The Importance of Website Performance (Sources)

The Importance of Website PerformanceLately in some of my writing projects I’ve had to hunt down sources to demonstrate the importance of web page speed. Usually a quick Google search will pull up some pretty good ones, and I have a few others on file that I can refer to.

I thought I would put together a roundup of some of the ones I’ve been able to find. Web development bloggers, who are constantly promoting the importance of web page speed, should have these types of authoritative sources at their fingertips.

So consider this post the collective evidence for the importance of page speed. Posts are listed from oldest to newest.

If you know of any other good sources that discuss why page speed matters, add them to the comments and I’ll continually update this post. And keep in mind, these are sources that show why page speed matters not how to make pages faster.

So if you’re heading to a client meeting or want to discuss with your boss why it’s wrong to polyfill some CSS3 or HTML5 feature so it works in IE6/IE7/IE8, this might be a good way to show the potential effects of slowing down the slowest browser.

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14 Responses

  1. ehhwhat.co.uk:
    Dec 7/2011 7:12am

    Thanks for this, really useful information.

    Reply
  2. Mike - Focus97:
    Dec 7/2011 11:43am

    Dig the roundup of articles. Before I finished the redesign/re-engineering of my site, I grabbed the PageSpeed addition to Firebug and heeded it’s warnings. After quite a few hours of optimizing the front-end scripting and server output, I managed to get PageSpeed scores of 90-95. http://focus97.com

    Now we do the same for client sites. It’s tough to gauge the true ‘experience’ from a user/visitor’s perspective, but average visit times have increased, perhaps owing to the speed not being a distraction (i.e. when it was slower).

    Reply
  3. Dan:
    Dec 7/2011 12:58pm

    Hi,

    You may find this article and infographic interesting;
    http://www.shiftscape.com/website/the-need-for-speed/

    Dan

    Reply
  4. Emma:
    Dec 9/2011 4:22am

    Thanks, these are really useful links and some helpful advice for shrinking load times. I know its important to cater for the slowest but I still feel like should design for the fastest – survival of the fittest! If you can’t keep up, get out the race… or update your browser or your hardware! Wrong, I know, but everyone is entitled to an opinion.

    Reply
  5. W3Spor:
    Dec 13/2011 4:06am

    Thanks, very useful article :-) Good links, and a lot of information on shrink loading time. Unfortunatly, we do’nt have any good tip.

    Reply
  6. Andy Brummer:
    Dec 20/2011 12:15pm

    As a long time web application developer I’ve found that working on a fast application lets me work so much faster. The faster I can load up and get to a page, the faster I can make changes on it or fix bugs, etc. Maintaining a slow application just slows everything down, testing, development, etc.

    Reply
  7. Justin:
    Jan 2/2012 10:11pm

    Very applicable content! There are many times where I am very frustrated by slow sites. Many people are unwilling to spend the extra cash to ensure speed, but it is ultimately worth it when it comes to web design and general website formation!

    Reply
  8. Régie publicitaire:
    Feb 19/2012 8:37am

    thank you for this Article

    Very good website !

    Reply
  10. Louis Lazaris:
    Oct 10/2012 11:37pm

    A relevant list by Steve Souders:

    Performance Tools

    Reply

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