Automated Web Performance Testing with Lighthouse

Slow websites frustrate users and hurt search engine rankings, making consistent performance tracking vital for modern web development. Manual audits are time-consuming, but automating these checks ensures your site remains fast with every update. This text-based course guides you through the process of programmatically running performance audits. You will transition from understanding basic speed metrics to writing automated scripts that launch headless browsers, run audits, and parse performance data for actionable insights. What you will learn: Understand core web performance metrics, including First Contentful Paint (FCP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS); Configure and launch headless Chrome programmatically using Node.js; Run automated Lighthouse audits directly from your command-line scripts; Extract and analyze performance JSON reports to identify speed bottlenecks; Implement automated checks to monitor performance regressions during development. You will start with the foundational concepts of web performance and key metrics before moving on to setting up your Node.js environment. From there, you will read through step-by-step scripting guides, examine code snippets, and complete written exercises to build your own custom performance automation tool. This course is designed for beginner developers and QA engineers looking to automate speed testing, with no prior automation experience required. Start building your automated performance testing pipeline today.