Visibility

Web performance optimization (WPO) is a discipline focused on improving web user experience by making pages load faster. This is done through a variety of individual techniques that make it easier for web browsers, as well as networks that route traffic, to load and render web page content. Given two competitive sites that are identical in practically every other way, the faster site will be more successful. Similarly, a site operator which lacks certain competitive elements can gain an advantage through increased performance.

For example, recent studies published by Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft, and others have shown that faster web sites not only improve the user experience but also greatly improve web marketing metrics in the form of increased conversion rates, higher average order values, and better site stickiness. Specifically:
•    Amazon reports that every 100 ms delay in delivering web pages to customers translates to 1% of potential sales lost.
•    Google has found out that adding a mere 500 ms delay to the time required for its search results page to load results in a 20% loss in traffic.
•    Yahoo! has made similar discoveries, with a 400 ms added delay producing a 5% to 9% surge in the number of users who click "back" before pages even load.
•    Microsoft Bing reports 5% lift in revenue per user for every 2 seconds of speed improvement.
•    Shopzilla yielded a 12% increase in revenue and a 25% increase in page views for every 5 seconds of speed gained.

Additionally, major search engine crawlers are now evaluating site speed in their ranking algorithms, leading to faster sites appearing higher in search results. Increasingly, site operators are turning to web performance optimization technologies to speed up their sites and maintain a competitive advantage.

How It Works
As a technology, WPO is relatively new – at least from the perspective of productized offerings.  While content delivery networks (CDNs) and application delivery controllers (ADCs) have been around for years, they are mainly focused on optimizing the “pipe,” meaning the network and routing associated over the public Internet.

Web performance optimization, on the other hand, typically works at the client (browser) and content (object) levels, making content faster and more efficient for modern web browsers to retrieve, render and cache. Thus, WPO is different than (but complementary to) CDNs such as Akamai and Limelight Networks, and ADCs such as F5, Zeus, and Cisco.

The rapid growth of the mobile web also illuminates a problem area: mobile data networks are congested, and even with 3G now mainstream, the inherent latency of mobile switching causes higher delays between requests (versus desktop web). Thus, mobile browsing stands to benefit disproportionately more from the benefits of performance optimization.

The Benefits of Speed
With a global community of more than 350 million people around the world using its Firefox Web browser, Mozilla.com is among the top 50-trafficked websites worldwide (ComScore). In fact, Mozilla’s websites receive 700 million page views per month (as of 12/31/2009), with more than 1.3 billion user-initiated downloads. Firefox maintains approximately 30% of the global browser market, increasing by 40% in 2009.

Mozilla has found that reducing its page load time by 2.2 seconds increases conversions by 15.4%, which translates to an additional 10 million downloads per year (based on 275,000 visitors per day). If Mozilla achieves a similar performance boost to its other top landing pages, they will drive in excess of 60 million additional Firefox downloads per year specifically because of faster page loads.

What to Look for in a Solution
There are several vendors currently offering web performance optimization solutions. If you are in the market for a solution, be sure to look for one that:
•    Leverages controlled experimentation ( multivariate testing) to zero in on the best blend of optimizations.
•    Detects best combinations as well as individual effects of each optimization method.
•    Takes advantage of leading behavioral targeting suite to deliver best optimizations based on browser type, mobile device capabilities, and more.
•    Has powerful, built-in behavior measurement to track how WPO impacts end-user behavior -- i.e. doesn't just measure speed, but also other web metrics such as conversion rate, stickiness, engagement, loyalty, etc.
•    Controls risk/downside for aggressive techniques that may not be optimal for a particular audience or segment of users.
•    Leverages CDN capabilities for network route optimization, TCP protocol optimization, edge caching, etc.

You’ll be off to a great start in the next frontier of optimization. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me directly.