SITE SPEED 101

Cloud Chat with Jay and Robert at #cloudcafe

Discussion Points

What is Site Speed

Top 5 Reasons Speed Matters

Stats that Matter

3 Types of Speed Metrics

5 Components of Site Speed

What is Site Speed

Technical Definition: Site Speed is the time it takes for

content to be delivered to a web page.

User-Based Definition: Site Speed is the time a user waits

to engage with the page (i.e., checkout).

Top 5 Reasons Why Site Speed Matters

Longer User Wait Times Impact…

1. User Experience

2. Conversions

3. Cart Abandonment

4. Negative Word of Mouth

5. SEO Ranking

REVENUE

3 Types of Speed Metrics

Type Definition Why Bother

Time to First Byte Time it takes for the first

byte of data to load into a

web page.

Impacts SEO (flawed as a

measure of web page

speed since it measures a

single point of time)

Speed Index Provides numeric measure

of time required to get to

visual completeness.

Indicator of End-User

Experience; when the user

can engage with the page

Checkout time Time it takes to process the

checkout once submitted

Slow checkouts have higher

abandonment and many

times users go to competitor

sites

Stats that Matter

• 1 in 4 users will abandon a website if it takes more than 4 seconds to load

• The average checkout abandonment rate is already67 percent

• For every second it takes an eCommerce website to load, approximately 7% of visitors will abandon the site

• Sites with a top search ranking typically have 350 msor better for time to first byte

Sources: Kissmetrics, Baymard, Aberdeen Group, Moz.com

5 Main Components of Site Speed

1. Type of Content

2. Location

3. Redundancy & Load Capacity

4. User Platform

5. Concurrency

Type of Content

• Static vs. Dynamic

• Flash, Video, Images

• Third party content

Dynamic/Perso

nalized for each

user

Static/Same for

all users

Location

Location impacts Latency

• Application Delivery Controllers

• Database Servers

• Application Servers

• Website & Mobile Users

Latency is the travel time from source to destination

ie.round trip travel time (latency) from user to database

server and back to the user

Redundancy & Load Capacity

Auto-Scaling and Self-Healing • Traffic spikes and server deaths slow down site

speed (or worse, cause outages)

• Insurance for consistent speed and user

experience

User Platform: Mobile vs. Computers

• Mobile phones cannot search the web

as fast as computers because of

processor speed and internet

connection

• Mobile speed compounded by network,

quality of signal, time of day

• While Content Delivery Networks

(CDN’s) help decrease latency for

computers, they don’t for mobile

latency

Concurrency

• Concurrent means something that happens at the same time as something else.

• Multiple processors execute instructions simultaneously for better performance.

• Tasks are broken down into subtasks that are then assigned to separate processors to perform simultaneously, instead of sequentially.

THANK YOU!

QUESTIONS?