IISpeed accelerates visitnapavalley.com, with PageSpeed optimization by
Google
This
guest post was written by Otto van der Schaaf, Founder and Software Engineer,
We-Amp
Google has been working on
making
the web faster for years now. Recently,
We-Amp collaborated with Google and
SunStar Media to conduct a test to measure
the real-world effects of PageSpeed optimization with IISpeed on conversion rates and overall
site speed. We used IISpeed to optimize the
Visit Napa Valley site.
Our test found that
IISpeed reduced page
load time on average by 12.36% for mobile, and increased conversions by 1%. (In this case, a
conversion is a visit to a booking page on an external site.) In the mobile and tablet
segments, we saw 7x and 9x improvements in the 0-1 second page load time bucket.
We got these results after spending just 20 minutes to configure IISpeed.
What did IISpeed optimize?
James Moberg, CTO of
SunStar Media,
said this about the project: “This website displays a large number of unique images. IISpeed
automatically controls caching for updated files and performs lazy loading. We were using some
server-side logic and jQuery libraries to do this, but it required more code, required caching
file dates and it appeared to display slower during page load. We use Adobe ColdFusion and
there are some libraries that concat and minify both JavaScript and CSS, but none are as easy
or robust as IISpeed. Adding a custom header allows us to enable or disable any IISpeed
features on page requests based on any criteria like authenticated user, browser, cookie, IP
address, internal application toggle, and so on. Overall we are extremely pleased with IISpeed
and are proactively removing all optimization hacks from past projects and allowing IISpeed to
manage it.”
Some third-party content isn't optimized by PageSpeed in this test. These are areas for future
enhancement.
Findings
Changes measured: IISpeed versus no IISpeed. We set up a classic A/B test on Google Analytics
to facilitate our test strategy.
The average timings are sensitive to outliers, so for
correct interpretation it is good to have a look at the timing distribution as well.
 |
| Mobile |
 |
| Tablet |
 |
| Desktop |
IISpeed by We-Amp
IISpeed brings the full power of PageSpeed optimization to
Microsoft’s IIS web server, which powers millions of
websites. PageSpeed optimization via IISpeed improves site speed by automating best practices
as outlined by
Steve Souders, Head
Performance Engineer at Google. In addition to these optimizations, Google’s “Make the web
faster” team has added above-the-fold content prioritization and a lot more.
IISpeed is an initiative by
We-Amp, a web performance optimization company
located in the Netherlands.
Otto van der Schaaf
is one of the founders of We-Amp,and spends his time coding on web acceleration technologies
and accelerating web sites. When he is not working he loves to play soccer with his two
sons.
Posted by Scott Knaster,
Editor
