Web Performance Matters

Web Performance Matters

Why a site's performance is important.

I’m currently reading the book Jump Start Web Performance, and have dug into the importance of a site's performance, why it matters.

Introduction ⚡

Performance is important, it matters.

People are very impatient, and a slow site receives fewer visitors and conversions.

Performance has an effect on everyone, the business, users and even the environment!

Business 💰

The book mentions 5 points why performance is bad for businesses (taken from the book):

  1. The larger the page download, the slower the user experience, and the less likely that person will consider making a purchase or returning.

  2. 55% of visitors use a mobile device. These have more limited capabilities and may be connected to a slower network, which exacerbates the problem.

  3. Google’s page speed algorithms downgrade slower sites, which harms search engine optimization efforts.

  4. More data results in higher hosting, storage, and bandwidth costs.

  5. The larger your codebase, the longer it takes to update and maintain.

Performance is also a part of Accessibility. By improving a site’s performance, the site is accessible to more people, because people with a slower internet connection can also access the site. Take into account that not all users have a fast internet connection, and it can also be because of their location, i.e. if they are in the subway.

Examples and metrics (taken from Why your website speed and performance are costing you business):

Shopzilla increased revenue by 12% and views by 25% by taking load times from 6s to 1.2s on average.

Like Walmart, Amazon saw a 1% revenue increase for every 100ms of improvement.

Mozilla made their pages faster by 2.2 seconds and saw 60 million more Firefox downloads per year.

By keeping the site’s performance in mind, everyone can benefit:

  • Less code is required

  • Users receive a better experience

  • Search engine rankings improve

  • Conversions increase

  • Hosting costs decrease

Environment 🌤️

The environment itself gets affected. When someone performs an operation that uses the internet, a small amount of carbon dioxide is emitted.

Taken from Why your internet habits are not as clean as you think:

The carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, according to some estimates. It is similar to the amount produced by the airline industry globally, explains Mike Hazas, a researcher at Lancaster University. And these emissions are predicted to double by 2025.

Website Carbon Calculator allows you to calculate the effect your site has on the planet. It also mentions:

The internet consumes a lot of electricity. 416.2TWh per year to be precise. To give you some perspective, that’s more than the entire United Kingdom.

If less internet is needed to load our site and for users to accomplish their goals within the site, less carbon dioxide will be emitted.