VIDEO: Everything you wanted to know about web performance but were afraid to ask, part 2

30 Jun 2010

5 Comments

Yesterday, Network World posted part 1 of our whiteboard session where I talked about the performance problems faced by today’s websites: browser differentiation, web page complexity and size, and user expectations.

In part 2, I talk about the solution landscape, including CDNs and ADCs, and I explain why these don’t address all the opportunities for site optimization:

I also talk about how the Strangeloop Site Optimizer takes advantage of some unique optimization opportunities. I don’t normally use this blog to flog product, but I get a lot of requests to explain how exactly Site Optimizer works. If you’re wondering, this is the chance to find out.

Related posts:

By: Josh Bixby Category: Standards and benchmarks Tags: , , , , , , ,

VIDEO: Everything you wanted to know about web performance but were afraid to ask, part 1

29 Jun 2010

10 Comments

Some things you can’t explain with just words. That’s why, when Network World invited me to whiteboard the issues with web performance, I jumped at the chance.

In this video, I illustrate the performance problems in the current web landscape — from server time and round trips to browser differentiation and user expectations.

(See part 2 here.)

Related posts:

By: Josh Bixby Category: Standards and benchmarks Tags: , , , , ,

Friday Four: Velocity Wrap-Up Edition

25 Jun 2010

1 Comment

What a week. Velocity was absolutely amazing. If you weren’t able to attend, definitely consider it for next year. Lots of great takeaways and food for thought, which I’ll be posting about in the weeks to come.

Till then, here are the four most popular links (according to Topsy) mentioned on Twitter with the “velocityconf” hashtag over the past few days:

Tim O’Reilly’s Keynote
The crowd, not surprisingly, loves Tim, and for good reason. In his keynote, he reminds us of Velocity co-chair Jesse Robbins’ inspiring words, “The web is changing the way we live and touches every person alive. As more and more people depend on the web, they depend on us. Web Operations is work that matters.”

Steve Souders: Zen and the Art of Web Performance
I’m kind of proud of this little meme. After Tim referred to Steve’s blog post, Strangeloop found the link and posted it on Twitter. It went mini-viral and got retweeted like crazy. For good reason. Those before-and-after photos of Steve’s retaining wall are pretty compelling.

Velocity Speaker Slides and Videos
No surprise here. Velocity is posting the presentations and speaker videos as fast as they come in, and people want to see them.

Psychology of Performance
One of the most talked about sessions at Velocity was Stoyan Stefanov’s presentation on the human factors surrounding perceived and actual speed. Interesting fact: People perceive sites with white backgrounds to be faster, which is good, but they also have higher performance expectations of white sites. (Guess what color the newly launched Strangeloop site is?)

By: Josh Bixby Category: Ecommerce Tags: , , , ,

Performance Impact, Part Two: More findings from the front lines of website acceleration

23 Jun 2010

6 Comments

Here’s the slide deck from my Velocity presentation earlier today, where I presented case studies showing the relationship between site speed and business metrics. For those of you who want to get straight to the side-by-side performance videos, I’ve posted these as separate links below.

Velocity 2010: Performance Impact, Part Two: More Findings from the Front Lines of Web Acceleration

View more presentations from Strangeloop.

Side-by-side performance videos:

Google: 400ms speed improvement
Bing: 2sec speed improvement
Shopzilla: 5sec speed improvement

As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at joshua@webperformancetoday.com.

Related posts:

By: Josh Bixby Category: Case studies, Ecommerce Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Performance Metrics Project: Would you participate?

23 Jun 2010

0 Comment

Today at Velocity (1:00pm in Ballroom AB), I’ll be presenting important data that Strangeloop has gathered from our customers. It shows some interesting trends that correlate performance and key business metrics.

Here’s a sneak peek at one of my slides:

Web Performance Optimization: How landing page speed affects conversion rate

Customers who use our device or our service can easily opt-in to supply their performance and metrics data to help us gather exactly this kind of information. Most do, which is incredibly generous of them.

The cool thing is that it’s easy for anyone to contribute data, not just Strangeloop customers. All you have to do is insert some Javascript code into your page, the same way you do for things like Google Analytics.

Which leads me to my question:

Would you consider participating in an open project wherein contributors shared their performance and metrics data in order to gather and analyze realtime data from real websites? Would your organization? Is such a project even worthwhile? I’m keen on this idea, and I’m working to garner universal support within Strangeloop. However, opening this kind of data-gathering up to a broader audience will take time and effort. In your opinion, is it worth it?

Please give me your feedback and level of interest in the comments or by email: joshua@webperformancetoday.com.

Related posts:

By: Josh Bixby Category: Research Tags: , , ,
1 2 3