Gawker readers are leaving in droves. Is slow performance partly to blame?

From the blog of Strangeloop president, Joshua Bixby:

Gawker Media’s radical redesign of all its sites has left a lot of readers unhappy, and they’re apparently leaving in droves. TechCrunch reports that a couple of the sites have suffered major traffic hits, with Gizmodo and Gawker.com losing up to half of their accustomed page views.

The comments from upset readers point to issues with the sites’ new design and architecture, but my hunch is that people will often complain about a website’s design, when what they’re really reacting to is speed and usability. So I ran Webpagetests on Gawker’s three biggest sites, then compared them to archived tests from November 2010.* (Here’s where I thank Pat Meenan profusely for keeping such a great public archive of old tests. It’s really useful to have them around for benchmarking purposes.)

Read the full post here. 

Google’s latest search change highlights the importance of unique site contents

Published in Internet Retailer: 

The changes could benefit retailers indirectly, says Joshua Bixby, co-founder and president of Strangeloop, a company that helps web merchants improve site speed and rankings. "This is excellent news for e-retailers. The quality of Google results has dramatically decreased as content farms have learned to game the system," he says. "I am ecstatic that companies focused on creating unique content and providing real value to customers will see search rankings improve."

Read the full article here.

Legit Sites Could Get Caught in Google's Content Farm Crosshairs

Published in TechNewsWorld: 

"The goal of this action was to target very specific companies that make a living gumming up the first page of search engine rankings and, most importantly, to score a big PR win," Joshua Bixby, cofounder and president of Strangeloop, told TechNewsWorld.

However, there is the danger that legitimate sites might be targeted by the new algorithm.

"Like all previous changes, this algorithm will probably catch the good guys as well," Bixby opined. "Some SEOs (search engine optimizers) have reported seeing 40 percent traffic drops to their sites already."

Read the full article here. 

This is your brain on a slow website: Lab experiments quantify “web stress”

From the blog of Strangeloop president, Joshua Bixby:

A hat tip to Stephen Thair, who heads up the London Web Performance Meetup Group, for his recent Web Performance 101 presentation, which pointed me toward this study that measures the neurological impact of poor web performance.

Last year, CA Technologies commissioned Foviance to conduct a series of lab experiments at Glasgow Caledonian University. The participants wore an EEG (electroencephalography) cap to monitor their brain wave activity while they performed two commonplace online transactions: finding and buying a laptop on a leading e-commerce site, and finding and buying travel insurance on an insurance website. The experiment also used EOG (electrooculograph) technology to track eye movements and facial muscle movements.

Participants completed tasks using either a 5Mb web connection, or a connection that had been artificially throttled to 2Mb. Slowing down the connection allowed Foviance to simulate the real-world user experience of an unresponsive website.

Find out what they found here.

Announcing the Strangeloop Speed:Revenue Calculator

Joshua Bixby announces Strangeloop's newly redesigned website on his blog:

I’m very happy to announce the launch of our newly re-designed Strangeloop website. Not only does the site have a great new design, it also features a nifty tool that I’m pretty excited about:

Find out more abour the Speed:Revenue Calculator here. 

Is the J.C. Penney SEO scandal relevant to the web performance industry?

From the blog of Strangeloop president Joshua Bixby:

If you haven’t yet read The New York Times article The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, you should. It reads like a shady underground exposé of an art smuggling ring — making SEO sound almost glamorous. One of the most interesting things I’ve read all week.

What I found most interesting is the distinction the article makes between activities that are actually illegal and those that are “Google illegal”.

Read the full post here.

Revving Up for Speed

Published in Chain Store Age:

It’s no secret that site speed can directly impact the performance of a site and ultimately affect revenue, conversion and page views. But surprisingly, new research shows sites are getting slower — not faster. According to data conducted from Strangeloop Networks, a Vancouver-based provider of Web acceleration solutions, the average page-load time of a site at the end of 2010 was just over 11 seconds, compared with seven seconds earlier in the year.

As merchants add more dynamic features to their sites, performance can start to drag. In response, retailers big and small are seeking technology solutions that can handle their growing sites, not only during critical periods but all year-round.

AutoAnything — a San Diego-based online retailer that specializes in custom automotive accessories and performance parts — first sought a solution in fall 2009 that could keep the site running smoothly despite its various performance-zappers. With more than 4 million items to choose from on its image-rich pages, AutoAnything also touts live chat, a recommendation engine and site personalization.

Read the full article here.

Slow websites make people angry

From the blog of Strangeloop president, Joshua Bixby:

Stating the obvious, right? But I find that it’s easy to quote the well-known Aberdeen Group study and say “A one-second delay in page load time equals a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction” without thinking about the reality of that customer dissatisfaction.

So, inspired by Duncan McDougall’s recent post about searching “slow site” on Twitter to see what came up, I decided to have a go at it myself:

“Am staring at the HMRC website. It’s like staring into the abyss. Suspect hell is akin to waiting for a very slow website to load and crash.”
“Is it just me or is The Sims 3 Website like really freaking SLOW!!!! WTF EA, get some faster servers”
“Sprint’s “new” website is running so slow i feel like im running on a 14k modem.. so prehistoric stuff here..”
“Tmobile’s website reminds me of Dial Up Modems, so slow. #FAIL”

Read the full post here.

Review: Blaze Mobile performance measurement tool

From the blog of Strangeloop president, Joshua Bixby:

Our industry has been in desperate need of a solid tool that measures real-world mobile website performance. Blaze Mobile — which is based on the Webpagetest framework — may be just what we’ve been waiting for.

The tool is still in beta, and the folks at Blaze has a list of known issues they’re working on. It’s up to the rest of us to take it for a test drive, see how it performs, and offer our feedback.

I thought it would be interesting to start by testing the current top 5 sites in Keynote’s mobile commerce index and benchmark Blaze’s results alongside Keynote’s.

Find out the results by reading the full post here.

Strangeloop Accelerates Online Photo Centers for PNI Digital Media

PNI Digital Media, leading innovator in online and in-store digital media solutions for retailers, has selected the Strangeloop Site Optimizer to accelerate its websites.

The PNI Digital Media Platform allows the world’s largest retailers to offer personalized products such as photo prints and photo books, ordered online and produced on demand for pick up and purchase at a consumers preferred retail location. The PNI Digital Media Platform connects 14,000 retail locations, 9000 of which offer a one-hour pick up of photo prints and photo gifts ordered online. The implementation of the Strangeloop Site Optimizer came just in time for PNI to take advantage of the peak holiday season, which typically sees more than 5 million image uploads and more than 150,000 orders during a single day.

"We tested Strangeloop’s Site Optimizer after a careful review of all the delivery-based web acceleration technology available in the market," said Aaron Rallo, President of PNI Digital Media. "We were immediately impressed with Site Optimizer’s ease of deployment, performance benefits, and its ability to scale across our enterprise."

Read the full annoucement.