Online marketing has evolved from selling products to creating engaging experiences for consumers. New research shows that how long these experiences seem to last, however, depends on how rich the experience and time of recall (Ahn, Liu, and Soman 2009). The “memory marker” model helps explain this phenomenon and the time distortion that some people experience during and after immersive online flow experiences. Web developers need to balance the need to create rich online experiences with tolerable download times and scant distractions.
Year: 2009
HTTP Compression – content encoding can compress xhtml, css, and javascript for faster web page download times web compression
HTTP compression, otherwise known as content encoding, is a publicly defined way to compress textual content transferred from web servers to browsers. HTTP compression uses public domain compression algorithms, like gzip and compress, to compress XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, and other text files at the server. This standards-based method of delivering compressed content is built into HTTP 1.1, and most modern browsers that support HTTP 1.1 support ZLIB inflation of deflated documents. In other words, they can decompress compressed files automatically, which saves time and bandwidth.
Web Page Performance Thesis – web page response time measurement, modeling and monitoring
For his doctoral thesis at the University of Glasgow, Thiam Kian Chiew studied web page performance. As part of his research, Chiew explored the different factors that affect web page speed, testing and modeling the key components to web page download times. His findings are summarized below.
Usability Study: Men Need Speed – web usability criteria show gender differences
The importance of download speed, for most Web users, has long been established (King 2008). Fast response times foster higher flow states (Skadberg & Kimmel 2004), higher conversion rates (Akamai 2007), higher perceived trustworthiness (Nielsen 1999), and lower user frustration (Ceaparu et al. 2004). But, previous research has also found that differences in gender, age and computer self-efficacy can moderate user priorities. This article explores the differences among men and women in their desire for speed.
Study: Web Users Prefer Speed Over Customization
Web users want site designs to be both easy to use and helpful, as prior human-computer interaction (HCI) studies have shown. But most such studies haven’t ranked interface design features in achieving these objectives. Since this knowledge can positively impact site design or re-design, this article will ask and answer the question – is there a single interface design feature that maximizes both user goals; usability and utility? If so, how important is this feature compared to others?
Offload Resource Intensive Scripts to Improve Server Performance
In a previous speed tweak we showed how upgrading our web server to a solid state drive and faster processors improved response times by 35% to 50%. With the Web Page Analyzer on the same server, the average response time was 11.87 seconds with typical response times after ramp-up ranging from 23 to 36 seconds. While this was an improvement over the old server, there were still response time and availability issues caused by hosting the analyzer script on the same server. This article shows how offloading a resource intensive script can dramatically improve your server response times.