How to measure your website performance when using CDN
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can significantly improve website performance by delivering content faster to your audience. To ensure speedy delivery, a CDN strategically distributes your website’s content across a network of servers around the world. Website visitors then receive content from the server closest to them, minimising travel distance and wait times.
Is a CDN right for you?
Before adding CDN to your website, test your website’s performance using free online tools. Once you have these results, add CDN to your site and run the test again to check for an improvement.
Test your website’s performance
The following online tools will help you measure your site’s performance:
- Google PageSpeed Insights: Provides several metrics to measure a website’s performance
- WebPageTest: Allows users to run different tests on a website, including performance tests
- Pingdom Website Speed Test: Provides a simple way to measure a website’s performance
- GTMetrix: Provides the ability to test and monitor your page’s performance
You may also want to install a browser extension (add-on) designed to measure the time it takes for web pages to load. By doing so, you can test the speed of your internet connection from your local point of presence (POP) instead of online tools that test from a set location.
After gathering data on your website’s performance, use it to pinpoint areas for improvement. Regular performance checks help ensure an optimal user experience.
Speed tests are based on the location from where the speed test is run. That’s why speed test results may vary based on what content has been cached in the location you’re requesting the test from.
A CDN is great at improving loading times, but it has other far-reaching benefits as well.
