Everybody Loves Performance: Easy Audits and Low-Hanging Fruit

In 2008 Amazon reported that an extra second of page load time would cost them 10% of profit. A decade is an eternity on the web, and Amazon was already the largest online retailer, but that wasn't an anomaly. Countless studies by other organizations have since produced similar results. You don't have to sell billions of products - or any at all - to see the effect that performance has on engagement. You also don't have to spend a dime to see where you might be able to shave time off of a website or application.

We will share how to audit page performance through the lens of user experience. We'll touch on which metrics are relevant in today's landscape and how to measure them. We'll also learn how to identify and measure the competition, both direct and indirect. We'll then combine those results with industry standards to create aggressive yet realistic goals. From there we can start identifying the low-hanging fruit to help us achieve those goals. The end result is an improved user experience that realizes lost engagement.

This session extends its welcome beyond those typically keen to User Experience. It will not include code examples and will benefit both a technical and non-technical audience. Every tool we'll discuss is free and easy to use. A basic understanding of web requests will help, but it requires no prior knowledge.