What is Real User Measurements data (RUM)?
RUM means data that is being provided directly by the real visitors of your website. To most website owners, this data is significantly more important than synthetic benchmarks and tests, since it provides a clear view of what their own visitors experience as they browse the site.
What it means
RUM data:
- Is reported by desktop and mobile devices as they visit your website
- Differs from synthetic tests since the the real user experience is being reported
- Takes into effect real world factors like the internet connection speed of the visitor
What Pixy reports
Pixy randomly asks the browsers of your visitors to report the difference in image weight before and after optimization. This process is invisible to the visitor. The data is reported directly to your Pixy dashboard, and is not shared with anyone, including the developers of Pixy. Its also completely anonymous. In the first 30 minutes after Pixy is activated on your website, it will randomly ask roughly 1 of every 2 visitors that come to your website about their experience. After it collects some metrics, it will keep asking roughly 1 in 10 visitors.
Why it matters
Pixy’s RUM data allows you to:
- Easily find out how Pixy is working for your website
- Verify impact on your own users experience
- Provide a clear overview of website performance when paired with the PageSpeed Insights score
How to read the data
Pixy RUM data uses multipliers (eg. 2x) to report image optimization impact:
- For example, 2x speedup means that an image has lost half of its weight after optimization and is now twice lighter
- Mobile and desktop images are often different as WordPress automatically serves resized images to mobile devices. Therefore mobile and desktop data may differ.