Lighthouse

Lighthouse is an open-source tool from Google that helps you evaluate the performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO-friendliness of your websites. With Lighthouse, you can generate detailed reports that give you insights into how you can improve your website to provide a better user experience and be better found on search engines.

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The tool analyses your website based on various criteria:

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- Power: Lighthouse assesses the load time of your website and makes recommendations to optimize performance, such as minimizing resources, caching files, and reducing render times.

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- Accessibility: It checks whether your website is barrier-free and makes recommendations to improve accessibility, such as using alt texts for images, using HTML tags correctly, and ensuring keyboard usability.

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- Best practices: Lighthouse checks whether your website follows best practices for web development and design and makes recommendations for compliance with standards, such as using secure connections (HTTPS), minimizing HTTP requests, and avoiding unused JavaScript.

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- SEO-friendliness: It evaluates the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website and makes recommendations for improving findability in search engines, such as using meaningful meta tags, optimizing images for search engines, and setting up an XML sitemap.

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- Command Line Interface (CLI): You can run Lighthouse from the command line to run automated tests and generate reports.

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- Integration with developer tools: Lighthouse is integrated with various developer tools, such as Google Chrome DevTools, to enable seamless use during the development process.

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- Configurable settings: You can adjust Lighthouse's audit parameters and reporting settings to address specific requirements and priorities for your websites.

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- Community and expandability: Lighthouse is an open-source platform, which means you can participate in development, and there are plenty of extensions and plugins to extend and customize its functionality.

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- Continuous Integration (CI): You can integrate Lighthouse into your continuous integration and continuous deployment process to run automated testing and ensure that changes to your website don't have a negative impact on performance.

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- Audits for specific technologies: Lighthouse provides specialized audits for specific technologies and frameworks, such as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), Angular, React, and more, to ensure that your application is following best practices for those technologies.

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- Support for various platforms: Lighthouse can be used not only for websites, but also for progressive web apps (PWAs), single-page applications (SPAs), and other web applications to ensure that they work optimally on various platforms and devices.

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- Accessibility audit: In addition to standard audits, Lighthouse also provides specialized accessibility audits to ensure that your website is accessible to all users, regardless of their abilities or limitations.

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Overall, Lighthouse is an extremely useful tool for web developers to check the quality of their websites and ensure that they meet the best standards. By using Lighthouse regularly, you can improve your website's performance, optimize the user experience, and ensure that it ranks well in search engines.

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After analysis, Lighthouse generates a detailed report that shows you which areas of your website can be optimized to improve performance and optimize the user experience. These recommendations can help you make your website more user-friendly, reduce loading time, and improve discoverability in search engines.

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By using Lighthouse regularly, you can ensure that your websites always meet the best standards and provide an optimal user experience. It is an essential tool for web developers and designers to review and improve the performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO-friendliness of their websites.

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Here's a detailed guide to using Lighthouse:

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1. Installing Lighthouse:

- Open your computer's command line

- Enter the command to install Lighthouse by typing npm install -g lighthouse and pressing Enter.

- Wait until the installation is complete

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2. Carrying out an audit:

- Navigate to the web page you want to check and make sure it loads.

- On the command line, enter lighthouse followed by the URL of your website, e.g. lighthouse https://www.example.com.

- Press enter to start the audit.

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3. Analysis of the report:

- After the audit is completed, a detailed report with the results is displayed.

- Review the various categories, such as performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO, to see how your website is doing.

- Read recommendations and suggestions for improvement to understand which areas need improvement.

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4. Optimizing the website:

- Use recommendations from the Lighthouse report to optimize your website

- Implement improvements such as minimizing resources, adding alt text to images, setting up HTTPS, and optimizing meta tags

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5. Perform a new audit:

- After you've made optimizations, run a Lighthouse audit again to see if your website's performance has improved.

- Compare the new report with the previous one to see if the changes you made have achieved the desired results.

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6. Conduct regular audits:

- Conduct Lighthouse audits regularly to ensure that your website always meets the best standards

- Set yourself a schedule, such as monthly or quarterly audits, to ensure that your website is continuously optimized.

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7. Use continuing education and resources:

- Use training resources and tutorials to learn more about the various aspects of website optimization

- Stay up to date with new developments and best practices to continuously improve your website.

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8. Integration into the development workflow:

- Integrate Lighthouse into your development workflow to run automated testing and ensure that changes to your website don't have a negative impact.

- Use continuous integration (CI) tools such as Jenkins, CircleCI, or GitHub Actions to automatically run Lighthouse tests whenever you change your code.

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9. Adjusting audit settings:

- Adjust Lighthouse's audit settings to address specific requirements and priorities for your website.

- You can select the audit categories you want to review and make additional configurations to get more accurate results.

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10. Extend Lighthouse with Plugins:

- Explore available plugins and extensions for Lighthouse to expand and customize its functionality.

- There are a variety of plugins for specific purposes, such as performance metrics, accessibility testing, and more.

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11. Team collaboration:

- Share the results of your Lighthouse audits with your team and discuss potential improvements

- Work together to implement optimizations and track progress to ensure that the website is continuously improved.

