ProjectX Blog

Image courtesy of Wedo Photography


I wanted to write a little bit of background to why I gave this talk at WDCNZ. I got hassled a little bit by the other presenters on why I gave this talk. That web performance was “Old Hat” and companies have known about this for 5 years. That’s correct, but very very few companies are doing it right especially in New Zealand. I would have loved to give a talk on advanced web performance techniques like Varnish and Edge Side Includes or how to handle 10K requests a second on a VM. BUT with the data from my Web page test results, fewer than 10% websites in New Zealand are doing it right.

Here’s the facts, if all New Zealand websites did four things

• Turn on web compression
• set expiry properly for images css and JS,
• Bundle JS and CSS files
• use image spriting

Every New Zealand website would be TWICE AS FAST.

I do a lot of Research and Development on web performance, I do consulting and I talk to a lot of companies about web performance. What I find the companies don’t understand enough about the operational side of their websites ie what is happening at the webserver and database. Some of the basic principles about how web sites scale is completely oblivious to some developers. eg. the difference between dynamic and static content.

In my talk I had to pick one site which has had all of the characteristics of bad web performance. Unfortunately the newstalkzb was the one that I choose. I could have been chosen several other websites. There are a lot of really really bad preforming websites. (As a sector blogs and news sites have a lot of work to do to improve performance)

I was thinking of a what to highlight just how “backward” the thinking in Web performance in modern terms. I came up with an idea of what was the worst html techniques that no web developer in their right mind would use today. So I made the correlation between 1990’s web design and bad web performance traits. Just as we have moved on from those designs to better designs, we need to progress web performance to next level in NZ. Its not hard to make significant performance wins.

I want developers and companies to take professional pride in their work and do a good job. I have seen very talent company release a website for a blue chip client with a 122 CSS files, which caused the site to take over 10 seconds to load. I’m sorry I can’t that seriously. Not very professional! I would want my company to be associated with kickass, innovative, FAST websites.

For those that have asked me, here is the video

How ugly is bad web performance from John Clegg on Vimeo.

WPO setting = BAD Design
No HTTP compression = Blink text
Poor expiry settings on static assets = Marquee text
No Javascript / No CSS bundling = Comic Sans font
No Image Spriting = Animated Gifs

Thanks to Martin Hipp for hacking the HTML for me!

Mobile is our future

Web Performance is even more important is Mobile. All of the web performance strategies and tactics are a lot more relevant with mobile as network latency is much much worse. The top minds in web performance are now starting to focus on Mobile, as a result the tools and best practices are being defined as we speak.

Should how we fix it?

Service companies must make it a priority with their clients. I bet that clients expect that their website will be the fastest possible. They do not understand that it has to built that way.

The best way to make Web performance happen is to make it a part of the build process of your website. There are plenty of tools to make Javascript and CSS bundling a part of your build and deployment process of your website. Then Web optimisation happens automagically everytime!

For service companies, creating a common build process with bunding and image spriting will become a small incremental cost that can be re-applied across all your clients.

If that sounds like too much work then look at mod_pagespeed module for apache or commercial solution Aptimize

Here is new image from my latest research of homepage performance.

This clearly shows the correlation between page load time and number of requests. The pageload time increases, so does the number of requests on the page.



From my presentation at WDCNZ, I recommend less than 60 total requests for a page, if you want to have a fast website.

Looks like there still a _lot_ of work to be done in speeding up NZ websites.

Introduction

This is the latest installment of the “Home page hall of Shame” which is an independent audit of the state of Web Page Optimisation in New Zealand. This test takes the top 160 New Zealand based websites from Alexa rankings and compares a number of different metrics – Page Size, Download time, optimisation scores and Javascript optimisation.

Summary

• The homepages for 160 of the top NZ based websites was measured using  webpagetest.org.nz on 1.5Mb DSL and 20Mb connection Thanks to aptimize.com.
• The average page size of homepages was 661.8K Up from (554.6K in Dec 2010 359.6K in May 2009 & 305.1K in 2008)
• Fastest home pages load < 2 sec. Top site loads in 1.1 secs !
  • The average download time for office broadband – 5.98 secs(3.97 secs for page reload)
  • The average download time for home broadband connection – 12.43 secs (5.21 secs for page reload)
• 66% of websites use  WEB COMPRESSION
• Only 35% of sites load in under 4 seconds.
• The largest pages were over 4000K. The largest site was 4Mb and with one image over 3Mb.
• A lot Advertising javascript still is not being compressed
• Some sites have dozens of Javascript and CSS files, worst offender had 54 javascript files.
• The fastest sites have less total requests. There seems to be a strong co-relation to lower total requests to speed.

