Define the metrics to measure the effectiveness of your Web Performance Optimization project
By Mauricio Freitas, in
Web Performance Optimization, posted: 19-Apr-2012 13:22
As in any other project, when working on your Web Performance Optimization (WPO) metrics are important. In WPO projects metrics could be something like time to load a web page, number of page views within a time frame, number of repeat visitors, number of orders place in a period, or even revenue per order. Once we have established the metrics that will define success, then we can work to define a baseline for later comparison, as well as define benchmarks for validation, etc.
At the end of the day, what you want is a faster loading web site that will help your company achieve an objective.
For example, when I started working to make Geekzone a faster web site, our metrics included reduce web page load time, increase number of repeat visitors, increased time spent on site and increased number of page views - we don't sell a "product", we sell advertising after all so those were the important metrics for us.
Using tools like WebPageTest allowed us to measure the time a web page takes to load in different parts of the world. Even though 40% - 45% of our traffic is New Zealand-based, we still have a large number of visitors coming from overseas (including the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and India).
A couple of years ago our average web page load time was around 10 seconds for a visitor coming from the US. By following through with changes in our database, backend scripts, hosting provider, CDN we managed to reduce the web page load time to around 6.5 seconds on average when measured from Dulles, VA.
With automatic web optimization software (in our case Riverbed Stingray Aptimizer) we managed to reduce the time even further to 4.5 s as you can see in the image below, captured from a WebPageTest run earlier today:
If you are in New Zealand our web page load times are even lower, on average 1.5 seconds for a complete page to be ready to be used.
In another post I will talk about each of the items we touched when improving performance on Geekzone - make sure to subscribe to my RSS feed. Of course if you run a web site and think a Web Performance Optimization project could help you improve metrics, please contact me and we can work on this.
Other related posts:
Geekzone experience using Pingdom RUM
Geekzone over the years: the tech behind the scenes
Again: use your ISP DNS for better performance
At the end of the day, what you want is a faster loading web site that will help your company achieve an objective.
For example, when I started working to make Geekzone a faster web site, our metrics included reduce web page load time, increase number of repeat visitors, increased time spent on site and increased number of page views - we don't sell a "product", we sell advertising after all so those were the important metrics for us.
Using tools like WebPageTest allowed us to measure the time a web page takes to load in different parts of the world. Even though 40% - 45% of our traffic is New Zealand-based, we still have a large number of visitors coming from overseas (including the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and India).
A couple of years ago our average web page load time was around 10 seconds for a visitor coming from the US. By following through with changes in our database, backend scripts, hosting provider, CDN we managed to reduce the web page load time to around 6.5 seconds on average when measured from Dulles, VA.
With automatic web optimization software (in our case Riverbed Stingray Aptimizer) we managed to reduce the time even further to 4.5 s as you can see in the image below, captured from a WebPageTest run earlier today:
If you are in New Zealand our web page load times are even lower, on average 1.5 seconds for a complete page to be ready to be used.
In another post I will talk about each of the items we touched when improving performance on Geekzone - make sure to subscribe to my RSS feed. Of course if you run a web site and think a Web Performance Optimization project could help you improve metrics, please contact me and we can work on this.
Other related posts:
Geekzone experience using Pingdom RUM
Geekzone over the years: the tech behind the scenes
Again: use your ISP DNS for better performance
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