of the graph. This visual lets you narrow down performance based on a specific metric so you can see exactly which aspect of your website needs further investigation.
The time period being displayed for both graphs can be changed using either one of the preset time periods or a custom range of your choice. Additionally, similar to Uptime.com’s RUM Check’s Aggregation Toolbar, the default aggregation is Median, but we provide alternative aggregation percentiles to best suit your use case and requirements.
Reporting
Each graph provides the user with the option to download the historical data from each graph in either SVG, PNG, or CSV format.
To download the data in your preferred format, select the menu in the upper right hand corner of either graph and select the format you would like to download.
Final Thoughts
No matter your use case, keeping data on your website’s performance can be an invaluable resource. With Uptime.com’s Page Speed Report, all of your website’s performance metrics are in your hands with a click of a button.
For a detailed explanation of each metric, please see our article on Definitions & Terminology. For any other assistance, please contact support@uptime.com.
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