The document discusses the importance of website speed and usability for retaining visitors, emphasizing that page load times should ideally be under 2 seconds to prevent losing 20% of traffic. It provides a comparison between different website setups, highlights best practices for optimizing site performance, and suggests tools for testing and improving speed. Recommendations include minimizing HTTP requests, optimizing images, using caching, and adopting a mobile-first approach.

1. Life in the Fast Lane
Speed, Usability &
Search Engine Optimization
Dana DiTomaso
CEO, Kick Point
@danaditomaso
kickpoint.ca

3. We’re All Impatient Jerks
Visitors want your site to load in
2 seconds or less
Every extra second of load time
causes 20% of your visitors to jump ship

4. Did We Forget?

5. Everything Old Is New Again
=

6. Don’t Be This Guy

7. Best. Website. Ever.
http://www.dolekemp96.org/main.htm

8. Dole/Kemp vs Basic
WordPress
dolekemp96.org/main.htm wp-themes.com
142 lines of code 487 lines of code
18 requests 6 requests
422ms load time 1.25s load time
85.6 kB page size 125.7 kB page size
DNS – 151 ms DNS – 169 ms
Connect – 159 ms Connect – 282 ms
Wait – 11 ms Wait – 276 ms
Receive – 13 ms Receive – 112 ms

9. That’s Nice.
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt

10. How Does This Affect Search
Traffic?

11. Actually a Good Thing
Google has a “time
budget” for how long
they’re willing to spend on
your site – don’t blow it.

12. What to Consider

13. Start Testing
• https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights
• http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
• http://www.webpagetest.org/
• http://gtmetrix.com/ (is particularly harsh)

14. Clean Up Your Database
• BACKUP FIRST
• In phpMyAdmin:

15. Do You Really Need That
Plugin?
• Delete any plugins you’re not using
• Dump anything that isn’t updated regularly
• Avoid plugins that create queries on the fly
when a flat file would do

16. Use Browser Caching
• Set an expiry date in your HTTP headers for
static resources
• For example:
Expires: Thu, 07 Nov 2022 23:00:00 GMT
• More:
https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/best-practices/caching#LeverageBrowserCaching

17. Minimize HTTP Requests
• If you’re not using a plugin on a specific page
type, see if you can avoid loading it
• Do you really need social icons everywhere?
• Move JS to server-side PHP if possible

18. Optimize Your Images
• Don’t upload an image larger than what’s
required
• Use the right file format for the job
– PNGs are awesome
– GIFs are for tiny images or animation
– JPGs are for photographs
• Use an image compressor
– WP Smush.it plugin

19. Compress/Combine JS + CSS

20. Use Sprites
• Every time an image request is made, a kitten
cries
• http://spriteme.org/

21. Install W3 Total Cache
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/
Really excellent step-by-step guide here:
http://gtmetrix.com/wordpress-optimization-guide.html

22. Does All That Really Help?

23. Back To The Future
=

24. Responsive?
display: none?
It’s still loading!

25. Change, Don’t Hide
• Think mobile first
• Progressively enhance
with JS
• Read this book!
http://www.abookapart.com/products/mobile-first

26. Keep Paying Attention
• http://kickpoint.ca/site-performance-dashboard-for-google-analytics/

27. Questions? Aspirin?
You made it!
Here is a cute
animal who cares
about speed.
Thank you for
listening.