How To Test Your Website To See If It’s Any Good

Estimated Reading Time: 4 Minutes

By: Brian McCrackenbutton to visit the authors linked profile
High Level Developer

KEY
POINTS

  • You should regularly test your website’s performance to identify potential problems.
  • It’s important to test not just your site speed, but also it’s accessibility, SEO, and vulnerability to hacking attempts to get a complete and clear picture on where you stand.

You would be shocked by how many bad websites there are out there. I’m not talking about websites that look bad or are hard to use.

I’m talking about sites that are raging dumpster fires and work AGAINST the business that owns them, and they have no idea.

There are all sorts of problems people look over all of the time. Anything from being inaccessible for people with disabilities, poorly optimized so they don’t get as much traffic as they should, and even completely blocked from search engines altogether!

Putting The Tools We Use In Your Hands

The issue is that unless you’re a web developer and know all of the tools, tricks, and things to look for, you might not even notice that your site falls into this category.

Well, we are going to fix that problem for you today.

I’m going to show you a bunch of tools you can use to see if your website is any good, or if it needs some help.

Measuring Your Site’s Performance

Your website’s performance can have massive implications on how well it’s ranked by search engines, the amount of traffic you receive, and what kind of experience your customers have on it. If your customers feel like they have a poor experience on your website, that will reflect negatively on your brand and their willingness to do business with you in the future.

PageSpeed Insights

pagespeed insights will show you problems with your websites performance

PageSpeed Insights is Google’s tool used for determining how fast a website is, what kind of experience a user may have on it, and what should be improved. Mobile and Desktop versions of the site are scored separately.

Link: https://pagespeed.web.dev/

GTmetrix

gtmetrix helps you understand more about your website's performance

GTmetirx offers much of the same information as PageSpeed Insights, as well as some additional information from other measuring tools, and a deeper look at your site’s asset waterfall.

Link: https://gtmetrix.com/

Measuring Your Site’s Accessibility

Website accessibility is incredibly important.

Not only can you find yourself right in the middle of an ADA compliance lawsuit if your website does not meet accessibility standards, but improving its accessibility will often also improve its SEO, user experience, and access to the information on your website for all users.

WAVE Accessibility Evaluation

wave accessibility testing can help you improve your websites ada compliance

WAVE’s accessibility evaluation can uncover helpful insights that will enable you to improve your site’s accessibility for disabled users. It is one of the industry’s standard tools for helping ensure ADA compliance across the web.

Link: https://wave.webaim.org/

Web Accessibility By Level Access

Level Access provides a web accessibility tool that will help you improve your website's ada compliance

Web Accessibility by Level Access is another great tool that you can use to determine if your website is ADA Compliant, and where it might need some help.

Link: https://www.webaccessibility.com/

Measuring Your Site’s SEO

Ensuring that your website has great SEO can make or break it’s success online. We do have a Beginner’s SEO Guide written for Cleveland Businesses that can help you improve your scores, or you can reach out to us for addition assistance.

SEObility

seobility seo checker can help you understand what your website's seo is like and where it could be improved

SEObility provides a good overview score to give you an idea of where your website’s SEO could improve. SEO is a complex and ever-changing field, so it should only be used as an indication of big things to look out for.

Link: https://www.seobility.net/en/seocheck/

Measuring Your Site’s Performance, Accessibility, SEO, and Best Practices All In One

Web.dev Measure

webdevs measure tool can help you understand multiple aspects of your website's quality and speed

Web.dev’s Measure tool is a collection of tests that can give you a good overall view of how your website stacks up. Sometimes the results they produce aren’t the same as the individual tools on their own, so I’ve put it lower in the list as it shouldn’t be your first resource.

Link: https://web.dev/measure/

Measuring Your Site’s Vulnerability

It’s common for sites to have small, or low-risk vulnerabilities. However, if you find that your site has medium and high-risk vulnerabilities, you will want to contact your web developer and host as quickly as possible to remediate them and reduce your risk of getting hacked.

PenTest’s Website Vulnerability Scanner

pentests vulnerability scanner can alert you to security concerns you should address

PenTest’s Website Vulnerability Scanner is a free tool that can help alert you of the security risks that you should look at reducing as quickly as possible. Repairing hacked sites or exposing customer information can become an expensive situation very quickly that you will want to avoid.

Link: https://pentest-tools.com/website-vulnerability-scanning/website-scanner

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