If you want your website to be excellent and work fast, you’re lucky. There’s a free tool you can add to Google Chrome that will help you check how well your site works. This tool will also show you ways to improve your site and make it even better. When it comes to websites, if your site is slow, people will leave for a faster one. So, let’s talk about how this tool can help you.
What is a Lighthouse?
Lighthouse is a free tool that you can add to Chrome. It is a special tool that helps you improve your website. It is light and easy to use. It tells you how to make your site faster and better. If you follow the steps it gives you, your website will get faster, and people will like it more.
You can use it on any device, but it works best on a desktop. When you use it, it will show you how well your website is performing and offer tips to improve it.
Check Your Competitors
Lighthouse isn’t just for your website. You can use it on any website you want. This is useful because it shows how your competitors’ websites are performing. When you check their site, you can see where they are doing well and where they need to improve. This will help you beat them.
You can download the report for any site and save it in a file for later review. This way, you can compare your website with others and find ways to improve.
What Does Lighthouse Check?
Lighthouse checks four essential things on your website:
- Performance
- Accessibility
- Best Practices
- SEO
Each of these gets a score from 0 to 100. This score shows you what you need to fix to make your website better.
1. Performance
Performance is critical. If your website is slow, people will leave. Lighthouse checks things like:
- First Contentful Paint (FCP): How long it takes for the first text or image to show up.
- Time to Interactive (TTI): How long it takes for the page to be ready to use.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How long it takes for the biggest thing on the page to load.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): How stable your page is while loading.
Improving these things will make your website faster and better.
2. Accessibility
Accessibility ensures that everyone can use your website, including people with disabilities. Lighthouse checks things like:
- Contrast: Is the text easy to read on the background?
- Navigation: Is it easy for people to move around your site?
- Labels: Are the buttons and links easy to understand?
These small things help make your site better for everyone.
3. Best Practices
Lighthouse checks if your website follows the best rules for websites. This includes:
- HTTPS: Make sure your site is safe to use.
- No pop-ups: Don’t ask for things like location or permission when the site loads.
- Correct Image Size: Make sure your images look right on the page.
These rules make your website safer and easier to use.
4. SEO
SEO helps people find your website on search engines like Google. Lighthouse checks things like:
- Meta Descriptions: Ensure every page has a strong description.
- Crawlability: Ensure search engines can crawl all your pages.
- Alt Text for Images: Ensure all images include descriptions.
Following these tips helps people find your site on Google.
Improving Your Scores
When you look at your Lighthouse score, you’ll see numbers between 0 and 49 (foul), 50 and 89 (okay), and 90 and 100 (good). You want your scores to be as high as possible.
Conclusion
Lighthouse is a small and helpful tool. It will help you make your website better by showing you where to improve. It is free and easy to use. If you want your website to be fast, safe, and easy to use, you should try Lighthouse. Just follow the steps it gives you, and your website will be much better.
