Not long ago, I reviewed the tools for testing website performance. In that I listed some well-known tools through which a beginner as well as an expert can test their website.
Last week, I got an opportunity to review another online tool for website testing. Yes, I am here with a review of DareBoost, a Web Performance and Quality Testing Tool.
Before starting, I would like to thank the CEO of DareBoost, Damien in providing me with a free Premium account for some days. The premium account helped me in analyzing and reviewing the product perfectly.
You may have come across with some other well-known website testing tools such as PingDom, Web Analyser, etc, and may have found them awesome. Another website testing tool is here and with a perfection to match the capabilities of fineness. Let us see what it actually has and what it provides to the users.
Around the web world, some people still don’t have an idea about the importance of faster loading of pages and the need of website testing tools. Especially when a user visits an ecommerce website, the developers and owner of these websites should really take care of the loading time. There is always a risk of losing your customer to another faster loading website.
Here are some statistics, that show the significance of fast loading pages:
- 8% of potential buyers cite extremely slow loading web pages as the primary reason for abandoning their purchase.
- Over 75% of online customers opted for a competitor’s site instead of suffering inordinate delays at peak traffic time.
- If page load time is 3 seconds or more, 57% of your website visitors will abandon your page.
- 75% of users exit within 4 seconds.
- When compared to business websites that load in 1 second, websites that load in 3 seconds experience a 50% higher bounce rate, 22% fewer page views, and, most significantly, 22% fewer conversions.
Keeping this as the topmost priority, the website has provided an apt stat on the Home Page itself. It says the following:
Additionally, Web Performance impacts are also briefly described on the website.
Have a look!
Let’s start with the review.
Test your website from another location
Let’s say you want to test your website from another location. What will you do? Surely, you will search for a tool which will give you a result on the basis of your required location.
I requested an Asian location and DareBoost notified of the same through an email, ”now your location is available”. That means now I can test my website from an Asian location and DareBoost can provide a new location according to your needs, as a paid option.
You can also request to analyze your website from another location by just filling the below given details:
Performance Metrics
As we all know Metrics is a system or standard of measurement. Here, an area for performance metrics is also defined which looks into the weight, number of requests and other things. As stated on the website,
The delay before reception of the first byte by the browser and the delay before the first paint of the browser, meaning the beginning of the page rendering.
These details are available with an access to the “Performance Timings”. Experts would surely get benefit from these metrics.
Note: For reviewing the tool, I’ll be testing linkedin.com for further analysis.
Monitoring: Weekly and daily digests
What if you wake up in the morning and find a glitch on your website, which is not notified to you from any other source. Generally, this is not a good thing if you’re a developer or a tester of the website. DareBoost has a solution for this. They will notify you of these kinds of issues:
We have detected some issues for your monitoring
Additionally, detailed report will also be sent daily.
Here is the sample of the email received, I kept the test name as Amit Test1:
They also sent a complete weekly report on the registered email. This includes the following:
- Average values of the last 7 days.
- Distribution of loading time.
- Alerts, etc.
- Furthermore, other details are provided by them on the dashboard.
Best Practice checks: Accessibility, W3C standards and others
For the first time when you’ll analyze a website, it will say “analyzing web page and checking best practices compliance”.
This is a feature which was not part of my previous review on 5 website testing tools. I should have included it. Here is an image showing the checks done under Best Practices:
Note: Only registered users have access to this feature.
It also checks whether the pages on your website matches the web standards or not. This is possible due to the HTML validation W3C and CSS validation W3C. The same is shown in the following image:
Test from mobile and desktop
Just change the DropDown (Desktop or Mobile) and analyze the page, here you can also change the browser options by selecting from Chrome or Mozilla.
Rewards
In its launch of less than 2 years, they’ve received the following 2 rewards:
- Ecommerce Award (technology category – Paris 2014).
- Crisalide numérique 2014 Jury and Audience Award in the category “usages of tomorrow”
Pricing
Avail a discount of 10% by using R-AMIT10 as the coupon code.
The Analysis
This is a general review and it may vary person to person.
Note: The images are taken from DareBoost website itself.
I have the following review for this product.
Status: Available
Launched: 2014
| Checking for multiple devices | Yes |
| Checking for multiple browsers | Yes |
| Accurate Reports | Yes |
| Timely delivery of reports | Yes (daily, weekly, etc.) |
| Request and approval of new location for testing the website at another location | DareBoost can provide a new location according to your needs, as a paid option. |
| Loading Time | The website loads the result at a pace equivalent to other web testing tools website |
| integrates the best practices of Yahoo YSlow? | Yes |
| Use Google Page Speed | Yes |
| W3C Validation | Yes |
| Accessibility check (Best Practices) | Yes |
| Dareboost website is responsive? | No |
I hope that DareBoost will grow apparently in coming years as they’ve almost all the features to test a website. In its initial year, they’ve provided some exceptionally awesome features for developers, testers and customers. Additionally, I also think the website should be responsive. As we all know, responsive websites are easier to access.