Test your TTFB | GeekFlare

Description TTFB Test – GeekFlare  

When it comes to improving the performance of a website, improving the responsiveness of the server where your website is hosted is one of the important factors to consider.  GeekFlare is a toolkit designed to help website owners test and improve certain technical factors of their sites. TTFB Test is part of this collection of tools from GeekFlare.  It was specially developed to check the TTFB of websites. That is, the time it takes for a user from a specific location to get thefirst byte loaded from your website.

What is TTFB Test – Geekflare

GeekFlare is an online platform that allows you to measure the TTFB of any website in one click.  It is actually a collection of tools intended primarily for webmasters to help them test technical issues on websites.  These issues are related to DNS, TTFB metric, SEO, network, and site security, among others. When running a test, GeekFlare provides real-time results on your website’s TTFB measurement from 3 different locations. Which is useful for getting a quick overview of how your site is performing around the world. And for that, you just have to enter the URL of the site whose TTFB you want to measure and then with one click launch the test.

GeekFlare: How to use the tool to measure your TTFB? 

Using GeekFlare to test your website’s TTFB measurement is very simple. 

• To get started, go to the GeekFlare home page then search for “FFTB Test”
• Or click on this link to go directly to the GeekFlare – FFTB Test 
• Then simply enter the address of the website you want to test and click the “Run Test” button.  

In the screenshot below, we can see that the tested page records an excellent 30ms TTFB measurement from London (UK) as the fastest TTFB measurement.  Then, GeekFlare also measured the site’s TTFB in other parts of the world such as New York (USA) and Bangalore (India) where the site records 40ms and 112ms respectively.  The TTFB values ​​obtained in New York and Bangalore are rather within the standard norms. But with some provisions, the site can manage to improve them to achieve better performance and offer visitors located in these areas to enjoy a better user experience.  Source: WP Astra After the results of the FFTB test, GeekFlare also offers suggestions in the footer to put into practice to optimize the loading of the tested page.  On your left, you have results sorted by color to help you have a glance of the performance status of your page: 

• GREEN to mean that everything is fine 
• YELLOW to mean that performance can be further improved 
• And RED to mean that you must make changes to improve the performance of the page.

Additional Resources 

What is TTFB?

TTFB (time to first byte) is a metric that determines how long the browser should wait before the server sends its first data. And the slower this data loads, the longer your page will take to display. Source: Web.dev Put simply , a website with a high TTFB is more responsive to user requests, while a low TTFB means users have to wait a while before they can interact with your site.

How does the TTFB work? 

To understand how the TTFB works, you have to consider 3 different steps.  The time it takes you to complete each of these 3 steps is what constitutes your TTFB: 

1. Sending an HTTP request to the server

The measurement of a website’s TTFB begins as soon as a user requests a HTTP request. The client (browser) forwards this request to the website server. The time that this request will take to reach the server varies depending on several factors including: 

• The speed of the user’s network 
• The interruption of the connection
• The distance between the server and the user’s geographical position and the initial position of the page Requested 

These factors influence the latency between the time the request is sent and the time it reaches the server. 

2. The server processing the request

Once the request has reached the server, the latter must process it and return a corresponding response.  For this, the server initiates another process which will consist of requesting a database, executing web scripts, interacting with other systems and performing certain important tasks. 

3. Sending the response from the server to the client (browser) 

After all requests have been processed, the server must send a response back to the client.  And there, the network speed of the server and the Internet connection of the user are two important factors in determining the time it takes to send this response.  Here is a visual representation that correctly illustrates this process:  Source: Gcorelabs 

Why is the TTFB important?

TTFB (time to first byte) is not to be confused with the loading time or speed of a website.  This is a metric used to measure how responsive a site is when requested by a user.  When you learn that a 2-second delay in the loading speed of a web page can increase its bounce rate by up to 103%, you realize the importance of the TTFB metric.  When people try to get to your site and receive the first byte of their query as quickly as possible, it will significantly reduce your bounce rate.  The benefit of a good TTFB metric is that you convince users that the page they are trying to access is indeed valid and will load quickly. This will prevent them from closing their session while their request is being processed. 

How to calculate the TTFB of your website? 

One of the easiest and at the same time reliable methods is to measure the TTFB metric of a website and use a TTFB test tool.  GeekFlare – TTFB Test is undoubtedly one of the best tools you will find on the market to evaluate the TTFB of your site in a few clicks.