Cumulative Layout Shift, The Layout Instability Metric

Have you ever started reading an exciting news article but then lose your line because all the text shifted downwards? This happens to me a lot, mostly because of ads loading around the content I’m reading.
This kind of user experience can be frustrating, but until now we’ve had trouble measuring it quantitatively. Cumulative Layout Shift addresses this challenge.

Continue reading Cumulative Layout Shift, The Layout Instability Metric

Page Experience and Core Web Vitals: a new SEO factor focusing on website speed

The Speed Report in the Google Search Console (recently renamed “Core Web Vitals”) is offering two new performance metrics: Cumulative Layout Shift and Largest Contentful Paint additionally to the First Input Delay. Core Web Vitals have also been deployed in tools such as Page Speed Insights or Lighthouse.
Google recently announced a major change to come: the search engine will release a new Page Experience signal for ranking in 2021, based on Core Web Vitals, with detailed objectives to comply with. Let’s discover about Core Web Vitals and the details of the Google’s announcement.

Continue reading Page Experience and Core Web Vitals: a new SEO factor focusing on website speed

Preload, Prefetch and Preconnect: Speed Up your Website with Resource Hints

Loading a web page requires fetching a whole set of resources which collectively allow the page to be displayed and interacted with. To increase the user’s perception of speed, you may need to influence the order in which these resources are fetched and executed. And that’s where preload and Resource Hints come in.

Continue reading Preload, Prefetch and Preconnect: Speed Up your Website with Resource Hints

How SeLoger uses Dareboost to monitor short-lived URLs

Today, we open the doors of our blog to Antonio Gomes Rodrigues and Benjamin Tournache of SeLoger.com, a French group specializing in the publication of websites and newspapers for real estate classified ads. Antonio is in charge of the initiatives related to web performance, and as such he handles very specific business and technical requirements.

Continue reading How SeLoger uses Dareboost to monitor short-lived URLs

Search Console Speed Report: everything you need to know

One year after the Speed Update has been released, Google has launched a brand new Speed Report within the Search Console. The Speed Report is using the Chrome UX Report data to highlight the slow pages of your website. Let’s discover how to use the Search Console Speed Report and how to interpret the related performance metrics (FID and FCP). As a conclusion, we’ll focus on speed as a ranking signal and the further changes we might expect within the Speed Report.

Continue reading Search Console Speed Report: everything you need to know

First Contentful Paint (FCP), Start Render, First Paint. How to properly measure the beginning of page rendering?

How to properly measure how fast a web page starts to display its content? Several Web performance metrics exist to answer this question, including First Paint, Start Render and one of the newest: First Contentful Paint (FCP). How does FCP stand out, what are its limitations? Let’s dive into the metrics that measure the browser’s early rendering of web pages.

Continue reading First Contentful Paint (FCP), Start Render, First Paint. How to properly measure the beginning of page rendering?

Brand-new comparison reports for your Website Performance Benchmarks

A new version of our performance comparison reports has just been released. With an improved user experience and some additional data available, benchmarking your competition is now easier than ever!
After a quick reminder about why and how you can use the performance comparison feature, let’s discover what’s new under the hood!
Continue reading Brand-new comparison reports for your Website Performance Benchmarks

Update to Chrome 73 and infrastructure upgrade

After several months of intensive work (and a new coffee machine), we are pleased to announce the next update of our service: June 13th (03:00 AM UTC). It will include an update to Chrome 73, a revised access management policy for detailed reports and a technical architecture revamped to meet the growing needs of our ever-increasing number of customers.

Continue reading Update to Chrome 73 and infrastructure upgrade

TTI: Time To (consistently) Interactive, how to measure web page interactivity

When we talk about web performance measurement, what we’re actually trying to determine is the moment when a user can effectively achieve his or her goal. Meaning the users can consult the content they are looking for and/or interact with the page  in a satisfactory way. Some metrics endorse rendering actions by the browser, others measure the progress of the display through the recording of a video. However, a great mystery remains: how to properly measure interactivity.

