As Walmart.com’s former head of Performance and Reliability, Cliff Crocker knows large scale web performance. Now SOASTA’s VP of products, Cliff is pouring his passion and expertise into cloud testing to solve the biggest challenges in mobile and web performance. The holiday rush of mobile and web traffic to your web site has the potential for unprecedented success or spectacular public failure. The world’s leading retailers have turned to the cloud to assure that no matter what load, mobile and web apps will delight customers and protect revenue. Join us as Cliff explores the key criteria for holiday web performance readiness: Closing the gap in front- and back-end web performance and reliability Collecting real user data to define the most realistic test scenarios Preparing properly for the virtual walls of traffic during peak events Leveraging CloudTest technology, as have 6 of 10 leading retailers

1. 1
Presents:
Webinar

2. 2
Expert Guidance on Retail Web Performance
TODAY’S SOASTA PRESENTERS
Cliff Crocker: VP Product Management (via Walmart)
Rob Holcomb: VP Performance Engineering (on loan from our retail
clients)
Moderator: Brad Johnson
Agenda:
• Poll question
• Closing the gap in front- and back-end web performance and
reliability
• Collecting real user data to define the most realistic test
scenarios
• Preparing properly for the virtual walls of traffic during peak
events
• Leveraging CloudTest technology
Questions:

3. 3
If you had to pick one area, which would you
select as the most critical to test for web
performance?
•Page speed = 26%
•Reliability and scalability in production =
55%
•Impact of integrated and 3rd
party services = 5%
•Back end infrastructure =
13%

4. 4
o 10 years working with (and for) retailers to
improve performance of their mobile and
web applications
o Joined SOASTA this year!
• Last 2 years leading Performance and Reliability
for @Walmartlabs (multi-tenant global
ecommerce platforms)
o Core focus: Understanding, measuring,
and testing for the optimal user experience

5. Source: Flickr – asparagus_hunter
PageSpeed vs. Reliability

6. Two Different Battles in the Performance
War
PageSpeed
•Client-side (browser)
•Best practices to decrease
perceived load time
•Focus is on front-end
development
•FASTER
Reliability
•Scalability
•Consistency under load –
peak period degradation
•Identifying bottlenecks
across the entire stack
•STRONGER

7. 7
o PageSpeed alone isn’t enough
o Common misconception: Traditional optimizations
for front-end translate to reliability under
increased capacity
“An analysis carried out by Compuware
found that the official London 2012
Olympics website may struggle to cope
with high demand”
Source: Computerworlduk.com
“Olympics websites get gold
medal for performance”
Source: www.v3.co.uk

8. 8
o The two disciplines are not
necessarily reliant on each
other
o Both are a necessary part of
your holiday readiness
strategy
thenounproject.com

9. 9
Walmart.com – PageSpeed Impact on Conversion
Source: http://www.meetup.com/SF-Web-Performance-Group/events/50485972/
Conversion
Rate:
Percentage of
users who
bought
something during
their visit
Load Time:
Time spent
loading content
and page
processing
(client-side)
Huge drop in engagement
with every second increase

10. 10
o Make fewer & smaller requests (images, js, css, etc.)
o Use a Content Deliver Network (CDN)
o Leverage browser caching
o Simplify the DOM (reduce the complexity of your HTML)
Webperf
101 – basic
principles
o http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html
o https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/best-practices/rules_intro
o http://webpagetest.org
Resources:

11. 11
o While there are many things you might find ‘wrong’ with your site using
traditional measurement tools, there are a few that give you the biggest bang for
the buck
o Consequently, they are typically some of the easier issues to address
1. HTTP Keep Alives – use them
2. Clean out your closet, remove tags and other third party content that you no longer need
3. Combine your JavaScript and CSS
4. Enable HTTP Compression
5. Compress your images
6. Check cache settings
Typically will have an impact on the scalability of a site as well

12. Identifying Single Point of Failure (SPOF)
Source: Flickr – CyberHades

13. 13
o Even big whales go down
• No matter how solid your site is, dependency on 3rd
parties can lead to your
downfall
o Requests for third parties can kill your performance if you don’t plan
for their failure
o Relevant Posts:
• http://blog.patrickmeenan.com/201
1/10/testing-for-frontend-spof.html
• http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/20
10/06/01/frontend-spof/
o Tools:
• SPOF-O-MATIC (Chrome Plugin):
https://github.com/pmeenan/spof-o-
matic
• 3P0 (YSLOW
Plugin)https://github.com/stoyan/yslow

14. 14
‘Site X’ –
Normal
State - .9s
start render
‘Site X’ –
Simulated
SPOF - 43s
start render!

15. Listen to Your Users
Source: Flickr – jamescridland

16. 16
• Where should I test from?
• What browsers should I
optimize for?
• What are the most critical
paths to test?
• What is the baseline for
server response?
• What is my cache/hit ratio?
• How long is a typical
session?
• What are page views/hour at
peak?

17. 17
o Understand your critical path
• Not always the most common path
through a site
• According to Forrester (2007) –
average conversion rate is 2.9% -
this means that you should be
testing the 97th
percentile!

18. 18
o Test early – don’t wait until October!
o Test in production throughout the year
o Test often / baseline each release in PQA
o Use repeatable tests
• Apples to Apples
• Maintain scripts to minimize test creation efforts
o Pick metrics that make sense to you and your organization
• TTFB, Page Views, Orders Per Minute
o Testing Third Parties
• CDNs – Yes, but partner with them for success (SOASTA is Akamai-approved)
• Other – it depends… remember SPOF
SOASTA White Papers
www.soasta.com/knowledge-
center/whitepapers
“Retail Best Practices”
“Strategies for Seasonal
Readiness”

19. 19
Rob Holcomb

20. 20
Thanks & Q&A
Contact SOASTA:
www.soasta.com/cloudtest/
info@soasta.com
866.344.8766
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White Papers, Webinar Recordings, Case Studies
www.soasta.com - Knowledge Center
Next Webinar: Aug. 28, 10 a.m. PST
“Getting Started with CloudTest Lite”
Register at www.soasta.com/knowledge-center/webinars
Contact Cliff:
ccrocker@soasta.co
m
@cliffcrocker
Contact Rob:
rholcomb@soasta.co
m @rcholcomb