How long does it take to make a site fast and accelerate its web pages?

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Like us, you’re aware of the importance of loading times for your SEO, user experience and conversion rates. If webperf is a project you’re considering to improve your speed, you may be wondering how, with what resources, and above all, how much time to devote to it. To answer these questions, we interviewed our CEO, Stéphane Rios, formerly CTO of Rue Du Commerce, and above all… a speed enthusiast and inveterate millisecond hunter.

How quickly can you optimize your website’s page load speed?

Stéphane Rios: In reality, you can’t say “it takes so many days or so many hours to get good loading times”, because speed is a subject to be tackled as a priority. The question is how much time you’re willing to allocate to it in your backlog. In itself, you could devote 100% of your time to working on your code, files and resources to optimize speed, but obviously, no IT department works like that.
To optimize your front-end and speed up your website, you need to set aside regular, long-term time slots to make sure you’re always on top of things. Because – and I insist on this point – website speed needs constant attention, it’s not a one-off job.

Why can’t speeding up a website be done once and for all, for example, during a redesign?

S. R. : Because it’s the same with SEO. For Google to rank well, a website has to be continuously optimized, but that doesn’t mean that’s all you do all day long.
It’s the same for loading times: a redesign won’t miraculously solve everything. Even if it’s an opportunity to reduce the weight of images, clean up HTML code, CSS and JS files, clean up Third Parties, and generally optimize all resources to reduce overall page weight and facilitate the browser’s work… every evolution or new functionality on a page can have a negative impact on speed.

This is what Le Parisienobserved , for example: despite a redesign that reduced the Speed Index by 60%, after just one quarter, some performance indicators had already deteriorated by 25%. So no, speed and loading times can’t be “fixed once and for all”. To bring webperf work closer to SEO, I return to my comparison with Google SEO: a page may rank well for a given period, but you have to work over time to maintain its performance. It’s the same for a page to be displayed as quickly as possible on a browser.

To illustrate the benefits of working on loading times over the long term, let’s take Rue Du Commerce as an example. They’ve managed to become the fastest e-commerce site in France [editor’s note: this website regularly tops the JDN mobile webperf rankings]. How did they do it? It’s precisely becausewebperf is in the DNA of all our teams that they’ve achieved these results.

But how do you get organized and know how much time to devote to improving the speed of your website?

S.R. : It all depends on the size of the project and the maturity of the web performance issue. If you’ve got a substantiallegacy to manage, you may need to put in a lot of effort at the outset to achieve the desired effect on page load times. For example, 2 to 3 man-days per week initially, then 2 to 3 man-days per month at cruising speed.

What takes the longest to optimize website speed? How do you prioritize optimizations?

S. R.: Generally speaking, the most time-consuming part is cleaning up the code in CSS and JS (JavaScript) files. It’s not easy because there are often a lot of dependencies, and these code optimizations can take weeks.

In addition, a veritable archeology may be required to identify unused elements on the site, so that they can be removed to reduce page weight. This is all the more true when layers have piled up over time.

However, it’s essential before undertaking the rest of the work, because you need a clean base to work on speed and achieve pages that the browser can display quickly.

Imagecompression is also a complex task, especially when starting from an existing catalog, because of the impact it has on DevOps and infrastructure. It’s a delicate task insofar as image compression has to be done intelligently. Unlike code optimization for CSS and JS files, there are many possible ways of optimizing images, and this requires expertise.

You also need to spend time on cache management, defining and implementing the right strategy (CDN cache, server cache or browser cache) and the right flush circuits. This is another area requiring specialized skills.

And how do you organize a team to tackle a webperf project to improve speed? Who can do it?

S.R.: As with any project, you need a leader. It may sound obvious, but a webperf project needs to be steered by an identified resource, and one who is also supported by the decision-makers (C-Level). This last point is important if the subject is to remain a priority.
Ideally, you need to be able to count on the following resources:

  • Frontenddevelopment , mastery of HTML, JavaScript, CSS… ;
  • Devops for subjects such as HTTP/2cache management, server performance on the infra side… ;
  • Backenddevelopment .

As you can see, speed concerns everyone! But don’t get me wrong: I don’t recommend setting up a dedicated team to optimize loading times. Webperf needs to infuse everyone, rather than a team working alone in its own corner, which would run the risk of being at odds with the rest of the stakeholders.
That’s why performance must be present in all strata of IT, and also in functional teams. For example, project management resources need to be made aware of web performance, so that when it comes to testing, speed standards and performance are taken into account as much as usability.

Depending on a team’s capacity in terms of time, resources and budget, web performance can be handled in-house. Here’s some inspiration with feedback from Aniss Boumrigua, IT Manager at Rue Du Commerce, who testified at We Love Speed 2018. He explains how he succeeded in making webperf a company-wide issue, and how he federated teams around this common project: improving speed for better performance, and boosting conversion rates as well as SEO.

In conclusion, speed has to be addressed on an ongoing basis, and it has to be a top priority for all teams: IT, but also marketing, e-commerce, product…

S. R. : Exactly! Commando mode doesn’t work in the long run. Why is that? Because you don’t need a good PageSpeedscore just for Black Friday or sales, you need a fast website all the time. The one-shot approach may remove a thorn in your side at a given moment, but it doesn’t take into account all the “thorns” that will settle in over time on each page.

That’s why loading times must be the subject of constant investment, either in resources or in tools (there are plugins offered by certain CMS, notably WordPress. They can help, but in my opinion they are not complete and generally only address part of the needs).

The good news is that the more adjustments you make on an ongoing basis, the fewer major projects you’ll have to launch in order to make up for lost time, and what’s more, you’ll be continually repeating the same work.

And the other good news is that you can put a tool in charge of automating everything.

For example, But used our webperf optimization engine to address everything at once: security, CDN and speed. In 3 weeks – the time it took them to implement our SaaS solution – the technical teams were able to handle what they had planned for a year.

In addition to saving time, the automation of Frontend optimizations can also be a precious help when a team is short of resources. That’s why the Orange Marinewebsite also calls on our services: to save time and, above all, budget.

In all cases, our customers retain full control over their infrastructure, with the option of activating or deactivating optimizations at any time. The best example of this is the relationship of trust we’ve built up with Celio, whose entire technical stack is based on our CDN. As a result, web page loading times are no longer a concern for technical teams, because all optimizations are handled automatically, while benefiting from personalized support from our webperf experts.

In short, whether automated or not, web performance must be an ongoing priority for all teams, technical and business alike. In fact, if the subject is dealt with effectively over time, with an appropriate organization, there will be fewer complex and time-consuming projects to launch to deal with speed problems.

You need to know what optimizations to make to your website
and how much time you can save by automating them?


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