What Is GTmetrix Used For?

GTmetrix is a speed test tool that helps to analyse the page speed and performance of a website. It gives text results for pages and offers Pagespeed and WiSlow. The tool is both paid and free, and it's very good at giving a detailed report about the performance of a site. It comes up with the results of the sites and also possible solutions. With GTmetrix, you can run very precise analytics from a WordPress dashboard.

GTmetrix also permits daily, weekly, and monthly basis scheduled reports. But to enjoy the services o GTmetrix, you have to create an account with them. The account is free to create, and you can start using the softer right away with the basic tier - although this comes with limited functions. Lastly, you can use the web-based version of GTmetrix by visiting their official website. 

How Much Is GTmetrix?

GTmetrix has three different payment tiers under it: the Individual plan, the Business plan, and the Custom plan. Each of these tiers also has sub tiers underneath them. 

1. The Individual

• Solo: $10.67/month, $128/year. Offers 3 monitored slots, 175 weekly on-demand tests, 25 daily API credits, 6 data retention (month). But on the downside, it has no hourly monitoring. It also has interesting extras and bonuses that you'll need.
• Starter (Recommended): $21.25/month, $255/year. Offers 6 monitored slots, 200 weekly on-demand tests, 50 daily API credits, 6 data retention (month) and hourly monitoring. It also has all the inclusive extras present in the Solo plan.
• Growth: $42.50/month, $510/year, with 12 monitored slots, 300 weekly on-demand tests, 100 daily API credits, 6 data retention, and hourly monitoring provided.
• Basic: free, 1 monitored slot, weekly on-demand test (50), 10 daily API credits, 3 data retention (months), no hourly monitoring, no extras. 

2. Business

• Champion: Recommended, $63.75/month, $765/year, 15 monitored slots, 500 weekly on-demand tests, 150 daily API credits, data retention (month), hourly monitoring. Includes everything in the individual plan plus exclusive bonuses.
• Team: $170/month, $2,040/year, 30 monitored slots, 100 weekly on-demand tests, 300 daily API credits, 12 data retention (months), hourly monitoring. Has all other extras.
• Enterprise: $450/month, $5,400/year, with 60 monitored slots, 2000 weekly on-demand tests, 600 daily API credits, 24 data retention (monthly). It so has all other extras included. 

3. Custom

Usually determined by the client. 

How Do You Use GTmetrix?

The first thing to do is to create a free account. This permits customization of tests, and reliability of performance results. After creating the account, you'll have to customize your GTmetrix test. 

There are several options that you can tweak to customize your testing experience with GTmetrix. Let’s see them together.

1. Choose Location (Test Region), preferably, the location closest to your server.

2. Try different Connection networks. GTmetrix gives you several possibilities: Unthrottled Connection, Broadband (slow, fast, and normal), 3G Mobile, 2G Mobile, LTE Mobile, 56K Dial-up.

3. Tick the AdBlock option. By doing this, GTmetrix will scan your URL while ads are blocked. You can check a real case example on GTmetrix’s site, where they used the Smashing Magazine website.

4. Tick Stop Test Onload. This will stop the speed test right after the Onload event, instead of after 2 seconds of network inactivity.

5. Enable Create Video, If you want to see how your page loads exactly. GTmetrix will record a video where you’ll see your page loading 4x slower, so it would be easier to detect eventual loading issues.

How Do I Read A GTmetrix Report?

To get detailed information about the performance of your site you will have to click the third tab and have s look at the GTmetrix waterfall chart. The waterfall chart gives you ample information about the loading attributes of your webpage by being precise on every request and quantifying the timing. It has every script, media file, or external resource embedded in the tested page. 

If you want to have a glimpse of what resources your page loads, and in which order, then this tab will be inevitable for you. Each request has its load time, denoted by horizontal bars. If the bar is long, then it will take some time before the request downloads or executes. 

GTmetrix waterfall chart has five columns: 

1. Filename of the requested resource.

2. HTTP response status.

3. File origin (where the file is coming from).

4. File size for each resource.

5. Load time breakdown.

By hovering over the file name, you can read the full path of the file you selected. And if you Ctrl+click  it, you will be able to have the file opened in another tab. Right here, you have a crystal clear portrait of the performance of your website.

Meanwhile, before you forge ahead to the load time breakdown part, watch the fourth column, File Size. If you observe closely and notice any file with a large size, take note of it and fix it. 

The distinct colour code such GTmetrix employs how to note the difference between parts of the loading process for each resource. If you hover over the load time bar, each resource exposes a pop-up where the diverse sections of the resource's loading process are displayed in different colours.

How Do I Increase My GTmetrix Performance?

According to common problems noticed amongst popular WordPress users, let's see how many solutions we can proffer. Generally speaking, if all these Belo tares are enhanced on your site, you will definitely see an increase in performance.

1. Serve scaled images

2. Autoptimize inline CSS

3. Leverage browser caching

4. Serve resources from a consistent URL

5. Defer parsing of JavaScript

6. Minify CSS and JavaScript

7. Minify CSS and JavaScript

8. Optimize images

9. Initial server response Time

10. Minify HTML

11. Enable GZIP compression

12. Minimize redirects

13. Specify a cache validator

14. Specify a cache validator

15. Specify image dimensions

16. Remove query strings from static resources