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12. Provision of training and training:

- Provide training and training for your team to ensure that everyone is familiar with using Lighthouse and can work effectively with it.

- Train your team in the various aspects of website optimization and show them how to interpret and implement Lighthouse results.

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13. Gather feedback and iteratively improve:

- Collect regular feedback from your team and other stakeholders about the effectiveness of Lighthouse audits and suggested improvements.

- Use this feedback to reconsider your approach and continuously improve the audit process and implementation of improvements.

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14. Documentation and recording of results:

- Document your Lighthouse audits and improvements you've made to keep track of progress and record key findings.

- Track your website's performance metrics over time to identify trends and measure the success of your optimization efforts.

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15. Sharing successes and best practices:

- Share your experiences and best practices using Lighthouse with other developers and the community to share knowledge and help others optimize their websites.

- Publish articles, blog posts, or presentations about your experiences with Lighthouse and the successes you've achieved to share your knowledge and inspire others.

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16. Continuous development and training:

- Stay up to date on new developments and updates related to Lighthouse and related technologies

- Participate regularly in training, conferences, or online courses to expand your knowledge and improve your Lighthouse skills.

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17. Updating guidelines and standards:

- Keep up to date with new developments and changes in web development guidelines and standards.

- Adjust your approach to using Lighthouse accordingly to ensure that your website always follows the latest best practices.

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18. Involving stakeholders and decision makers:

- Take the concerns and requirements of your stakeholders and decision makers seriously and incorporate them into your Lighthouse audits and optimization strategies.

- Communicate the benefits and results of Lighthouse audits clearly and convincingly to gain stakeholder understanding and support.

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19. Monitoring and troubleshooting:

- Implement a monitoring system to continuously monitor the performance and availability of your website

- Respond immediately to problems and errors identified during monitoring and make appropriate improvements to maintain the quality of your website.

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20. Provide feedback to the Lighthouse community:

- Actively participate in the Lighthouse community by submitting bug reports, making suggestions for improvements, or participating in discussions on forums and online communities.

- Share your experiences and insights with other members of the community to help develop and improve Lighthouse

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21. Data-based decision making:

- Use the collected data from your Lighthouse audits and other analysis tools to make informed decisions about optimization measures for your website.

- Base your decisions on quantitative data, such as performance metrics, accessibility checks, and SEO analytics, to make targeted improvements.

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22. Testing on various platforms and devices:

- Make sure that your website works optimally on different platforms and devices by performing Lighthouse audits on various browsers, operating systems, and devices.

- Take into account the different requirements and usage scenarios of your target group and optimize your website accordingly.

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23. Consideration of safety aspects:

- When optimizing your website, also pay attention to security aspects such as using secure connections (HTTPS), protecting sensitive data and avoiding security gaps.

- Conduct regular security audits to identify and fix potential vulnerabilities to ensure the security of your website

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24. Promote a continuous improvement culture:

- Create a culture of continuous improvement within your team by conducting regular feedback loops, retrospectives, and training.

- Encourage your team to contribute new ideas and suggestions for improvements to continuously improve the quality and performance of your website

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25. Adjusting the needs of users:

- Always keep an eye on your users' needs and expectations and optimize your website accordingly to ensure an optimal user experience.

- Conduct regular user research and usability testing to better understand and respond to your users' behavior and needs.

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26. Documentation and knowledge management:

- Record your Lighthouse audits and optimization strategies in well-structured documentation

- Document all tests performed, identified issues, and implemented optimizations to ensure comprehensive knowledge management.

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27. Regular review and update:

- Review your Lighthouse audits regularly and adjust your optimization strategies accordingly.

- Continuously update your website to incorporate new developments and technologies and ensure that it always follows the latest best practices.

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28. Get feedback from external experts:

- Get regular feedback from external experts, such as web developers, UX designers, or SEO specialists.

- Use their expertise and perspectives to generate new ideas and identify optimization opportunities that you may have missed.

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29. Continuous training and continuing education:

- Invest in continuous training and education for your team to ensure they're familiar with the latest developments and technologies.

- Provide training, workshops, and training materials to continuously improve your team's expertise and capabilities.

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30. Celebrate successes and milestones:

- Recognize the successes and progress your team has made in optimizing your website

- Celebrate milestones and successes you've achieved to maintain your team's commitment and motivation and recognize the importance of their work.

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By consistently applying these steps, you can make the most of Lighthouse to continuously optimize your website and ensure that it meets the highest standards of performance, accessibility, best practices, security, and user experience.

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Our lighthouse expert tip:

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Lighthouse is a very comprehensive analysis tool. If you need professional assistance analyzing your website, feel free to contact us.

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We have been working with Lighthouse for many years and have optimized numerous of our clients' websites through the analysis and subsequent implementation and elimination of error reports.

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If your website has performance problems and loads too long or receives poor results in the Core Web Vitals, we are able to optimize your website so that it achieves significantly better results thanks to our extensive expertise. This also improves your website's ranking on Google.

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Feel free to ask us to optimize the performance of your website.

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