Google sponsored WordCamp US this year in Nashville, TN. In the booth, Google showed attendees this presentation, which includes data about the state of the WordPress ecosystem. The data comes from HTTP Archive (httparchive.org), which is built on Lighthouse and WebPageTest.

1. Performance IS
User eXperience

2. Source: DoubleClick - The need for mobile speed, September 2016
53%of users abandon sites
that take longer than
3 seconds to load

3. 19 seconds
Average mobile web
page load on 3G

4. 60%
of mobile connections
world-wide are 2G

5. Optimizing Performance
How to achieve good performance?
Requests
Connections
HTML Bytes
CSS Bytes
JS Bytes
Critical rendering path
IMG Bytes
Lo d s at e Animations
Best
Practices

6. Measuring Performance
What are the metrics that matter to UX?
First Paint
First
Contentful
Paint
Is it happening? Is it useful? Is it usable? Is it delightful?
First
Meaningful
Paint
Hero element
timing
Time to
Interactive Long Tasks

7. How is the performance of
the WordPress ecosystem?
And… your site?

8. HTTP Archive
Tracking how the Web is Built
500K URLs
Top Alexa Sites
Trends. Load times. Download sizes.
Performance scores. Interesting stats. Popular
scripts. Image formats. Errors. Redirects...

9. Load Times
Users dislike slowness, and reward speed!

10. Visual Speed Index
How quickly the contents of a page are visibly populated? Low Bet

11. Time to First Interactive
When does the primary content of the page becomes usable? Low Bet

12. First Meaningful Paint
When does the primary content on the page becomes visible? Low Bet

13. Page Load Signals
How fast does the content on my site load? Low Bet

14. Images
The Art and Science of Image Optimization

15. Image Optimization
How many image bytes are wasteful? Low Bet

16. Image Optimization
How has it changed in the last two years?

17. Image Optimization
What percent of image bytes are wasteful? Low Bet

18. 1 in 5
image bytes are wasteful

19. Image Formats
What types of images are most popular?

20. Responsive Images
What is the impact of oversized images on mobile? Low Bet

21. Page Weight
Slim pages load faster!

22. Resource Bytes Loaded
How much stuff are we loading? Low Bet

23. Number of Requests
How many times are we going to the server? Low Bet

24. Scripts
The less (and less synchronous) Javascript, the better

25. Sync vs. Async Scripts
Do WordPress site request more render-blocking scripts? Hig s Be r

26. HTTPS
Authentication, Privacy, Integrity

27. HTTPS
How secure are the foundations of WordPress sites? Hig s Be r

28. A11Y
A great experience, for ALL users

29. Lighthouse A11Y Scores
Are WordPress sites built for accessibility? Hig s Be r

30. Tooling
Measure (performance) twice, serve your site fast, always!

31. We need data and tooling to assess the
performance of the WP ecosystem and our own sites
Data and Measurement Tools
How performant is (your) WordPress?

32. WebPageTest
Synthetic Performance Testing

33. Lighthouse
Automated
Performance Audits

34. Tide
Choose plugins and
themes based on
Quality

35. HTTP Archive
Tracking how
the web is build