Building on our discussion of how important a functional web presence is, I present WebPageTest.org. You simply enter a URL, and the site returns a huge amount of performance metrics that lets you pinpoint any problems in the performance of your site.

For example, I ran a test against is301 (I’ll assume you know that’s the site you’re on). I first ran the test in FireFox with a bunch of tabs open, and it returned predictable results. I know it can take a while for the page to begin the load process, although I was surprised by the First Byte time, which indicates the delay between you as the user making the request for a web page and the browser receiving the first byte of that page. There are many things that can impact that result, from network conditions to the quality of the hosting provider. That’s illustrated by the two tests below, one from FireFox and one from Chrome, the reasons for the First Byte time are clearly contradictory, indicating the fickle nature of the test.