The document emphasizes the critical importance of website load speed for e-commerce, indicating that even slight delays can lead to significant reductions in conversion rates and increased bounce rates. Research shows that faster sites not only improve user experience but also enhance SEO rankings, as Google considers site speed in its algorithms. Various strategies and tools for measuring and optimizing load times are discussed, highlighting the need for product managers to address speed as a key performance indicator.

1. Special Focus: Speed
TIME IS MONEY
From the Udemy.com online course: Digital Product Management

2. The Need for Speed
 You already know page load speed
is important.
 Did you know it might be the most
important thing you can make sure
is working well on your site?
 Yup, even more important than
some of the features.

3. How Bad Is the Problem?
 Wolfgang 2016 E-commerce KPI Benchmarks Study
“We found site speed matters more than any of the
website engagement metrics. ‘Server response time’
enjoyed a conversion rate correlation three times
stronger than the best engagement metric, ‘average
session duration’.
Because site speed is a SEO ranking factor, smart digital
marketers can benefit from a ‘site speed multiplier
effect as their faster site earns more traffic combined
with a higher conversion rate.”

4. More from Wolfgang…
“We found Average Server Response time is 0.76 seconds.
We also found a strong correlation between low server response times and
high conversion rates. This means for every two tenths of second you
shave off your server response time you can expect to see an an 8% lift in
conversion rate. Unsurprisingly, there was also a strong correlation
between high server response time and high bounce rate.”
“Average page load time 6.5 seconds.
This is significantly slower than the 2 second threshold for e-
commerce websites recommended by Google. Amazon’s
research into site speed found that every one second delay
reduces conversion rate by a whopping 7%.”
Source: Wolfgang 2016 E-commerce KPI Benchmarks Study

5. More Problem Definition
“A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7%
reduction in conversions.” - KISSmetrics
“1 out of 5 online shoppers will abandon their cart because
the transaction process was too slow..” - Radware
Got that? These are people you had gotten to come
to your site, and convinced them to buy. They were
in the process of buying when they left you. And
are less likely to ever come back.

6. And Even More Problem Definition
“The average load time for mobile sites is 19 seconds
over 3G connections…we found that 53% of mobile site
visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3
seconds to load.” - DoubleClick
“Sites that loaded in 5 seconds vs 19 seconds were
observed to have: 60% greater pageviews per visit. 35%
lower bounce rates.”- DoubleClick

7. What Does Google Say?
Says…
“53% of mobile site visitors leave a
page that takes longer than three
seconds to load.”
“Our research has been eye-opening.
For 70% of the pages we analyzed, it
took nearly seven seconds for the
visual content above the fold to display
on the screen, and it took more than
10 seconds to fully load all visual
content above and below the fold.”

8. Some Cases - Shopzilla
Shopzilla.com
It’s an old case from 2009, but still instructive.
• Load time brought from 6 to 1.2 seconds
• Conversions increased 7-12%
• Pageviews increased 25%
• SEM based sessions increased 8%
This was almost a decade ago. Speed is even more
important now.

9. Some Cases - Walmart
Walmart.com
From 2012.
• 2% increase in conversions for every ONE
second of speed savings.
• 1% additional revenue per 1/10 second
savings in speed.
• SEO Benefits.

10. Cascade Consequence: SEO
 Slow site speed can affect SEO.
“As part of that effort, today we're including a new
signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site
speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web
requests.” - Google Blog 4/9/2010
 Let’s say this more clearly. If you are slow,
Google will hurt you.

11. How Does Speed Hurt SEO?
 We can’t tell how slow pages can hurt SEO. Google is vague about
how the signal affects ranking.
 We don’t know if slow is based on time to first byte or full page
render and how many seconds is of concern.
 Google will also do this for your mobile experience. To what
degree and when is all up to them.
 Bottom Line: This is happening. And it will
likely matter more and more over time.

12. The Verdict on Speed and SEO
 There’s no way to know for sure of the impact. There are
anecdotal reports and some impossible to be
comprehensive studies. But it’s Google’s algorithm. Their
Secret Sauce.
 Here’s the thing though, we’ve already shown the value of
getting load time down. So think of any SEO juice as bonus.

13. Is This YOUR Problem?
 Is this your problem as a Product
Manager?
 Isn’t this kind of thing the
responsibility of the CTO?
 Well… yeah. And no.
 There costs to network hardware,
bandwidth, and more. That’s part of
P&L. So you have to share that.

14. Why Does Speed Matter to Users?
 It’s not just frustration.
 Humans have thresholds for short term
memory retention.
 The idea of “flow” isn’t just for sports or
work. We have it for everything.
 When things for which we’re in task
flow take too long, we can lose our train
of thought and become frustrated.
 And yes, perceived time during a
focused task can seem longer than
actual time.
Sensory
Memory
Short-term
Memory
Forgotten
Info

15. Convinced?

16. Why Do Pages Load Slowly?
 Poor architecture in the first place.
Code bloat, non-optimized graphics.
 Unexpected usage loads.
 Perhaps the number one reason is code and tag bloat over
time. Things creep in. Feature after feature, marketing code
tag after tag.
 Tags and other tools introduce third party code and content
that might not be optimized.

