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    Google PageSpeed Insights vs WebPagetest.org or GTmetrix

    Store owner is getting 90/100 desktop 84/100 mobile using Google PageSpeed Insights but

    F - First Byte Time
    A - Keep-alive Enabled
    A- Compressed Transfer
    N/A - Compressed Images
    C - Cache static content
    X - Effective use of CDN

    The First Byte Time is 0.980s, while Google PageSpeed Insights is reporting that the server responded in 0.43 seconds. Are these two measurements measuring the same thing?

    Some precious milliseconds seem to be tied up in the SSL Negotiation as reported by WebPagetest.org. Since Google wants all SSL does it not ding it like WebPagetest.org seems to be doing?

    Also something else I may be seeing in WebPagetesting is that it runs all the code on the page and doesn't differentiate between desktop and mobile like Google does. It almost seems to penalize for the second running.

    I have also tested the storefront page at GTmetrix. The site gets a PageSpeed Score of A (94%) but a YSlow Score of C (73%). So which tests should be considered the important ones to pay attention to?

    Leslie Kirk
    Miva Certified Developer
    Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
    Previously of Webs Your Way
    (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

    Email me: [email protected]
    www.lesliekirk.com

    Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

    #2
    All these tools have a slightly different way of looking at things which is why you're seeing different results. At the end of the day these tools are just guidelines. The real goal is to make the site as fast as possible for the customer using the site.

    Time to first byte differences could be how they are measuring or it could be load on the server at different times. Im not sure in the differences in the SSL negotiation. Google should be talking that into account with their calculations as that would impact time to first byte.

    A good way to see time to first byte is to use the browsers developer tools, and look at the waiting time on the page itself. That is the time it is taking Miva to process all its data and return information back to the browser
    Brennan Heyde
    VP Product
    Miva, Inc.
    [email protected]
    https://www.miva.com

    Comment


      #3
      Thanks Brennan. The javascript and fonts needed for the framework seem to be the next biggest impact on time it takes to load the entire page. What can be done about the load time of the local fonts?
      Leslie Kirk
      Miva Certified Developer
      Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
      Previously of Webs Your Way
      (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

      Email me: [email protected]
      www.lesliekirk.com

      Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

      Comment


        #4
        I'm delighted at these developments. Where a client has a tight budget, I'm always sure to inform them there are easily 50+ other things they should be focusing their spend on, but this has created a lot of revenue for people like us, and it often justifies the spend. The flaw in Google Insights is in providing a score. Those score's often scare clients into thinking these issues are more important than they are, especially for small sites. The larger the site, the more likely the report is important.

        From what I've learned in a year or so of dealing with this stuff is that TTFB is the most likely to cause you issues, first, because it will increase bounce rates where sites aren't responding at all due to a high TTFB. And that spills into hurting your rankings, because bounce rate is a very import signal for Google. Fixing this through optimization is obviously doable, especially where a site is poorly put together, but I believe the easiest way to improve TTFB is throw money at hardware and/or server config. A client on a well configured dedicated box is always going to win the speed battle over someone on a shared server, if if their site itself isn't well optimized.

        Another thing I've seen too often recently, clients experiencing site speed issues, worrying about optimization, only to find they hadn't deleted expired baskets in like.....FOREVER. I've seen clients with gig's worth of expired baskets and at some point the server hits a choke point and just can't keep up anymore. Clearing that data and scheduling the task for the future fixed their issues immediately.

        So if you're seeing TTFB issues, one of the first, and obvious places to check is the expired baskets. Sadly, it's not as obvious as you'd think as I always just assume people have this buttoned up where they've used Miva for a long time. Miva support and I went back and forth for days on two sites, neither of us able to pinpoint the issue, and then David stepped in and said, "hey guys, did anyone consider the baskets"? Genius that guy.
        Ted Hust
        AarcMediaGroup.com

        Celebrating 13 Years of Outstanding Service & Support
        Miva Merchant Design

        Comment


          #5
          Good point on the expired baskets. In the case of the site I'm currently battling the "F" on, the expired baskets have been deleted and the data has been packed.

          In the mean time, I've been given another testing link https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/ - it seems to be a lot of feel good fluff. I like the old version of the Google PageSpeed Insights instead of this tester.
          Leslie Kirk
          Miva Certified Developer
          Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
          Previously of Webs Your Way
          (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

          Email me: [email protected]
          www.lesliekirk.com

          Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

          Comment


            #6
            Found yet another tool to add to the list:

            https://varvy.com/pagespeed/

            Leslie Kirk
            Miva Certified Developer
            Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
            Previously of Webs Your Way
            (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

            Email me: [email protected]
            www.lesliekirk.com

            Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by Brennan View Post


              A good way to see time to first byte is to use the browsers developer tools, and look at the waiting time on the page itself. That is the time it is taking Miva to process all its data and return information back to the browser
              Which browsers developer tools? The one that pops up when I right click on the page and then click Inspect? Is it the Timeline tab? Are there any references online as how to read this data? The waterfalls from WebPagetest.org and GTmetrix are a bit easier to understand. Happie pointed me to GTmetrix when I was having issues with another site so I was thinking it was the tool that Miva Support was using.