Percent of sites that got a passing grade for the basic optimization checks:

Optimization	Percent of pages with a passing grade (2011)
Keep-alive Enabled	89.4%
Compress Text	61.55%
Cache Static	31.4%
Compress Images	66.4%

Download time distribution – Office Broad band (20Mb)

Table 1 – Shows the distribution of download times of the top 160 home pages using office broadband speed.

Time	Frequency
<1	0 (0%)
1 – 2	12 (7.55%)
2 – 3	24 (15.09%)
3 – 4	19 (11.95%)
4 – 5	27 (16.98%)
5 – 6	22 (13.84%)
6 – 7	13 (8.18%)
7 – 8	12 (7.55%)
8 – 9	6 (3.77%)
9 – 10	4 (2.52%)
10-12.5	3 (1.89%)
12.5-15	9 (5.66%)
15+	8 (5.03%)

Download time distribution – Home Broad band (1.5Mb)

Table 1 – Shows the distribution of download times of the top 160 home pages using home broadband speed.

Time	Frequency
<1	0 (0%)
1 – 2	2 (1.26%)
2 – 3	8 (5.03%)
3 – 4	6 (3.77%)
4 – 5	17 (10.69%)
5 – 6	16 (10.06%)
6 – 7	21 (13.71%)
7 – 8	16 (10.06%)
8 – 9	9 (5.66%)
9 – 10	16 (10.06%)
10-12.5	22 (13.84%)
12.5-15	10 (6.29%)
15+	6 (3.77%)

What should we do to improve

The Data

Optimisation

What? This table shows the top ranking home pages with highest optimisation scores as ranked by performance ranking tools YSlow and Pagespeed.

How? We used the website www.showslow.com to record the score for the test.

Why is this important? This result shows which sites are best optimised for web performance. The sites  are optimised sites for fastest downloading and reloading of pages.

Top 10 most optimised sites

Site	YSlow Rating	Page speed	Combined Score
geekzone.co.nz	95	98	193
dashtickets.co.nz	87	95	182
snipesoft.net.nz	91	90	181
www.mightyape.co.nz	84	96	180
zenbu.co.nz	92	86	178
realestate.co.nz	88	89	177
xero.com	84	92	176
zoomin.co.nz	87	88	175
holidayhouses.co.nz	83	92	175
slingshot.co.nz	76	93	173

Top 10 worst optimised sites

Site	YSlow Rating	Page speed	Combined Score
Courier Post	75	15	90
smilecity.co.nz	73	17	90
yellowlocal.co.nz	50	45	90
metservice.co.nz	63	38	101
rcnz.co.nz	80	25	105
webjet.co.nz	66	41	107
ezibuy.co.nz	71	37	108
tvnz.co.nz	71	37	108
genesisenergy.co.nz	68	61	109
flightcentre.co.nz	42	57	109

Download time

What? This table shows the top ranking home pages with fastest and slowest download times .

How? We used the website webpagetest.org website on 1.5Mb DSL connection Broadband and 20Mb Office network connection in Wellington NZ to simulate a fair test of all the webpages. The test took page over the week of the 2nd to 11th of July.

Why is this important? This result shows which sites are fastest to load for users. The faster the website, the more pages that a user can visit in the allotted time.

Top 10 fastest home page download speed using Office broadband

Site	Size (K)	Total requests	Webpagetest.org first load time – Broadband (secs)
telecom.co.nz	274.4K	32	1.171s
dol.govt.nz	121K	21	1.234s
snipesoft.co.nz	124K	17	1.489s
auckland.ac.nz	170K	32	1.58s
massey.ac.nz	401K	37	1.596s
xenbu.co.nz	31K	13	1.623s
geonet.org.nz	105K	21	1.729s
school.nz	52K	7	1.731s
maxx.co.nz	431K	41	1.786s
westpac.co.nz	385K	20	1.874s

Top 10 slowest home page download speed using Office Broadband

Site	Size (K)	Total requests	Webpagetest.org time first load time – Broadband (secs)
skykiwi.com	991K	116	26.88s
thestandard.org.nz	4076K	92	20.917s
istars.co.nz	3293K	186	20.092s
whaleoil.gotcha.co.nz	1765K	151	17.199s
nz.yahoo.com	828.1K	105	16.491s
interest.co.nz	410K	55	16.381s
3news.co.nz	900K	142	16.287s
thebigidea.co.nz	1195K	179	15.081s
readersdigest.co.nz	1541K	202	14.6s
stuff.co.nz	1052K	160	14.353s

Size

What? This table shows the largest and smallest home pages by total download size .

