I’m constantly amazed by how many websites fail even the most basic of website quality tests.
I recently noticed a large local organization had a new website built and decided to take a little peek at the interworking’s (as someone like me typically does!). Not only was the website extremely slow (failing performance standards), but it was full of major accessibility issues, and missing proper markup.
The icing on the cake was that the developer forgot to make the website available to search engines, so their website is no longer being shown on Google.
This kind of mistake is likely costing the company thousands of dollars.
The problem is, many of these errors cannot be seen by the naked eye and it takes some specialized tools and industry knowledge to find them. A website may look beautiful but could be nothing more than a facade.
There’s no governing body to ensure that websites are built to spec (like you’d find in the construction industry), so it really comes down to finding a developer that you trust will do things the right way — but knowing for sure is difficult.
In this article I’m going to share a simple way you can test your website to see if there are any underlying issues.
However, it comes with a caveat…
The testing tool I’ll share with you is all automated — and while it does a good job of running basic tests, it can often lack important context that requires a trained person to analyze.
Running these tests are a great start, but if you find issues, you’ll want to talk to a website developer about them to ensure the testing was accurate.
How to Test Your Website Quality
The tool we will be using is Google’s PageSpeed Insights, which tests your performance, SEO, accessibility, and best practices — all in one free report. While it’s not a complete test of everything that goes into the quality of a website, it does a great job of giving you a solid general overview.
To test your website, go to pagespeed.web.dev, type in your website URL/address into the empty search bar, and click the button labeled “Analyze”.
After about 30 seconds you’ll be taken to a new page that will display the results of your test.
These results are broken down into 4 categories: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. For each of the categories, your website is given a score from 0 to 100 (100 being the best).
If your scores are 90 or above, they’ll be in green. 90+ scores are excellent and puts your website in the top percentile of websites.
Scores from 50-89 will be in yellow and mean your website has some obvious issues that need to be addressed.
Any score below 50 will be red, indicating serious failures.
Next, let’s take a look at each of the 4 categories to understand a little bit more about what they are testing for.
Performance
Performance tests are important for a few different reasons.
As internet users we have become increasingly impatient. Studies have found that the chances of someone leaving your website grows exponentially if it takes any more than 3 seconds to load.
Google (and other serach engines) recognize this behavior and is taking performance into account as part of its algorithm to determine search engine rankings. Since users prefer a fast-loading website, Google can (and will) prioritize high-performance in their rankings giving fast websites an edge over slower ones.
The performance test measures several key areas, including Google’s Core Web Vitals — the three metrics Google has identified as most important to real-world user experience:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures when the largest content element on the page becomes visible. It’s essentially “how fast does the page feel like it loaded.”
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures how quickly the page responds to user input — clicks, taps, keyboard interactions. A slow INP means the page feels sluggish to use even after it’s loaded.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures how much the layout moves around while the page is loading. High CLS is what causes you to accidentally click the wrong thing because a button shifted just before you tapped it.
Beyond the Core Web Vitals, PageSpeed Insights also reports on supporting metrics like First Contentful Paint, Speed Index, and Total Blocking Time — all of which contribute to the overall performance score.
Core Web Vitals have become an extremely important metric to use when analyzing the quality of a website’s performance. Not only because they are things that so dramatically affect the user, but because these are the exact metrics Google is using to grade your website as well.
Below the performance results, you’ll see sections labeled “Opportunities”, “Diagnostics”, and “Passed Audits”. These sections will give you a more detailed report. While this information is vital in understanding your scores (and what you can do to improve them), they are full of website developer jargon that might not make a whole lot of sense to the untrained user.
Accessibility
Just like a store’s physical location needs to conform with federal accessibility guidelines governed by the Americans with Disabilities Act (or “ADA”), your website needs to conform to accessibility standards is well.
This insures people of all ability are able to use your website without undue burden.
Accessibility measures may include things like:
- Color contrast for those who are color blind or visually impaired.
- Alternative text for images for those who are visually impaired and cannot see the images.
- Keyboard navigation for people who are unable to use a mouse.
- Semantic HTML which gives context to the structure of your website.
- And a whole lot more.
25% of website visitors have some type of disability
Not only in some cases are you legally required to conform to accessibility standards — it’s most certainly in your best interest to do so. About 1/4th of the population in the United States have some type of disability. A website that doesn’t address accessibility standards could be alienating nearly a quarter of their possible visitors and customers.
Best Practices
The best practices test is a little harder to define, though generally it looks for common mistakes that effect your website’s security, any errors, depreciated technologies, user experience and more.
It’s important to have a professional dig into any of the issues listed under this section as this is the category that can most often have false positives. For example, in my test results I get docked 8 points for an error. As I analyzed what the error was, I discovered that it’s only a resource that’s being restricted from the testing tool, but works fine for real visitors.
Cases like this illustrate the importance of having a trained professional analyze these scores since they are able to investigate and use context to understand if they are worth perusing.
SEO
The SEO (or “Search Engine Optimization”) section is extremely important for those who are wanting to attract new visitors to their website through search (like Google).
SEO is a huge topic with thousands of nuanced factors to consider — so keep in mind that the testing tool can only do so much without context about what your website is trying to rank for.
However, the test does a good job of ensuring you are following basic SEO advice, including proper structure and meta data. Both performance and accessibility play a role in your SEO score too — and many of the accessibility and performance errors might also be reflected in your SEO score.
Just because you get a high score in these results does not mean that your website will rank highly in search engines, but it does mean that things have been structured properly so that you start on a good foundation for search engine optimization.
A Holistic Approach to Website Quality
The combination of having no enforced standards in place for the construction of a website, coupled with the technical nature of understanding what makes a well-built website means a lot of business owners end up with websites that are nothing more than a pretty facade.
It’s important to test your website’s quality, not only when it’s first built, but routinely as standards and best practices change over time. Just like you need to get your car inspected once a year, it’s important to make sure your website is functioning properly. Routine maintenance is always less expensive than remediation, so being proactive about reviewing your website is crucial.
PageSpeed Insights does a great job at giving you a general overview of your website’s quality, but it cannot compare to a manual audit done by a trained professional.
For example, an automated tool could tell you if the colors your using have enough contrast to comply with accessibility standards, but they can’t tell you if that’s the best color to attract your target market or if it matches your branding.
They also don’t give much context to which issues are insignificant and which ones could be causing major issues with your online presence. For example, in the story I shared at the beginning where a website was set to not show in search results — that site would score a 77 for SEO in PageSpeed Insights, even though their website isn’t available in search results at all. SEO, like many aspects of a quality website, relies on context and hiring a professional search engine optimization specialist will help you get results beyond what any automated test can provide.
It’s best to think of these tools as an aid in helping measure your website’s quality — but keep in mind that it’s only telling part of the story.
If you run this test and find issues you’re not sure how to interpret — or scores that seem off — I’m happy to take a look. A fresh set of trained eyes on your results can tell you quickly which issues actually matter and which ones you can safely ignore.
Get in touch and we can talk through what you’re seeing.
