Free Website Load Test with Load Impact

For all those people who thought that generating load from across the internet was inconceivable, LoadImpact.com has a different story to tell. Load Impact is a website that allows you to load test or stress test that your site can handle with only a “few mouse clicks”.

With Google’s new algorithm penalizing slow loading website this could be a good resource to explore. With more and more websites looking for resources to analyze the speed of their pages load impact’s load testing and page analyzing tool could be of immense help.

Load Impact’s Page Analyzer Tool:

The Page Analyzer Tool is very simple to use all you need to do is type in the URL of the page and it throw up an image that gives you download details on each file ( images, scripts etc.) size present on the page.

The advantage of the Page Analyzer tool is that it gives you an indication of files and images that are heavy on the tested page so that you can immediately take action to reduce the size.

The below image gives an indication of the file size for WebTrafficROI, the large size files shown in the image are banners and images on the page which I need to reduce to make it faster and lighter to load.

Website Test:
You can run a website to check the load test and the speed of your website based on the number of concurrent users. The below image shows the speed of WebTrafficROI based on the number of concurrent users or clients.

As per Load Impact’s load tests the load time of the blog is about 1.56 seconds with 10 concurrent users and 1.42 seconds with 50 users.

Test can also be scheduled at a specific dated which when schedules run automatically to show you the load testing response.

Types of Load Tests:
It offers four service levels in all ( light, basic, professional and advanced ). Light load test is the lowest-capable load generating service and is free. Pricing varies per month with varying number of users, differences in what can and cannot be configured in any given test and varying result and configuration management. The site allows you to see all configuration options provided you are using the right version, otherwise the options are not enabled for modifications.

While creating a load testing website, you have two basic options: basic and advanced. The only requirement for the basic one is the page you want to test. Load Impact supports both HTTP and HTTPS. It can also handle sites requiring HTTP Basic Auth. Here after, it uses defaults. The Advanced setting offers a little more control in the Light version allowing you to analyze the pages and then edit the ‘load script’ accordingly.

A lot can be done with the script to alter the behavior of the client and then customize it to almost match the behavior of the “real visitors”. The script format allows one to control the simultaneous connections that can be accessed to copy the behavior of the real web browser. In the more advanced versions you can take help of a recorder to chalk out more complex scripts.

Check out Load Impact and let me know how much time it took for your site to load.