Time Is Money

Time Is Money

by Tammy Everts
Released June 2016
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781491928806

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Book description

If you want to convince your organization to conduct a web performance upgrade, this concise book will strengthen your case. Drawing upon her many years of web performance research, author Tammy Everts uses cases studies and other data to explain how web page speed and availability affect a host of business metrics. You’ll also learn how our human neurological need for quick, uncomplicated processes drives these metrics.

Ideal for managers, this book’s case studies demonstrate how Walmart, Staples.com, Mozilla, and other organizations significantly improved conversion rates through simple upgrades. Find out why happy customers return, while frustrated users can send your metrics—and your domain—into a tailspin.

You’ll explore:

  • What happens neurologically when people encounter slow or interrupted processes
  • How page speed affects metrics in retail and other industries, from media sites to SaaS providers
  • Why internal applications are often slower than consumer apps, and how this hurts employee morale and productivity
  • Common performance problems and the various technologies created to fight them
  • How to pioneer new metrics, and create an organizational culture of performance

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Table of contents

  1. Introduction
    1. Why Should Anyone Care About Web Performance?
    2. My Hopes for This Book
    3. Performance Is a Human Issue
  2. 1. The Psychology of Web Performance
    1. Fast Websites and Apps Create Happier Users
    2. How Fast Do We Expect Web Pages to Be?
    3. Our Need for Web Speed
    4. Why Are We Impatient? Because Neuroscience
      1. Sensory memory
      2. Short-term memory and working memory
    5. What Is “Flow” and How Does It Relate to How We Use the Web?
    6. Questioning Our Assumptions: Do Delays Really Hurt Productivity?
    7. What Does This Mean in Web Performance Terms?
    8. Web Stress: It’s a Thing
    9. Mobile Users Feel Web Stress, Too
    10. What Does This Dissatisfaction with Mobile Performance Look Like at a Neuroscientific Level?
    11. Takeaway
  3. 2. Speed as Competitive Advantage
    1. Retail Isn’t the Only Vertical Market Affected by Performance
    2. Slow Time Versus Downtime: Which Hurts Your Business More?
    3. Brand Perception
    4. Slow Web Pages Undermine Brand Health
      1. Case study: Healthcare.gov’s “epic fail” is conflated with the entire Obama administration
    5. Conversions and Revenue
      1. Case study: Every 1 second of load time improvement equals a 2% conversion rate increase for Walmart.com
      2. Case study: Staples.com shaves 1 second from load time, improves conversion rate by 10%
      3. Case study: AutoAnything.com cuts page load in half, increases conversion rate by 9%
      4. Case study: Mozilla shaves 2.2 seconds from load times, increases download conversions by 15.4%
      5. Case study: Obama fundraising platform improved speed by 60% and raised an additional $34 million
      6. Case Study: Intuit Cuts Load Times by More Than Half, Increases Conversions by 14%
    6. Who Converts When?
    7. Different Pages in the Conversion Funnel Can Have Different Conversion Rates
    8. People Are More Patient with Specialty Sites Than with General Merchandisers
    9. Visitors in Some Countries Are More Patient Than Visitors in Others
    10. Shopping Cart Abandonment
      1. Case Study: Impact of Page Slowdown on Shopping Cart Abandonment
    11. Page Views and Bounce Rate
      1. Case Study: At Google, a 500-millisecond Slowdown Equaled a 25% Decrease in Searches
      2. Case Study: GQ Cuts Load Time by 80%, Grows Traffic by 83%
      3. Case Study: At The Financial Times, Page Slowdowns Correlate to up to 11% Decrease in Engagement
      4. Case Study: Edmunds.com Shaves 7 Seconds off Load Time, Sees 17% Increase in Page Views and 3% Increase in Ad Revenue
    12. Customer Satisfaction and Retention
      1. Case Study: Impact of Page Slowdown on Returning Traffic
    13. Google Ranking and Organic Search Traffic
    14. The “Slow” Label
      1. Case study: Smartfurniture.com Accelerates Pages, Enjoys 20% Increase in Organic Search Traffic (Plus More Sales!)
    15. Mobile Matters
      1. Case Study: Measuring the Impact of Page Slowdowns on Mobile Metrics
    16. Takeaway
  4. 3. Measuring Performance from Within
    1. Employee Satisfaction
    2. Slow Performance Hurts Morale
    3. Consumer Web Applications Have Raised the Bar for Performance
    4. Bandwidth
    5. Page Bloat (or, When Can We Expect the Average Web Page to Hit 3 MB?)
      1. Case study: Wikipedia Improves Load Times by 66%, Radically Cuts Back on New Server Costs
      2. Case study: Hydro-Québec Reduced Download Times by 90%, Increased Adoption Rate of New Engineering Processes
      3. Case study: Netflix Saw a 43% Decrease in Its Bandwidth Bill After One Simple Optimization
      4. Case study: Shopzilla Decreased Load Times by 5 Seconds, Reduced Infrastructure by 50%
      5. Case study: Hilton Speeds Internal App, Resulting in Bandwidth Savings, Greater Customer Morale, and Employee Satisfaction
    6. Takeaway
  5. 4. Let’s Talk Solutions
    1. What Is Latency—And Why Should You Care About It?
    2. Network Infrastructure (or, Why More Bandwidth Isn’t Enough)
      1. Do Network Improvements Actually Make Web Pages Load More Quickly?
    3. How Many People Actually Have Access to Faster Networks?
    4. Servers
    5. Load Balancers and ADCs
    6. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
    7. Frontend Optimization (FEO)
    8. Mobile Optimization
    9. Performance Measurement
      1. Synthetic performance measurement
      2. Real user monitoring (RUM)
    10. Will Browser Evolution Save Us?
    11. Takeaway
  6. 5. The Future of Performance
    1. How Can We Better Understand the Intersection Between Performance, User Experience, and Business Metrics?
    2. What Impact Does Web Performance Have on Customer Lifetime Value?
    3. Are Site Owners Optimizing the Right Pages?
    4. Are We Measuring the Right Things?
    5. How Fast Is Fast Enough?
      1. STEP 1: Measure
      2. STEP 2: Correlate
      3. STEP 3: Monitor
      4. STEP 4: Optimize
      5. STEP 5: Repeat
    6. How to Create a Culture of Performance in Your Business
      1. Build your case
      2. Benchmark your site
      3. Communicate your performance goals
      4. Identify performance champions within your company
    7. Takeaway
  7. Index

Product information

  • Title: Time Is Money
  • Author(s): Tammy Everts
  • Release date: June 2016
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781491928806