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By
MARK FEMAL
Beantree Inc.
We all know that some Web sites are faster than others.
But what factors affect the speed of a Web site? Research
has been done to show the perceived response time of a Web
site impacts the number of site visitors received. This
chart, taken from Computer, an IEEE Computer Society publication
(December 2001) shows a relationship that faster sites do
experience more visitors. Note that the amount of information
downloaded (content size) is not always directly related
to the response time and unique visitors. It is arguable
that as this content size increases the response time will
increase assuming that all other influencing factors remain
constant.
When tailoring your site content and functionality to your
audience, it is extremely critical to ensure that the construction
of your site conforms to what your expected visitor may
be using for a connection. For instance, if your site is
targeting the general public, it is best to ensure your
site performs well using a standard 56k modem rather than
the high-speed connection your business office may have.
Conversely, if your target is other businesses who may have
faster connections, you may want to sacrifice a little speed
for a more graphical experience.
Factors which affect speed There are many factors which
influence the speed of a Web site. These factors can be
classified into issues which are either controllable or
uncontrollable. Obviously your focus should be on those
factors which are controllable and will yield the most value.
For simplicity purposes, we will ignore the factors which
aren't easily controlled. For instance, many sites do not
manage the speed of their visitors unless their Web site
is tailored specifically towards a sales force they provide
connections for or between some interconnected office locations.
The following factors should be considered the most important
when improving the speed of your site:
Web hosting environment
Shared b. Dedicated
Load
balanced
Connection speed
Hardware and software used
Content efficiency
Page complexity
Graphical elements
Processing requirements
Web hosting environment Arguably the biggest factor that
affects how quickly your Web site performs is the type of
Web hosting environment your site is deployed in. For many
small to medium-sized businesses, a shared hosting environment
is chosen. This means a Web site is located physically on
the same computer system as several or perhaps hundreds
of other Web sites. Think of this as renting part of a computer
system from another company. For the budget conscious, this
is the least expensive option but may be the most problematic
depending on your requirements. A problem with another Web
site can potentially cause problems with your site.
Dedicated hosting is the next step up from shared hosting.
Dedicated, as implied in the name, allocates a dedicated
computer system for all your processing needs. Your site
will receive a dramatic boost of speed going from a shared
to a dedicated environment. This improvement is not only
related to the fact that your Web site doesn't compete for
computing resources with other sites, but you can also custom
tailor your dedicated system to your specific needs. You
could go from a more powerful shared hosting solution to
a lesser powered dedicated solution and still experience
great gains. It is best to check with your Web hosting company
to see what equipment options may be available to you. Load
balanced Web hosting is much like dedicated hosting, but
some additional componentry is in place to allow your site
to run on more than one computer system. Load balancing
hardware not only detects when something goes wrong, but
also distributes the processing for your site across a group
of systems. Two sample policies for load balancing include
evenly distributing web requests across all systems or tailoring
requests based on the processing power of the equipment.
This Web hosting option is a must for sites with 99.99%
or above uptime requirements. More complexity is added if
you have interactive applications on your site to account
for this load balanced behavior. Most corporate environments
employ solutions in this high-availability environment.
Many Web hosting companies do not provide this level of
service due its complexities so it is important to check
your Web hosting provider. Connection speed is another important
factor but this is not the connection speed of your Web
site visitors.
This is the connection speed that you or your Web hosting
company provides directly to your Web site. Most hosting
companies manage this factor through their own default policies
and service level agreements. The last concern in your Web
hosting environment is the hardware and software used. It
is easy to demonstrate that faster processors, more memory
and faster disk drives can speed up your Web site. It is
harder to determine the software components and configurations
necessary for your site to perform optimally. These hardware
and software choices used should be driven by your requirements.
It is extremely valuable to gain insights from professionals
on this complex subject. For instance, in some environments
it may make sense to utilize dedicated hardware or software
caching systems to place your Web content closer to your
Web site visitors.
Companies such as Akamai specialize in these high-end content
distribution systems. Content Efficiency The other primary
factor which affects the speed of a Web site is the page
complexity. The more dynamic your Web site is the more complex
your site becomes. From a construction standpoint, it is
best to avoid overly complex tables and keep your pages
to the minimum needed for your design to be effective. Many
tools that exist which allow builders to put together a
Web site are not designed with download speed in mind. These
tools may increase the size of your pages by a factor of
2 or more.
The graphical elements of your site also affect the download
time. It is best to stick with images which are JPEG or
if needed GIF. Limit the size of your images to 20kb or
under if possible. With many image editing tools, decreasing
the number of colors in those images greatly reduces the
size of these files without taking away from clarity.
The processing requirements of your site can also affect
speed. For instance, your order management solution may
be dependent on the speed of your database or other middleware
systems. One must monitor the performance of the complete
end-to-end environment to understand any bottlenecks.
This includes any third parties which you communicate to
through your Web site. It is important to design these systems
with both efficiency and accuracy in mind. You don't want
your Web site to appear slow because some other third party
system is being unresponsive or slow.
By managing your efficiency requirements you can expect
to have a more pleasant experience for your Web site visitors.
One must think of the mantra "time is money".
Consider that you only have around eight seconds to capture
a Web site visitor's attention. Delivering your content
to visitors efficiently will also help you capture their
loyalty.
Mark Femal is Lead Technical Analyst for Beantree, Inc.
with 7 years of Internet Development Experience. Direct
any questions via email to
[email protected].
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