5 Best Practices For Blazing Fast Website Performance presented by Gomez & Forrester

ImadMoulineCTO,Gomez

MikeGualtieriSeniorAnalyst,ForresterResearch

5 Best Practices for Blazing Fast Website Performance

Five Best Practices For Blazing Fast Web Site Performance Mike Gualtieri Senior Analyst Forrester Research March 23, 2010

Make your Web site faster!

5 Entire contents © 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.

Agenda

• Why your customers won’t wait • Blazing fast best practices

• Recommendations


Achieving blazing fast Web site performance is more challenging

Modern Web audiences expect more content and functionality

Firms want to provide more content and functionality

IT needs to reduce infrastructure costs

Rising tides of users make scaling more challenging


Great User Experiences Are Useful, Usable, And Desirable

•  Users can accomplish their goals Useful

•  Users can easily perform tasks Usable

•  Users enjoy their experience Desirable

And, fast!

Customers want more and they want it faster.


Agenda

• What do customers want?

• Blazing fast best practices • Next practices for which to prepare


Based upon Forrester’s ongoing Blazing Fast Web site performance research

1. Measure first, early and often


Check the performance of your peers at http://benchmarks.gomez.com


Web applications are increasingly assembled within the browser


Browser performance varies widely

Source: Gomez sampled 360 million pages across 200+ Websites over a 30 day period from broadband users in the United States

Web Browser Page Load Time (in seconds)

Internet Explorer 6 9.654 Internet Explorer 7 6.740 Internet Explorer 8 4.831 Firefox 3 5.631 Firefox 3.5 4.424 Chrome 4 2.369 Safari 4 3.132


Best practices: Measure early and often

• Measure how quickly users perform key objectives on your site.

• Baseline performance metrics with a consistent reporting frequency

• Know who is using your site and how performance varies from geography to geography.

• Use on-demand measurement to determine the effectiveness of key changes.

• Know what elements of your infrastructure are affecting performance.


Pitfalls: Measure early and often

• Don’t measure so seldom that you can’t react to problems.

• Don’t measure the wrong things.

17 Entire contents © 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. 17 Entire contents © 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. Architect pages for speed.


Browser versions have different capabilities

Source: www.browserscope.org November 19, 2009


Browsers render differently


Best practices: Architect pages for speed

• Stay abreast of client optimizations.

• Minimize server requests.

• Cache intelligently.

• Compress data. • Leverage client-side applications.

• Use page analysis tools.

• Use appliance or other software that can improve page speed (E.g. Aptimize)


Yahoo!’s YSlow Grades Pages And Suggests Changes That May Improve Web Performance

February 2009 “Best Practices: Attaining And Maintaining Blazing Fast Web Site Performance”


Pitfalls: Architect pages for speed

• Don’t rely on frameworks to keep up with browser technology.

• Don’t ignore user workflow speed.

• Don’t assume the HTML provided by page design tools will perform well.

3. Cache smartly to eliminate bottlenecks.



Achieving blazing fast Web site performance is more challenging


The user’s distance from the content matters


Best practices: Cache smartly to eliminate bottlenecks • Test and monitor performance from your customer’s perspective.

• Address the low-hanging fruit first. – Might not be the browser

• Add an edge cache (such as Akamai, Edgecast, Limelight) if you need it.

• Consider elastic caching for: application data, sessions, page fragments, and shared application state


Pitfalls: Cache smartly to eliminate bottlenecks

• Be sure your scale-out architecture is free of bottlenecks before implementing caching

• Don’t create caches that hold the wrong things.


Typical IT Web architecture is designed to scale the app server tier

Relational database

Load balancer

Application server

Application server

Application server

Application server


Elastic caching adds scaling layer to overcome the data bottleneck

Persistent data store

Load balancer

Application server

Application server

Cache node

Cache node

Cache node

Application server

Application server

4. Continually optimize your application

architecture.


Best practices: Continually optimize your application architecture

• Monitor continuously and learn.

• Mitigate the risk of remote services.

• Scale out Web and application servers.

• Be clever about data architecture. • Divide monolithic applications to conquer them.

• Diminish the role of older or limited systems and applications.

• Group functions by protocol or type for better load balancing.


Data can be scaled using a federated approach


Divide Monolithic Applications To Scale Functions Independently


Use a combination of approaches to scale Web application

NOSQL

Elastic cache

Elastic cache

Elastic cache

Load balancer

Application server

Application server

Application server

Application server

RDBMS

NOSQL

NOSQL NOSQL

Function A

Function B


Pitfalls: Continually optimize your application architecture

• Don’t get seduced by hardware vendors.

• Don’t be a slave to prior art.

• Don’t allow syndicators to hold you hostage.

Source: amctv.com

5. Cooperate with app dev, infrastructure ops,

and user experience pros.


Best practices: Partner with your app dev, infrastructure ops, and user experience colleagues • Collaborate with all on the performance imperative.

• Understand the desires of your interactive marketing colleagues.

• Conduct joint Web site change performance audits.


Pitfalls: Partner with your app dev, infrastructure ops, and marketing colleagues • Don’t engage in finger-pointing.

• Don’t circumvent IT operations.

• Don’t underinvest in performance testing.


Agenda

• Why your customers won’t wait

• Blazing fast best practices

• Recommendations


Make your Web site faster!


To create a blazing fast Web architecture:

• Test and monitor performance from your customer’s perspective.

• Assess your current Web architecture to identify bottlenecks or areas of opportunity.

