Testing your website before it goes live is an important task to ensure the site’s success and longevity. Here are three tools that I found helpful in the designing process. If you are creating a site for a client, it is important that the final product can perform well.
W3C Validator – This is a free tool that checks the validity of your CSS and HTML files. It makes sure you don’t have missing closing tags or any other elements that are left behind. The tool provides you with suggestions on how to fix the errors.
Google Pagespeed Insights – Created by Google developers, this free tool checks your sites for things that may slow down your page load time. It even can provide you with optimized image files of your images.
Lighthouse – Another free tool created by Google developers, it audits your site for page speed issues, accessibility, and best practices. It is available on the Audits tab of the Chrome Devtools.
Regardless of the tool(s) that you decide to use, it’s important that they can help point out the common website problems of large image files, un-optimized code, caching and multiple HTTP requests. These issues slow your site and also contribute to poor website rankings.