For a few years now, Google has been pushing an ambiguous metric: Time To Interactive. What does it mean? Let’s define it and explain how and when to use it (or not).

Continue reading TTI: Time To (consistently) Interactive, how to measure web page interactivity

Lazy Loading, faster webpages, SEO friendly

Images are a key content on your website? If you’re serious about your website performance, you have probably optimized them. But have you considered to lazy load your images? Lazy loading images improves the user experience by saving bandwidth for important content first.

Some reject the technique for SEO considerations. But properly lazy loading your images does not prevent them from being indexed. Let’s find out why you should implement lazy load, and how to make sure you build it in a SEO friendly way.

Continue reading Lazy Loading, faster webpages, SEO friendly

Secure your Cookies (Secure and HttpOnly flags)

Cookies are widely used throughout the Web because they allow publishers to store data directly on the user’s Web browser. They’re particularly used to identify the user’s session, allowing the web server to recognize the user as they navigate through the site, and generally contain sensitive data. You have to properly protect them.
Continue reading Secure your Cookies (Secure and HttpOnly flags)

Synthetic Monitoring to monitor the web performance of your User Journeys (transaction monitoring)

The simplicity of use of Dareboost is frequently highlighted by our customers. After working with dozens of them to get valuable feedback, we’re very proud to announce a new release of our User Journey Monitoring (Scenario) feature. Let’s discover why and how you should start using it to better monitor your Digital Customer Experience!

Continue reading Synthetic Monitoring to monitor the web performance of your User Journeys (transaction monitoring)

5 days together: taking a step back to move forward

Although we work in the same company, the daily life of each Dareboost collaborator is very specific. About a year ago, we have hired our first remote workers. That was a new organization to be found. We do not live in the same place, don’t have the same jobs or routines, and it sometimes does not make it easy to share our successes, our doubts, our feelings. We’re enthusiastic and absorbed in what we’re building, but we also need to take a step back, once in a while, to nurture our vision and company culture.

We regularly meet in Dareboost’ headquarter (Rennes, France) for a few days of brainstorming where we alternate between workshops, indoor or outdoor activities, and friendly meals (long live the raclette!). Continue reading 5 days together: taking a step back to move forward

Content Encoding: why and how to use the meta charset tag and the Content-Type header

Improving the speed at which a web page is displayed often means making the browser’s life as easy as possible. When the browser receives an HTTP response, it actually receives text encoded in bytes, where each byte or sequence of bytes represents a given character. If the browser does not have a clear information about the used encoding, it will waste time trying to guess and may fail in some cases.

Continue reading Content Encoding: why and how to use the meta charset tag and the Content-Type header

Tag Manager & Web Performance Part 2: a question of discipline and collaboration

Using a tag manager does come with consequences on your web pages loading speed. In a previous post, we’ve pointed out that this impact can’t be limited to the asynchronous loading of the embedded tags, and that your tag manager can become a serious problem for your website performance. So now it’s time to explore a few best practices about tag management so that this tool could meet its marketing goals without compromising your webpages’ speed. With the help of L’Oréal’s Digital Ad Tech Manager and several experts. Continue reading Tag Manager & Web Performance Part 2: a question of discipline and collaboration

Lighthouse: a powerful tool included in Chrome and DevTools

After our articles about Test My Site and Page Speed Insights, our collection dedicated to the Google Speed Update ecosystem continues with another tool: Lighthouse.
Released in 2016 as a Chrome extension, Lighthouse is now also available directly in Chrome DevTools, via the “Audits” tab. Lighthouse is a great resource for developers interested in web performance and quality. Continue reading Lighthouse: a powerful tool included in Chrome and DevTools

PageSpeed Insights: the best tool to check your website performance for the Google Speed Update?

This is the second part of our weekly series about Google toolkit for web performance. A few weeks before the Speed Update (Google algorithm change expected on July 2018) this collection will help you to benefit from the best of the available tools and to avoid tricky mistakes. The tool of the day is perhaps one of the most well-known: Google PageSpeed Insights. Continue reading PageSpeed Insights: the best tool to check your website performance for the Google Speed Update?