In the summer of 2020, the website platform Wix, with which we implement all of our brand design and website design projects, carried out an extensive performance update to make every Wix website faster - on desktop, tablet and mobile.
Ultimately, the loading speed (page speed) plays a significant role in the Google ranking of a website. All of this happened in the background at no extra cost and without manual intervention by Wix users and Wix partners like us.
The goal: Making every Wix website load faster
Wix used to have a problem in the past - or rather, numerous page speed test tools used to have a problem with Wix. The reason: most page speed tools cannot properly read the Ajax technology on which Wix was based and could therefore not correctly calculate the loading time. Therefore it led to incorrect test results. We were informed of this by one of the leading providers of website analysis tools.
That might also be a reason why Wix offers its own page speed tool called Wix Turbo. You can see the massive differences in the page speed test times below in our test results.
What did Wix do in particular?
As part of the major performance update in summer 2020, Wix massively reduced the amount of code that is loaded on end devices and has put more code on its own high-speed servers instead ever since.
In addition, Wix also worked on code-based internal topics in order to be able to transport correct test results to the numerous analysis tools out there.
Page speed of a Wix website - the hard facts
But: How good was the Wix performance update really? We wanted to know the facts and tested some of our customers' websites with four different page speed analysis tools before and after the performance update - specifically on July 13, 2020 and February 19, 2021.
The results:
VinAvventura on July 13, 2020:
Google Page Speed Test (= a value between 0 and 100; the higher the value, the faster the loading time): 33 desktop, 13 mobile
webpagetest.org ("fully loaded time"): 11.68 seconds
GTmetrix: 23.8 seconds
Wix Turbo ("visitor interaction within"): 4.4 seconds
VinAvventura on February 19, 2021:
Google Page Speed Test: 79 desktop, 46 mobile / 240 % and 354 % faster
webpagetest.org: 6.08 seconds / 48 % faster
GTmetrix: 3.2 seconds / 87 % faster
Wix Turbo: 1.8 seconds / 56 % faster
(No significant changes were made on the website.)
Holzbau Wegscheider on July 13, 2020:
Google Page Speed Test: 43 desktop, 16 mobile
webpagetest.org: 14.14 seconds
GTmetrix: 19.4 seconds
Wix Turbo: 3.0 seconds
Holzbau Wegscheider on February 19, 2021:
Google Page Speed Test: 85 desktop, 42 mobile / 198 % and 263 % faster
webpagetest.org: 6.50 seconds / 46 % faster
GTmetrix: 2.3 seconds / 88 % faster
Wix Turbo: 1.4 seconds / 53 % faster
(No significant changes were made on the website.)
Ingenieurbüro Genitheim on July 13, 2020:
Google Page Speed Test: 48 desktop, 21 mobile
webpagetest.org: 8.28 seconds
GTmetrix: 8.6 seconds
Wix Turbo: 2.3 seconds
Ingenieurbüro Genitheim on February 19, 2021:
Google Page Speed Test: 86 desktop, 48 mobile / 79 % and 129 % faster
webpagetest.org: 5.39 seconds / 35 % faster
GTmetrix: 3.8 seconds / 56 % faster
Wix Turbo: 1.1 seconds / 52 % faster
(No significant changes were made on the website.)
Blickpunkt LKW & BUS on July 13, 2020:
Google Page Speed Test: 38 desktop, 16 mobile
webpagetest.org: 10.99 seconds
GTmetrix: 14.5 seconds
Wix Turbo: 3.8 seconds
Blickpunkt LKW & BUS on February 19, 2021:
Google Page Speed Test: 59 desktop, 20 mobile / 55 % and 25 % faster
webpagetest.org: 8.43 seconds / 23 % faster
GTmetrix: 10.0 seconds / 31 % faster
Wix Turbo: 2.6 seconds / 65 % faster
(Between the two testing times, an online shop and a subscription function including a payment system were implemented. Despite these normally slowing elements, the loading speed was greatly increased.)
Urlaub Maxnhager on July 13, 2020:
Google Page Speed Test: 44 desktop, 18 mobile
webpagetest.org: 10.19 seconds
GTmetrix: 8.9 seconds
Wix Turbo: 2.1 seconds
Urlaub Maxnhager on February 19, 2021:
Google Page Speed Test: 82 desktop, 56 mobile / 86 % and 211 % faster
webpagetest.org: 3.91 seconds / 62 % faster
GTmetrix: 2.5 seconds / 72 % faster
Wix Turbo: 2.0 seconds / 5 % faster
(Between the two testing times, an image gallery was optimized and new text elements and design elements were added.)
Conclusion
The results are clear: Wix has done a very good job here and could really massively speed up their websites - without extra costs and effort, fully automatically in the background. Well done!