• Address the low-hanging fruit first based upon greatest impact and lowest cost.


Next practices • Cloud computing is here to stay

– How can you evolve your architecture to take advantage of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) either internal, public, and hybrid cloud?

• Prepare for mobile – How will you test and improve the performance of

your mobile applications?

– What approach will you use to develop the applications?

• New technologies: Elastic platforms and NOSQL – How can elastic caching help improve performance

– Can NOSQL help you scale your data?


Follow these best practices

1. Measure first, early, and often

2. Architect pages for speed

3. Cache smartly to eliminate bottlenecks

4. Continually optimize your architecture

5. Cooperate with app dev, ops, user experience, and marketing


Thank you Mike Gualtieri

+1 617.613.6145

[email protected]

Twitter: mgualtieri

www.forrester.com

5BestPracticesforBlazingFastWebsitePerformance

ImadMouline,CTO,Gomez

ThePerformanceOptimizationChallenge

BalancingCostvs.Performance

Operations

Development CloudandCDNProviders

AmIoverpayingforperformancegains?

EfficientOptimization

Arethesethemostcosteffectiveimprovementstomake?

IsourcodeoptimizedforspeedANDcost?

“WorkingwithPros”‐OptimizingPerformanceandCosts

NormalConfiguration

ParallelizedConfigurationIfyouarepayingbasedonvolumethenoptimizeusingparalleldownloading

“ContinuallyOptimizeyourApplications”–FocusingonImprovedResponseTimesYieldsBusinessResults

 Measureperformanceundernormalandpeakconditions–Testyourapplicationsatpeakandnormaltrafficlevels,tofindalltheproblemsandoptimizationopportunities

  Improveresponsetimestoreduceabandonmentrates–Gomezresearchshowsthatdecreasingpageresponsetimefrom10to2secondsreducesabandonmentratesby38%

  CompareyourselfagainsttopcompetitorsandInternetleaders

“CacheSmartly”‐ValidateCachingattheSERVER

LongFirstBytetimesapotentialserver‐sidecachingopportunity

“CacheSmartly”‐ValidateCachingattheEDGE

In‐housedeliveredcontent

OutsourcedCDNdeliveredcontent

“CacheSmartly”‐ValidateCachingattheBROWSER

Safari4.x

InternetExplorer7.x

InternetExplorer8.x

Firefox3.x

Chrome

“ArchitectPagesForSpeed”–PLUSPerceivedPerformance

  Eachbrowserhasdifferentperformanceandrenderingcharacteristics

Source: Gomez Real-User Monitoring   Real users around the world   Broadband

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Second

s

Rawpageloadtime

  360M pages over 30 days   200+ sites

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Second

s

Rawpageloadtime

Perceivedpageloadtime

  Firefox   InternetExplorer

“ArchitectPagesForSpeed”–AnalyzeAcrossBrowsers

MajorISP

LocalISP

MobileCarrier

Internet

ContentDeliveryNetworks

3rdParty/CloudServices

Browsersanddevices UsersUsers

Storage

WebServers

AppServers

DBServers

Mainframe

LoadBalancers

MobileComponents

Network

“MeasureEarlyAndOften”‐Fromthe‘Outside‐in’

TheWebApplicationDeliveryChain

ZoneofcustomerexpectationTraditionalzoneofcontrol

“Outside‐in”customerpointofview

Ismybackendoptimized?

Ismyhostingproviderperformingwell?

IsmyWebsitesloweddownbyvendors?

IsmyWebsiteoptimizedacrossbrowsers?

“MeasureEarlyAndOften”‐AcrossBrowsers

  ResponsetimesdifferacrossFirefoxandIEagents

InternetExplorerAgent

FirefoxAgent InternetExplorerAgent

FirefoxAgent

Don’t forget to monitor across browsers as availability & performance issues can also be browser specific

Puttingyourplaninaction–HowGomezcanhelp

BestPractices

GomezCapabilities DeploymentTesting

ProductionMonitoring

MeasureEarlyAndOften

Monitorperformance&availabilityfromtheend‐users’perspective

ArchitectPagesForSpeed

Measureclient‐side&optimizeperceivedperformanceacrossmultiplebrowsers

ContinuallyOptimize

Monitorandoptimizeresponsetimesforend‐userstoimprovebusinessresults

CacheSmartly

Validatetheeffectivenessofcachingstrategies

PartnerwiththePros

EvaluatetheperformanceofcloudandCDNservices

Testingcloudapplicationswithworld’smostcomprehensiveperformanceandtestingnetwork

WebPerformanceManagementandLoadTesting

100+locations

Backbone

WebPerformanceManagementandLoadTesting

100,000+locations

LastMile YourActualUsers

RealUserMonitoringWorldwide,whereveryour

usersare

Formoreinformationvisitwww.gomez.comorcontactusatinfo@gomez.comor+1781.778.2700

  Reduceddowntime45%

  Reducedseven‐steptransactiontimeby50%

  Increasedconversions10%

  Validateddecisiontoconsolidatethreedatacenters

  Achievedunder3secondresponsetimeand99%+availability

  Reducedhomepageloadtimefrom11.3secondsto3.4seconds

  Improvedpageloadtimes23%

  Saved50%+instaffandfees

GomezCustomersEnjoyMeasurableBenefits

ImadMoulineCTO,Gomez

MikeGualtieriSeniorAnalyst,ForresterResearch

5BestPracticesforBlazingFastWebsitePerformance

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5 Best Practices For Blazing Fast Website Performance presented by Gomez & Forrester