LoadForge integrates Google Lighthouse to provide comprehensive technical performance analysis for your website. This automated tool evaluates your site across four key dimensions: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO.

About Lighthouse

Google Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. It performs audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, SEO, and more. LoadForge automatically runs Lighthouse audits on your site to provide actionable insights.

Lighthouse Performance Dashboard

Key Dimensions

Performance Score

The Performance score reflects how quickly your page loads and becomes interactive for users.

Key metrics include:

  • First Contentful Paint: Time until the first content is displayed
  • Speed Index: How quickly content is visually displayed
  • Largest Contentful Paint: Time until the largest content element is visible
  • Time to Interactive: When the page becomes fully interactive
  • Total Blocking Time: Sum of time periods blocking user interaction
  • Cumulative Layout Shift: Unexpected layout shifts during page load

Accessibility Score

The Accessibility score measures how accessible your website is to users with disabilities.

Key aspects evaluated:

  • Color contrast: Ensuring text is readable against backgrounds
  • ARIA attributes: Proper implementation of accessibility attributes
  • Keyboard navigation: Ability to navigate using only a keyboard
  • Alt text: Presence of alternative text for images
  • Heading structure: Logical organization of content

Best Practices Score

The Best Practices score evaluates your site’s adherence to modern web development standards.

Areas assessed include:

  • HTTPS usage: Secure connection implementation
  • Browser errors: Console error detection
  • Image aspect ratios: Proper image display
  • Deprecated APIs: Use of outdated web technologies
  • User-friendly features: Implementation of expected behaviors

SEO Score

The SEO score measures how well your site is optimized for search engine results.

Factors considered:

  • Meta tags: Proper implementation of title and description
  • Crawlability: Whether search engines can properly index your content
  • Mobile-friendly: Adaptation to mobile devices
  • Structured data: Implementation of schema markup
  • Link quality: Proper functioning of internal and external links

Sub-Page Analysis

LoadForge doesn’t just analyze your homepage—it evaluates key sub-pages across your site to provide a comprehensive view of performance across different sections:

  • Landing pages: Critical for first impressions and conversions
  • Product pages: Essential for e-commerce sites
  • Blog posts: Important for content marketing
  • Contact/form pages: Critical for user engagement

Sub-Page Performance Comparison

Historical Tracking

LoadForge stores Lighthouse results over time, allowing you to:

  • Track performance improvements after optimization efforts
  • Identify regressions after site updates
  • Monitor the impact of content or design changes
  • Establish performance benchmarks for your site

Actionable Recommendations

For each dimension, LoadForge provides specific, actionable recommendations to improve your scores:

Impact on LoadForge Score

Lighthouse metrics account for 30% of your overall LoadForge Score, making them a critical component of your site’s performance rating.