              With that said, I'm still not getting a straight answer on the "Reduce server response time" that Google's PageSpeed Insights is finding.


              Recommendations

              You should reduce your server response time under 200ms. There are dozens of potential factors which may slow down the response of your server: slow application logic, slow database queries, slow routing, frameworks, libraries, resource CPU starvation, or memory starvation. You need to consider all of these factors to improve your server's response time. The first step to uncovering why server response time is high is to measure. Then, with data in hand, consult the appropriate guides for how to address the problem. Once the issues are resolved, you must continue measuring your server response times and address any future performance bottlenecks.
              Leslie Kirk
              Miva Certified Developer
              Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
              Previously of Webs Your Way
              (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

              Email me: [email protected]
              www.lesliekirk.com

              Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

              Comment


                #8
                Leslie, another factor is the location of page speed testing tools and your location vs the location of the Google page speed testing tool vs the location of your client's server. The difference in first byte times you instance could easily be explained by network issues e.g. one route being via 5 routers and another via 10 or network slowness. It is a complex issue to resolve.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by Pete McNamara View Post
                  Leslie, another factor is the location of page speed testing tools and your location vs the location of the Google page speed testing tool vs the location of your client's server. The difference in first byte times you instance could easily be explained by network issues e.g. one route being via 5 routers and another via 10 or network slowness. It is a complex issue to resolve.
                  Thank you Pete - your insight is always extremely valuable.
                  Leslie Kirk
                  Miva Certified Developer
                  Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
                  Previously of Webs Your Way
                  (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

                  Email me: [email protected]
                  www.lesliekirk.com

                  Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

                  Comment


                    #10
                    So this needs to come back to the forefront. Still having issues with Server Response Time. Site server responded in 0.63 seconds. I'll go and delete the baskets again (even though it had no impact the last time I did)....
                    Leslie Kirk
                    Miva Certified Developer
                    Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
                    Previously of Webs Your Way
                    (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

                    Email me: [email protected]
                    www.lesliekirk.com

                    Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Question for Bruce - will the Phosphor Media Merchant Optimizer help with this? I'm thinking it since it will convert the pages to HTML which will reduce the load.
                      Leslie Kirk
                      Miva Certified Developer
                      Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
                      Previously of Webs Your Way
                      (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

                      Email me: [email protected]
                      www.lesliekirk.com

                      Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Hi Leslie,

                        You may have a redirect problem.

                        Are you testing https://www.yourdomain.com or www.yourdomain.com ?

                        Most browsers will default to the non-secure protocol and if your site is all SSL then there will be additional server processing time to handle the redirect.

                        If it is a redirect issue then double check that your htaccess rules-set are optimized and that it isn't redirecting to another redirect.

                        Test both versions and see if the TTFB is any faster.

                        Also make sure you are using a good DNS like Cloudflare, Google DNS, GoDaddy, etc. I've seen old companies like NS or large telcoms mess up name server management. (it happens.)

                        Small traffic sites will typically have longer DNS lookups because of the way name servers propogate.



                        http://www.alphabetsigns.com/

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by lesliekirk View Post
                          Question for Bruce - will the Phosphor Media Merchant Optimizer help with this? I'm thinking it since it will convert the pages to HTML which will reduce the load.
                          Probably not on TTFB, since that is time before anything in Miva is actually thinking about doing anything...Optimizer just removes the 'thinking' part :)

                          BUT...while I agree with Ted on a lot of what he wrote awhile back, if it was my client, I'd tell them there are many better areas to focus on that a 200 ms difference in TTFB...
                          Bruce Golub
                          Phosphor Media - "Your Success is our Business"

                          Improve Your Customer Service | Get MORE Customers | Edit CSS/Javascript/HTML Easily | Make Your Site Faster | Get Indexed by Google | Free Modules | Follow Us on Facebook
                          phosphormedia.com

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by Bruce - PhosphorMedia View Post

                            Probably not on TTFB, since that is time before anything in Miva is actually thinking about doing anything...Optimizer just removes the 'thinking' part :)

                            BUT...while I agree with Ted on a lot of what he wrote awhile back, if it was my client, I'd tell them there are many better areas to focus on that a 200 ms difference in TTFB...
                            I did two tests - one was a plain HTML page with a single line of text. The other I took the page code (view source) of the page in question and created an HTML page with it. I ran both through https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/. The plain page came through with flying colors. The second page did slightly better than the generated version so that would also indicate that using Optimizer is not going to solve all the problems.

                            Leslie Kirk
                            Miva Certified Developer
                            Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
                            Previously of Webs Your Way
                            (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

                            Email me: [email protected]
                            www.lesliekirk.com

                            Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

                            Comment


                              #15
                              The one thing Optimizer will do is make overall times more consistent as there'd be no (or minimal) load on shared Miva resources.
                              Bruce Golub
                              Phosphor Media - "Your Success is our Business"

                              Improve Your Customer Service | Get MORE Customers | Edit CSS/Javascript/HTML Easily | Make Your Site Faster | Get Indexed by Google | Free Modules | Follow Us on Facebook
                              phosphormedia.com

                              Comment

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