Website performance is affected by many different factors, such as network conditions, load on the server, activities on the browser and many other variable factors. As these factors vary dynamically web performance metrics can fluctuate considerably. This is especially true of network conditions which for smartphone users download speed can vary considerably from being a very fast 40+ Mbps to a very slow 2 Mbps connection.
Download speed is measured as the number of bytes per second that is transferred from the internet to an end-user device, and in this.....
What is Web Performance Engineering
Understanding how to speed up your website to improve customer experience is now a defined skill. Welcome to web performance engineering.
The importance of how fast the company web site performs has risen substantially in recent years as business executives recognize how significant a faster web sites can contribute to overall business performance, especially in online retail and eCommerce.
This trend has seen an increase in software and service vendors in the web performance market together with the emergence of a new digital skill set; Web Performance Engineering.
Web performance engineering is both a complex and diverse subject and in this article we look to identify some of t.....
A Decade of Web Performance
2020 is not only a new year but also the start of a new decade so in this article we take a look at how some industry-accepted web performance best practices have been impacted by the technology advances of the past ten years.
In the beginning
For many, the origins of web performance began with Steve Souders when he wrote his books High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web sites over 10 years ago.
In his work he developed 14 rules, listed below, that when applied should speed up the loading of web pages and th.....
Using Web Performance to Maximize SEO
In the continual search for SEO benefits such as improved conversion rates, page views and search engine rankings, web performance optimization provides some invaluable extra ammunition.
The origins of web performance in SEO
Back in April 2010 Google announced the inclusion of Site Speed as a new signal in their search ranking algorithms. This new signal was introduced to reflect how quickly a website could respond to web requests. At the time Google stated that it had a low relevance as a ranking factor but since then site speed and web performance have begun to play a much more important role as a differentiation not only in improving user experience but also as a important factor for suc.....
The Performance Load Test Process
Performance load testing is vital to verifying that business outcomes can be achieved for online services. This article discusses a repeatable best practice approach to achieving this.
Following the performance load test process improves the accuracy and confidence of results together with objectivity of lessons that can be learned when conducting performance load testing on your websites and applications.
Performance load testing (load testing) is an important and integral component of the development and maintenance of a website or web application (website).
Its objective is to ensure that the key performance-based business criteria of the website and its environment platform can be achieved and benchmarks for futur.....
Optimizing Optimizely Part 2 Optimizing for Performance
In Part 2 we continue our investigation on how to improve web performance of the client-side Optimizely Web digital experience platform. Building on the discussion in Part 1 on its impact on the critical render path in this article we look at other key influences on web performance.
Background
In Optimizing Optimizely Part 1 we uncovered how the implementation of the snippet impacts on customer experience and discussed some best practices covering how to implement the Optimizely snippet. In this article we take a look at how to optimize further to gain improved web performance for client-side in-browser implementations.
Sizing the Optimizely snippet
.....Optimizing Optimizely Part 1 Implementing the Snippet
As a foremost digital experience platform, Optimizely is relied on by organisations world-wide, yet it’s impact upon web performance is often overlooked. Here we take a look at how to resolve this.
As an important tool in the Digital Manager’s toolkit, digital experimentation platforms deliver considerable business benefits but often at the expense of faster loading web pages. In this multi-part article we take a look at some of the inhibitors to web performance that come with these platforms and how you may potentially reduce their impact on customer experience.
Background
In the search for excellent customer experience, digital experimentation tools providing A/B testing and multi-variate testing (MVT), are importa.....
Why Web Performance Matters
Not understanding why web performance matters can be costly to your business. Here we discuss why and what you can do about it.
Everyone wants the best experience possible when accessing, browsing and buying products and services online and an important aspect of this is ensuring your online service is fast. This discussion is for Business, IT and Digital stakeholders and highlights some of the reasons why this is important. Ignore it at your own cost!!
If you are Lewis Hamilton on the front row of the grid in a Formula 1 (F1) race, he is not thinking about how good his car looks, only one thing is in his mind; Performance. He is concerned about the performance of his competitors and.....
Fast Websites on Slow Networks
A look at how cellular network speed really can affect website performance.
Time is Money
In 1748 Benjamin Franklin wrote in an essay titled Advice to a Young Tradesman, Time is Money. This maxim was as relevant then as it is now as we apply pressure on our web development teams to deliver not only high functionality websites but also ever faster websites. To achieve this developers are implementing proven best practices, such as image compression, content delivery networks and techniques to avoid render blocking to meet an almost insatiable demand for fast loading content to improve the user experience. &nb.....
The Performance Implications Of Web Security
Over the past few years all of the browser vendors have substantially enhanced the surety of their product and with it the security of the internet. This has led to a much wider adoption of the encrypted hypertext transport protocol HTTPS, and browser will now mark websites as ‘not secure’, especially when a form, for example a login or credit card details, is requested.
Specifically, pages that included forms where login credentials or credit card details could be entered would be labelled as not secure.
This approach makes p.....