Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

20
1 Presents: Webinar

description

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

Transcript of Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

Page 1: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

1

Presents:

Webinar

Page 2: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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: Submit in the question box during event

Page 3: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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%

Page 4: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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

Page 5: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

Source: Flickr – asparagus_hunter

PageSpeed vs. Reliability

Page 6: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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

Page 7: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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

Page 8: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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

Page 9: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

9

Walmart.com – PageSpeed Impact on ConversionSource: 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

Page 10: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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:

Page 11: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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

Page 12: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

Identifying Single Point of Failure (SPOF)

Source: Flickr – CyberHades

Page 13: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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/2011/10/testing-for-frontend-spof.html

• http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2010/06/01/frontend-spof/

o Tools:

• SPOF-O-MATIC (Chrome Plugin): https://github.com/pmeenan/spof-o-matic

• 3P0 (YSLOW Plugin)https://github.com/stoyan/yslow

Page 14: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

14

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

Page 15: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

Listen to Your UsersSource: Flickr – jamescridland

Page 16: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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?

Page 17: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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!

Page 18: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

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 Paperswww.soasta.com/knowledge-

center/whitepapers

“Retail Best Practices”

“Strategies for Seasonal Readiness”

Page 19: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

19

Rob Holcomb

Page 20: Keys To World-Class Retail Web Performance - Expert tips for holiday web readiness

20

Thanks & Q&A

Contact SOASTA:www.soasta.com/cloudtest/[email protected] us:

twitter.com/cloudtesttwitter.com/cloudtest

facebook.com/cloudtestfacebook.com/cloudtest

White Papers, Webinar Recordings, Case Studieswww.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: [email protected] @cliffcrocker

Contact Rob: [email protected] @rcholcomb