If you are having trouble accessing your website, how can you tell if it is just something that is wrong with your Internet connection or there is a real problem that could be affecting your customers and orders.

Here are a few ways you can test your website's performance to check where problems are occuring. 

External speed testing sites - Australia

If you're an Australian business, there are a number of performance testing tools you have at your disposal. One really useful site is called Website Pulse. This site tests the time it takes to connect to your webserver and download the HTML code for your home page. You can choose three different testing locations, Brisbane Australia, Munich Germany and Seattle USA. 

External speed testing sites - USA and other countries (for international traffic)

If you are measuring international traffic or want an individual breakdown of page element load times, one really useful site you can visit is the Octagate SiteTimer.  This tool shows you each part of the home page as it loads so you can troubleshoot if you have one particular image or Javascript that is causing a problem.  Other sites like this include Pingdom. This tool also includes a trace route tool that makes a record of the path data travels from your webserver to your computer and any timing problems along the way.

Run multiple tests to be sure

It is a good idea to run your tests with different testing tools as each will run from a different host in a different location. If all tests are coming back with similar results, it will give you a good picture of whether the problem you are having is isolated to one computer or one region, or affects the whole Internet.

Tip: Try running these tools against your competitor's websites too and compare the results.