How? We used YSlow to provide the tool download size of the home page including all the HTML , Javascript, CSS, image and Flash files.

Why is this important? This highlights the total size of some of the home page. Some of these webpages sizes are out of control and webmaster need to think about the time that it takes to load their sites.

Top 10 largest home pages by size

Site	Size (K)	Total requests
thestandard.org.nz	4076K	92
istars.co.nz	3293K	186
stoppress.co.nz	2141K	140
wahleoil.gotcha.co.nz	1765K	151
yazoom.co.nz	1762K	216
thewarehouse.co.nz	1642K	89
barfoot.co.nz	1610K	68
readersdigest.co.nz	1541K	202
nzherald.co.nz	1429K	7.938
eventcinemas.co.nz	1396K	110

Top 10 smallest home pages by size

Site	Size (K)	Total requests
zenbu.co.nz	31K	13
school.nz	52K	7
elgar.govt.nz	76K	19
oldfriends.co.nz	83K	28
geonet.org.nz	105K	21
dol.govt.nz	121K	21
snipesoft.co.nz	124K	17
radionz.co.nz	130K	23
psis.co.nz	133K	15
builderscrack.co.nz	169K	26

Cacheability

What? This table shows which sites have the fastest reload time. ie. this is the 2nd loading of a site after an initial load.  This is an indication of effective are the cacheability of the webpage.

How? We used the website webpagetest.org website on 20Mb Office connection Broadband in Wellington NZ to simulate a fair test of all the webpages. The test took page over the week of 2nd to 11th of July.

Why is this important? This test shows which sites will load fastest for regular users. A cacheable site will load quickly as the browser does not have to reload all the content that hasn’t change (static content)

Note: There seems to be some problems with the reload calculation as geonet.org.nz and westpac.co.nz should be at the top of this table but for some reason they are not.

Top 10 fastest cached pages – 2nd reload of a page

Site	Size (K)	Total requests	Webpagetest.org time first load – Broadband (secs)	Cached load – Broadband (secs)
oldfriends.co.nz	83K	28	1.971s	0.822s
farmers.co.nz	743K	26	3.3s	0.842s
zenbu.co.nz	31K	13	1.623s	0.844s
snipesoft.net.nz	124K	17	1.489s	0.866s
elgar.govt.nz	76K	19	4.838s	0.929s
dol.govt.nz	121K	21	1.234s	0.939s
aucklandcity.govt.nz	176K	28	5.355s	1.018s
school.nz	52K	7	1.731s	1.054s
nzqa.govt.nz	604K	32	2.108s	1.1078s
dashtickets.co.nz	502K	31	2.51s	1.103s

Javascript

What? This table shows which sites have most javascript files on the home page.

How? We used YSlow to provide the number of the javascript files used on the web page.

Why is this important? Javascript files can be bad for your website if they are not properly optimised and loaded in the correct way. The scripts can be block the downloading of any other content on the webpage.  The more javascript files on the site can make the page very slow while the user has to wait until the browsers loads all the javascript then continues to render the page.

Top 10 home pages with most javascript files

Site	Size (K)	Total requests	# of Javascript Files	Webpagetest.org time first load- Broadband (secs)
whaleoil.gotcha.co.nz	1765K	151	54	17.199s
flightcentre.co.nz	917K	156	47	5.7s
readersdigest.co.nz	1541K	202	35	14.698s
thebigidea.co.nz	1195K	179	33	15.081s
vodafone.co.nz	824K	130	33	4.912s
yazoom.co.nz	1762	216	32	7.931s
kiwblog.co.nz	528K	72	32	13.622s
tickettek.co.nz	1022K	146	30	13.267s
tvnz.co.nz	832K	72	32	5.929s
aatravel.co.nz	870K	114	29	5.892s

I’m giving a half day  SEO training session on Wednesday for NZCS in Wellington. Pricing starts from $230 for NZCS members and $345 for the general public. This course is open to everyone.

This course has been derived from the specialist consulting that I have provide my clients over the past few years and my learning from running a number of sites for the last ten years. I’ve added some new slides from recent findings on the effectiveness of Twitter and Google+

The workshop includes the following:

Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

• What is SEO?

• SEO and online marketing (SEM)
• SEO Key concepts
• SEO – Science or Magic?
• Paid Ads
• SEO in practice
• Page / Content Optimisation
• Site Optimisation
• Link building
• SEO and Social Media
• Tools

More courses are available in Auckland and Christchurch later in the year.