Why is it crucial to monitor the environmental impact of a URL?

Posted on by Clément DERON
Reading Time: 4 minutes

The more frequently a URL is viewed, the more essential it is to reduce its digital impact. A simple measurement makes it possible to check and react to changes made on the page: modifications linked to the graphic charter, events (e-commerce sites during sales periods) or even technical modifications. All of these changes can have a big impact on the sobriety level of a web page.

When to integrate the digital sobriety measurement of a URL?

These measurements can be integrated as part of daily monitoring on any page. “Dynamic” pages whose content changes regularly, such as e-commerce home pages or press information sites, are crucial to monitor. Even less “dynamic” pages can also be targeted: updating a CDN library can, for example, impact this type of site. In this case, the measurement will make it possible to ensure that the new skin of the page does not harm the level of sobriety of the website: an image too heavy for a banner can be easily spotted.

Measurement can also be used during the development phase. To test choices before going into production or to correct excessively impactful changes very early. It is often difficult to change the choice of a technology or an implementation once a site goes into production. Measuring a URL during the development phase allows you to test different options early on and see which one corresponds best by taking into account digital sobriety as one of the criteria.

Example of daily monitoring of a web page

How to measure the digital sobriety of a URL?

There are several options available to you at Greenspector to measure a URL.

A first tool allows us to perform a simple first measurement of a URL and obtain rapid observations: the Benchmark tool based on standardized tests.

To go further, we can measure a complete user journey on a website using App Scan. This kind of measurement represents the full path on a website or mobile application, such as a purchase journey or the completion of a bank transfer. It helps identify areas to focus on to achieve significant improvement. As part of an App Scan, the measurement of a URL is also possible via an automated route which will allow obtaining specific metrics beyond the benchmark.

URL measurement vs Benchmark

Here are the different steps measured during a URL measurement vs with the Benchmark tool:

Measured steps

  • Loading without cache
  • Pause after launching without cache
  • Pause on the web without cache
  • Scroll on the web
  • Pause on the web after scroll
  • Loading with cache
  • Pause on the web with cache
  • Background app metering

Benchmark

URL Measurement

The URL metric contains more steps than the benchmark we will come back to that. Unlike the benchmark, the URL measurement is more precise on the loadings. The measured duration being the actual loading time, unlike the benchmark tool which performs the measurements over a fixed period of 20 seconds. Another difference is that the URL measurement manages the tabs present on the page, in particular those concerning cookies, which the benchmark tool does not do.

Enfin, la mesure URL par Greenspector permet de réaliser des mesures sur d’autres navigateurs que GFinally, the URL measurement by Greenspector makes it possible to carry out measurements on browsers other than Google Chrome. The benchmark tool is limited to the latter browser, but our GDSL expertise allows us to offer another browser such as Firefox to go even further.

The steps of a URL measurement

  • Loading without cache: This is the loading of the URL having previously cleared the cache and deleted all cookies. This step measures the loading of the web page when a user goes to it without a cache. It is essential for URLs with a lot of unique visits.
  • Pause after loading without cache: Measuring a short pause after loading allows you to recover data exchanges and other operations that are still taking place when your page is displayed. The ideal, of course, is to have none of that. Otherwise, it allows us to make observations and suggest ways to eliminate or reduce these treatments.
  • Pause on a page without cache: It represents the action of a user reading the content. No movement on the screen. The idea of ​​this step is to measure the impact of the continuous display of the page.
  • Scroll on the page: Scroll to the bottom of the page to make observations on the treatments during the scroll. Here we can make observations on the possible data exchanges (pagination, image download, advertising) as well as the associated fluidity.
  • Pause on the page after scrolling: Measure of pause after scrolling allowing to observe processes that continue after the end of user interactions.
  • Loading with cache: Measurement of the loading of the URL with the cache of previous interactions (loading, scroll). This step allows you to see the impact of caching on the site. This is important for pages that will be visited a large number of times by known visitors, such as a website home page.
  • Pause on the page with cache: The measure of pause on the page allowing to see if despite the cache there are treatments after loading.

Thanks to our tools and our expertise, we can offer reliable and relevant measurements on a URL. Whether it is a simple measurement allowing initial findings using our benchmark tool or a more in-depth measurement with our GDSL language. This regular URL monitoring gradually improves the sobriety level of its website. This approach compared to other approaches commonly used in the web (Analysis only of the loading of the page with Lighthouse or others …), brings more finesse to the knowledge of the consumption of the page.