Historical page load time monitoring using Drupal and WebPageTest

Studies show that page load times directly impact business revenue. Longer wait times result in higher bounce rates and negatively impact search engine rankings, leading to fewer customers. Performance monitoring tools can provide rich diagnostic data, helpful for identifying potential problems. Drupal can be used for aggregating this data over time to generate historical reports.

This session will introduce fundamental metrics of performance monitoring, such as time-to-first-byte, speed index and load time, and demonstrate how to visualize these metrics by using a waterfall view. We will walk through setting up Drupal to integrate with WebPageTest to create historical performance reports, useful for identifying overall trends and highlighting specific system changes that have impacted page load times, both positively and negatively. Real-life examples, of how these reports were used to make data-driven decisions for improving website performance, will be provided.