I had to laugh when I read the introduction to Performance Matters on the A List Apart blog, for me it wasn’t going to get a cup of coffee while waiting for a webpage to load, it was getting my entire breakfast (oatmeal and orange juice) ready. Times have changed and as mobile devices take over the market, having an optimized website from the ground up is more important than ever.
Responsive designs are becoming the norm, and why not? Having one site that quickly resizes to fit all manner of devices helps save money and development time which can be immediately helpful for small businesses who don’t have the deep pockets of larger companies who can throw money into app development and separate mobile sites . But how is this effecting those back end developers who are busing pouring themselves into code every day trying to create innovative new user interfaces? Do they have time to really examine how they are building the sites on a page load speed level? Minimizing javascript and css? It takes a talented team to make sure from design to finished product that your website hits on so many different levels.
Building the foundation for your site is like building the foundation to a home. If it is done right, it will be solid and last a lifetime, but if there are cracks and you are patching it here and there, eventually you are going to have to put in some major time and money to correct the flaws. Which is why it is so important to hit page load speed problems now before users stay stalled on a choked website and become an increasing Bounce Rate number in your analytics.
Think about it, if the framework for your site is hampering page load times now, how do you think it will perform in another year? Two years? The speed and power of mobile devices have steadily increased. Soon, you will have more computing power on your phone or tablet than you do on some desktops.
There are many ways to increase page load speed and optimize your site and many tools to monitor and gauge it. How are you looking at it? Do you know what your page load speed rating from Google is?
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