Page speed benchmarking

GTMetrix performance benchmarking

Overview

For professional software products with high performance standards, regular performance testing is a must. Either with each new build or on a regular schedule, it's good to track some specific metrics for your product over time and set targets for performance.
GTMetrix is a good tool for getting a high-level view of this, with a few key metrics easily testable on any web application.
Reports for logged out users will be deleted after a week. Basic (Free) users's reports last 3 months.

When to use

  • Landing pages
    • Doesn't provide accurate data if the user must be logged in to see the page's content, whether due to redirects or privacy rules.
  • Public-facing search pages
  • Any slow public-facing page
  • A copy of a slow private page
    • If privacy rules are applied for logged-out users, this test won't be accurate, but in a copied app the privacy rules could be briefly removed while the test is run.
Check out this guide for a more in-depth explanation of all the features on GTMetrix.

Metrics to track

  • TTFB: Time to first byte
  • FCP: First contentful paint
  • LCP: Largest contentful paint
  • Fully loaded time (less important)
  • Total page size
  • Total page requests
  • "Total blocking time" (Seconds of blocking JS)

Comparisons with some Bubble pages

Comparisons with some non-bubble pages

Video guides

Also goes over Pingdom, a similar tool