17. Why Do Pages Load Slowly?
 Too many server requests. (Worse for mobile)
 Large graphics.
Poorly optimized graphics.
Graphics can take up large percentages of overall page byte
count.
 Lot’s of ad calls and other third party widget calls that may
not be efficient.

18. Problems With Fixing Speed Issues
 Speed alone isn’t really a sexy feature.
 There are many points along the page load journey that can
affect speed.
 Mobile has made things harder.

19. Speed Challenges with Mobile
 Bandwidth is obvious issue.
 Device processing capability varies.
 Software may work differently.
 E.g., browser caches less robust.
 Mobile latency can change if a user turns a
corner or if it happens to be raining.
 Multiple requests are problematic.
 If Mobile is critical, you may need to analyze
Adaptive vs. Responsive methods.

20. What You Should Be Looking At
 Generally you’re going to take action on things you’re
measuring.
 Speed is a KPI you need to be measuring.
 Do you have a target load time?
For first pixels to render?
For total page load?
 What are competitor benchmarks?

21. Diagnose Your Problem
 Where are you now?
Determine your baselines.
 Page speed is made up of both page
and site architecture and networking
issues.
 A proper approach to measurement
will involve multiple methods.

22. General Types of Testing
 Synthetic
Lab testing. Clean browsers, etc. Goal is to understand what the
best cases can be.
 Real User Monitoring (RUM)
Real users connected to typical ’net connections, mostly clean
browsers, but many types of hardware, latencies, etc.
These are really complementary methods. It takes both to give a full
picture of what’s going on. (And even then you won’t fully know.)

23. Monitoring Speed
 There are – as usual – a wide variety of tools, both do it
yourself and professional enterprise grade, for monitoring
site performance.
 Note: Tools that help diagnose and monitor web site speed
may also provide server uptime monitoring. However,
operational monitoring is an entirely separate topic and
also has it’s own dedicated toolsets.

24. Some Basic Quick Look Tools – Developer Tools
 Chrome Developer Tools
Easy to plug in to browser.
Use the Network tab to see
load times for elements and
whole pages.
You can disable cache, throttle
speed, and determine scripts
that block rendering.

25. Some Basic Quick Look Tools – Google Insights
 Google’s Page Speed Insights
 ”PageSpeed Insights analyzes the
content of a web page, then
generates suggestions to make that
page faster.”

26. Some Basic Quick Look Tools – Ghostery
 The Ghostery product
isn’t a speed tool. It’s
primarily to identify
and potentially block
tracking technology.
 Also useful for
troubleshooting.

27. More Speed Test Tools – WEBPAGETEST
 Sponsored by Google,
this Open Source
Project shows loading
waterfall charts, Page
Speed optimization
checks and suggestions.

28. More Speed Test Tools – GTmetrix
 Freemium & Pro.
 Page load times,
requests, benchmarks,
visualizations.

29. More Speed Test Tools – HttpWatch
 Commercial Product.
 Page debugging, Network
traffic debugging,
automation testing,
recommendations,
compare to others.

30. More Speed Test Tools – Pingdom
 Commercial Product.
 Heartbeat / uptime
monitoring, Real User
Monitoring, load speed
analysis, alert / incident
reporting.

31. More Speed Test Tools – New Relic
 Commercial Product.
 Large scale testing
platform. Applications
and networking
monitoring. Requests
reporting, geographic
performance, API testing,
etc.

32. Fixing Problems: Overall Goals
 Get things rendering asap.
 This follows an information scent pattern.
 Minimally, let the user see that things are happening.
This can be called “Time to Value” Get them some value and
maybe they’ll hang around. But show them a blank nothing and
they’re gone

33. Cutting Down Load Time
 Get Diagnostics Going.
Select Tools.
Instrument your site as needed.

34. Cutting Down Load Time (cont’d)
 Code Review.
Remove components where possible.
This not only reduces byte count and possible processing time,
but also the number of network requests.
Get rid of junk. Comments are generally good, but unnecessary text
and lines may have crept in over time.
Gzip compression.

35. Cutting Down Load Time (cont’d)
JavaScript in particular can be problematic. Besides being
interpreted in the browser, moving elements around, swapping CSS,
etc., can slow things down. (As well as use of Ajax calls.)
jQuery can be a decent chunk of code. In most cases, it’s
unquestionably needed. But be sure about this. If you can get away
without it, that’s something to consider.
Can you use local storage / cache better?

36. Cutting Down Load Time (cont’d)
 Optimize Graphics and Videos.
While this is a well known issue, it can easily be an afterthought.
 Consider a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
This will require financial analysis, but getting content, (especially
‘heavy’ content), closer to users via edge of network servers can
help.

37. Cutting Down Load Time (cont’d)
 Optimize Critical Rendering Path.
 This is somewhat advanced.
 The goal is pixels to screen as soon
as possible.
 Google offers a free course on how
to study and adjust rendering order.
 Progressive rendering can be “lazy”
by only loading as items come into
viewport, or focus on ”above the
fold” or other options.

38. Thanks!
From the Udemy.com online course: Digital Product Management