4 Tools to Check If Your Private Practice Website Is Too Slow
In the post 5 reasons a slow website is costing you therapy clients, I have talked about why having a slow website is not good for your private practice. A slow therapist website not only lowers the conversion rate but also leaves a bad impression on the users. But how do you determine that your therapist website is slow?
There are various online website speed testing tools that helps in determining the speed of a website. They provide real time results for various device types like mobile, desktop, tablet, etc. Using these website speed test tools you can check your private practice website speed and also get to know about the reasons why your therapist website is slow.
In this post, you’ll discover 4 powerful website speed testing tools that are beginner friendly and easy to use to check your private practice website’s speed and how to use them to make your site faster and more client-friendly.
1. Google PageSpeed Insights
Website: pagespeed.web.dev
The first website speed test tool on the list is Google’s PageSpeed Insights. This is Google’s official website speed test tool which checks both mobile and desktop speed. It scores your website out of 100 and highlights what elements on your therapist website are slowing it down like large images, unused code, or slow server response times.
The tool tells you about the performance of your therapy website through core web vitals like First Contentful Paint, Largest Contentful Paint, Total Blocking Time, Cumulative Layout Shift, and Speed Index.
It also shows accessibility issues, best practice, and SEO performance. A handy and feature rich tool to check the slow elements of your website.
Why Google PageSpeed Insights is great for therapists?
- Simple color-coded scores
- Clear action steps even non-techies can understand
- Prioritizes mobile, which is where most therapy clients browse
2. GTmetrix
Website: gtmetrix.com
GTmetrix is also a very popular therapist website speed test tool. With GTmetrix you can calculate the performance of your therapist website in various ways. GTmetrix gives you a detailed breakdown of your site’s performance with loading time, page size, and total requests. It even shows a waterfall chart that visualizes how each part of your site loads.
The waterfall chart is a special feature of GTmetrix that displays the loading behavior of your therapist website. It will show you how much time every script, media file or any other third party resource takes to load. This makes it very easy to know about the elements which are causing the website to load slow, and needs improvement.
Why GTmetrix is great for therapists:
- Visual breakdown helps you or your web developer pinpoint issues
- Helpful grades for performance, structure, and speed
- Can test from different countries
Also read: 7 Ways to instantly speed up your therapist website
3. Pingdom Tools
Website: tools.pingdom.com
Pingdom is another user-friendly website speed test tool that you can use to check your therapy website speed. It also comes with various handy features that you can use to optimize your website speed. If you want a fast overview of what’s working and what’s not then Pingdom is a great website speed testing tool. On the free version of the Pingdom speed test tool you can check your website speed from 7 different locations around the world.
Pingdom gives several information about the webpage. Like it shows the website total load time in your selected location, page size, total requests taken to load the webpage, gives recommendations to improve the page performance, show content size by content type in percentage, show requests by content type. It also use different colors to indicate different stages of a request displayed in a table.
Why Pingdom Speed Test tool is great for therapists:
- Easy-to-read speed score
- Highlights slow-loading elements
- Gives improvement suggestions ranked by impact
Also read: Myths private practice website owners believe about slow website speed
4. Uptrends Website Speed Test
Website: uptrends.com/tools/website-speed-test
This tool is much different from the other website speed tools I listed above. This tool lets you check the speed of your therapist website not only from desktop or mobile but also from different screen sizes and different mobile devices. You can also modify the bandwidth throttling (internet speed) to check your website loading time from different internet bandwidths. A great additional feature which is not found in any other tools listed above.
Uptrends Website Speed test tool lets you check private practice website speed from 20 different locations. This tool has all the features that all other speed test tools I have listed above have. You can check core web vitals, inspect Google PageSpeed Insights, other areas of improvement, request time of each element.
Uptrends has a feature, which gives you report about every request and load time. You can check which elements are loading slow, and needs improvement. This feature is similar to the GTmetrix which shows you how you website is loading.
Uptrends shows this in the form of screenshots of page load. Overall, an all-rounder tool to check your private practice website speed.
Why Uptrends Website Speed Test Tool is great for therapists:
- Ideal if you serve clients across multiple cities or countries
- Easy snapshot of how your site performs under different conditions
- Can simulate mobile users with different browsers
Final Thoughts
A slow website could be silently costing you new therapy clients. But with these 4 website speed testing tools, you can quickly find out what’s slowing things down and start improving your private practice site’s performance today.
Fast, mobile-friendly therapist website build trust, reduce bounce rate, and help clients get to your booking page fast.
So, spend some time with these tools, check which request, css, or any other element is slowing down the website, make changes and see the results.
Nothing beats a fast loading time in conversions. Faster website means more conversions, better trust, and visibility.
