My presentation for HighEdWeb 2020 was about the basics of website performance evaluation. We covered tools such as Lighthouse, and WebPageTest. We also updated an example site to improve performance.
Description
Evaluating and Fixing Website Performance
For the past decade we’ve been building websites with responsive web design to accommodate all visitors regardless of device. Unfortunately, web performance is often not taken into consideration on many higher education sites. So while we’re accommodating the screen size, we’re ignoring the network. Features such as auto-loading videos, custom fonts, and third party embeds can all contribute to a sub-par mobile experience.
During this presentation, we will explore free web performance tools that can help us evaluate where problems are occurring, and how we can use the results to make our sites faster. If you ever thought to yourself “Network Waterfalls are really interesting. I wish I knew more about them,” then this presentation is for you.
Link to conference presentation page.
Presentation Links
- Slides 740 KB PDF
- Web Vitals
- PageSpeed Insights
- WebPageTest
- Hero Video Demo
- San Jose State University
- San Jose State University Demo
- Using WebPageTest: Web Performance Testing for Novices and Power Users (affiliate link)
- How to read a WebPageTest Waterfall View chart
Improving third-party tag performance
- Reducing the Site-Speed Impact of Third-Party Tags
- Adding controls to Google Tag Manager
- Increase App Performance — Tame Tag Managers and Take Back Control From Third-Parties