Is Your Site Speed Optimized?

June 24, 2009Joe Christopher

As pointed out on Google’s Research Blog, speed matters. Google ran a test on their search results to determine how page loading time affects user satisfaction. In Google’s experiment, they injected a delay of only 100 to 400 milliseconds. The decline in the number of searches is certainly measurable.

While none of us have the traffic level of Google, it still brings up an interesting question: Is your site speed-optimized?

There are several reasons to optimize the speed and functionality of your page:

• • Increase user satisfaction through usability efficiency

• • Increase time-on-page metrics

• • Decrease your own and your users’ bandwidth needs

In addition to code-level changes you can make on your website, functionality changes will also increase the user’s perception of speed and performance. The efficiency in which users can achieve their goal on your site is as important as how fast your site loads.

The bottom line is that when we speed-optimize our pages, it increases usability – the keystone to increased conversions.

Google recently published a resource for developers that shares knowledge of how we can code to make web pages load faster. While most developers and designers know most of these tips, it is great to have all of these resources in one place; everything from articles to downloads to community forums.

Here are some of our favorite articles from Google’s speed resource:

• • User experience and site performance

• • Optimizing web graphics

• • Properly including stylesheets and scripts

• • CSS: Using every declaration just once

• Prefetching resources

Want to check the speed of your website?

Here are three resources that will help you to test your website speed:

• • Website Speed Test by WebsiteOptimization.com

• • Yahoo’s YSlow Firefox plugin

• • Google’s Page Speed Firefox plugin

Being Google Analytics Consultants and Google Website Optimizer Consultants we can help you analyze, test and optimize your website speed.

About the Author

Joe Christopher

As Vice President of Analytics at Blast Analytics, Joe leads a team of talented analytics consultants responsible for helping clients understand and take action on their vast amounts of data, to continuously improve and EVOLVE their organizations. With over 20 years of experience in analytics and digital marketing, Joe offers a high-level of knowledge and guidance to clients across all industries. He is an expert in all major analytics platforms including Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics, as well as various tag management systems such as Tealium and Adobe Launch. He also consults on data visualization, data governance, and data quality strategies. Having extensive expertise in many areas, has enabled Joe to become a well known thought leader and speak at industry events such as Tealium’s Digital Velocity series. Joe remains on the pulse of various information technology, programming languages, tools and services, keeping Blast and its clients on the leading edge.

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn. Joe Christopher has written 51 posts on the Blast Digital Customer Experience and Analytics Blog.