Improving website performance through faster users

So you’ve tweaked, tuned, load balanced, and rearchitected until you’re blue in the face, but you’re still not getting the throughput you want. What’s left? Accelerate your customers!

Bill Westerman presented ‘Faster customers: The final frontier’ at the O’Reilly Velocity Web Performance and Operations Conference on June 22nd.  The Velocity format  gives each presenter exactly five minutes to make their point: exactly 20 slides, rotating automatically every 15 seconds.

So how do you make your customers faster?

• Chunk content so users can parse it quickly

• Optimize frequently-used workflows

• Keep the website visually and structurally simple

• Don’t require users to jump from one context to the next

• Divide long activities into more easily consumed tasks

• Get the UI out of the way, focus on content and goals

• Reuse familiar interactions

• Optimize for getting users into a state of ‘flow’

Take a look at the slides on slideshare.net