Many webmasters take various steps in order to optimize their website. However, there is no way to verify that specific techniques are working if there is no way to measure the performance of a site. The best way to measure the performance is to sue software specifically designed for this purpose. One popular software is Google Analytics, I am not sure if it is the best on the market, but it is very popular because Google is behind it. You can use whatever software you want, but it is simply important to monitors the performance of your site. Whenever you make some changes, make sure to check out how they affect your site.