Optimization

This is my favourite... I make things go faster.

Optimization has provided enormous value to me over the years but more important is the intangible benefits. Tangible benefits of optimization are easy to quantify. How much CPU, disk, bandwidth, time savings and other physical items are relatively easy to calculate.

One of the key intangible benefits is customer satisfaction. Customers want to be able to do what they need to do quickly. Preferably being entertained as much as possible during any delays. Since the majority of Internet users are under 30 patience is at a premium. Making things faster means the user waits less time. Exactly how much is that worth? The customer now prefers your solution over the competition. Hard to quantify that! On the web it could be an individual customer or a large corporation choosing your service.

On the web few realize how critical optimization is and have forgotten there are people without broadband. I personally have seen sites where their home page could be reduced from 150kb to 35kb and still look exactly the same to the customer. If there were 10,000 visits to the home page this month the bandwidth would be 1,500mb versus the 350mb optimized page. Plus the server has to send and customers have to download an additional 115kb to see the same page! Others make excessive calls to the server. The result is customer dissatisfaction. Something none of us can afford.

Optimization requires diligence. I constantly re-evaluate optimization on my site. If you are just starting the key is to find the spots that slow you down the most and tune them first. Then create standards and code reviews to follow the optimization guidelines. There will always be something slowing you down, optimization just reduces the wait. The balance between optimization and cost is a constant battle.

My demo site emphasizes numerous web optimization techniques and explains several to you. See why you should hire me to improve the performance of your site.

For the benefit of all of us, please optimize your site.

*** Google has really done a good job with their new Chrome browser. Everything is done to minimize stuff you have to do. They also optimized screen real estate to maximize page display area. Meanwhile eliminating browser crashes(a tab may crash but it won't hurt the other tabs/windows). Google is 10.2 times faster than IE in JavaScript. I applaud Google's attention to performance and simplicity while ensuring Chrome is a robust browser. Could they do better... Of course... In the next version ;)

**** It's June 2012 and Since I posted the original note about Google Chrome(around March 2010) Google has gone from version 3 to version 20. That is a little ridiculous(17 versions in 2 years). They are still taking market share and I still think they have the best browser at this time. Microsoft is falling off a cliff(Not sure what they are doing).