Category: Third-Party Content

Web Performance Trends 2013 – Third Party Services

2012-12-04 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

Every site has them. Whether they’re for analytics, advertising, customer support, or CDN services, third-party services are here to stay. However, for 2013, I believe that these services will face a level of scrutiny that many have avoided up until now.

Recent performance trends indicate that while web site content has been tested and scaled to meet even the highest levels of traffic, the third-party services that these sites have some to rely on (with a few exceptions) are not yet prepared to handle the largest volumes of traffic that occur when many of their customers experience a peak on the same day.

In 2013, I see web site owners asking their third-party service providers to provide verification that their systems be able to handle the highest volumes of traffic on their busiest days, with an additional amount of overhead – I suggest 20% – available for growth and to absorb “super-spikes”. Customer experience is built on the performance of the entire site, so leaving a one component of site delivery untested (and definitely unmonitored!) leaves companies exposed to brand and reputation degradation as well as performance degradation.

In your own organizations, make 2013 the year you:

Implement tight controls over how outside content is deployed and managed
Implement tight change control policies that clearly describe the process for adding third-party content to your site, including the measurement of performance impacts
Define clear SLAs and SLOs for your third-party content providers, including the performance levels at which their content will be disabled or removed from the site.

When speak to your third-party content and service providers about their plans for 2013, ask them to:

Explicitly detail how they handled traffic on their busiest days in 2012, and what they plan to do to effectively handle growth in 2013
Clearly demonstrate how they are invested in helping their customers deliver successful mobile sites and apps in 2013
Lay out how they will provide more transparent access to system performance metrics and what the goals of their performance strategy for 2013 are.

Take control of your third-party content. Don’t let it control you.

Web Performance Trends for 2013 – Performance Optimization

2012-12-03 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

As we approach the end of 2012, I will be looking at a few trends that will become important in 2013. In a previous post, I identified optimization as an important performance trend to watch. It is one of the items on a performance checklist that companies can directly influence through the design and implementation of their web and mobile sites.

The key to optimization in any organization is to think of objects transmitted to customers, regardless of where they originate, as having a cost to you and to the customer. So, a site that makes $100,000 in a day and transfers 10 million objects to customers has an object-to-revenue ratio of 100. But, if the site is optimized and only 7.5 million objects are transferred to make $100,000, that ratio goes down to 75; and if the reduction in objects causes revenue go up to $150,000, the ratio drops to 50.

This approach is simplistic and does not include the actual cost to deliver each object, which includes costs for bandwidth, CDN services, customer service providers, etc. as well as revenue generated by third-party ads and services you present to customers. The act of balancing the cost of the site (to develop and manage), the performance you measure, the revenue you generate, the experience your customers have, and the reputation of your brand is an ongoing process that must be closely considered every time someone asks, “And if we add this to the site/app…”.

There is no optimal figure for site optimization. But there are some simple rules:

Use Sprites where you can. Combing multiple small images into aggregated image maps that you can use CSS to display gives you a double-plus good improvement – fewer objects to download and more text (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS) that can be delivered to visitors in a compressed format
Combine JavaScript and CSS files. Listen to your designers – they will likely try to convince that each file needs to be separate for some arcane reason. Listen and then ask if this is the most efficient way to deploy this particular function or formatting. Ask the developer to produce a cost/benefit analysis of doing it their way versus using something that is already in place
Control your third-party services. This means having a sane method for managing these services, and shutting them off if necessary. Have every team that is responsible for the site meet to approve (or deny) the addition of new third-party services. And those who want it better come with a strong cost/benefit analysis.

Optimization is the act of making the sites you create as effective and efficient as the business you run. No matter how “low” the cost to operate a web site is, each object on a site can cost the company more money than it is worth in revenue. And if that object slows the site down, it could turn a profitable transaction into a lost customer.

Effective Web Performance: Third-Party Providers (Or Why Herding Cats is Fun)

2009-08-18 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

It’s a rare Web site these days that hosts all of its own content. From the smallest blog to the largest retailer, Web sites farm out their images, streams, and pages to CDNs, and absorb feeds, ads, and data streams from any number of outside providers.

Effective Web performance demands that a site take responsibility for the entire site, not just the parts under direct local management. Why? Because customers see a problem with your site, not with a provider.

How can the performance all of the third-party content on a site be managed? Using the exactly the same strategies already place to manage the performance of local content.

Measure from the outside-in

Customers come from the Internet. That measuring the performance of a site from the perspective of visitors is being mentioned here should not be a surprise. Critical to this part of managing third-parties is the ability to see into the page and determine if there are performance issues requesting and transmitting data from third-parties.

In the first article of this series, I detailed a number of approaches to actively gathering performance data. This method, whether from the datacenter or the last mile, will provide the early warning signs that there is an issue with a third-party, and feeding this data into the performance issue management plan.

Measure from inside the browser

The network and application performance of a third-party page component is just the start of the process, as this is what it takes to get the object to the browser. But what if this object then launches a number of actions, or starts to render on the screen. This may lead to a whole different range of issues that are a blind spot when analyzing Web performance.

Measuring the performance of discrete page elements from within the visitors browser will provide deeper insight into what effects the customer sees and which third-parties will need to be approached in order to improve the overall Web performance of the site.

Have clear and useful SLOs and SLAs

Service level objectives and service level agreements are often thrown about whenever there is the suspicion that there is a Web performance issue. Using these documents and frameworks as a club to beat up partners with is counter-productive.

SLOs and SLAs should clearly detail:

the performance expectations of the Web site owner
the performance and delivery capabilities of the third-party provider

Guess what? Arriving at this in a way that doesn’t lead to resentment and mistrust on both sides requires open and honest discussion.

Share data

If Web site owners and third-parties are going to work together to ensure the most effective Web performance strategy possible, then data must flow freely. Vendors will need access to the same data that Web site owners have (and vice versa) in order to ensure that if an issue is detected, everyone can examine all of the available data, and solve the problem quickly.

Communication

A recurring and critical theme when establishing a culture of effective Web performance is communication. When working with third-parties, this is even more critical, as the performance culture of one organization may be completely different from another. The Web site owner may have one site of criteria that determines a Web performance issue, while the vendor has another, and unless these are understood, problems will occur.

Clear communication paths must be baked into the SLA. Named contacts or contact paths will be there, as will expected response times for inbound requests, and escalation procedures.

When there is a performance issue, both sides will need to be very clear about how each other will respond.

Takeaways

Third-party content on Web sites is a fact. It shouldn’t be a headache. Effective Web performance measurement strategies, shared sources of Web performance data, and clearly understood paths and methods of communication will make using third-party content less stress-inducing to everyone.