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Best Practices: Building a Culture of Web Performance Optimization (WPO)

With over 31,000 members and 91 Meetup groups across 65 cities and 23 countries, the Web performance community is blossoming. This should be no surprise to IT pros, since Web speed impacts user experience and conversion rates, Website stickiness, page search rankings and organic traffic, all of which have a tremendous impact on customer loyalty, revenue, brand, and overall business bottom-line.

[caption id="attachment_1474" align="alignnone" width="1545"]Surfing the www Web Performance Optimization (WPO) is key to business success[/caption]

If building a culture of Web performance optimization is new for you or your organization here are some quick tips to help you get started:

Start with metrics:

Establish your initial Website performance baseline. If you are using Site24x7 you already have this information. If you are new, sign-up for a free trial account, and start~benchmarking~key Web pages and functions. Four seconds is a well-documented user acceptance threshold, so every page that takes longer to load is a great candidate for Web Performance Optimization (WPO). Since you can’t optimize your entire Website all at once, plan a phase-approach.

Get peer buy-in:

Knowing your audience and how their success is being measured is crucial to win them over. For example, discuss quality and fewer outages with QA/development, or how a faster Website increases organic traffic with marketing; share case studies on how you can optimize hardware and reduce operational costs with financial teams; or debate user metrics, such as additional time spent on a faster Website, with the user experience team. Once you have cross-functional support, define the first project to tackle and go to the next stage.~Tip: It’s best to start with low-hanging fruit to show success with minimal time and effort.

Sell to the top:

Few projects are supported (aka- funded) without SVP or executive support, so it’s essential to get them on board right from the get go. Based on your organization size, you could go straight to your CEO or C-level team, or a VP or Director audience. Once you identify the most favorable candidate (CMO, CIO, Director of IT Operations, Application Owners, etc.) set up a meeting, prepare slides, and bring some peers with you to that meeting. Here are some quick tips to help you make that meeting a success:

  • Don’t start your discussion focused on your Web performance metrics. Instead, start by showcasing how a slow Website impacts revenue/brand/bottom-line, all of which are key stats for your audience. For example, 1 second of Web downtime means $108k revenue lost for Google and $118k for Amazon. Try to quantify something like this for your organization, and collaborate with your peers –they will have helpful suggestions on key points to present
  • Research if any of your key competitors are focusing on WPO. This will be a key selling point for your audience
  • Show your current Website baseline at its worst. It is OK to show you have a problem since you will be discussing remedies to fix it
  • Discuss specific plans and actions to improve your Web performance, as well as goals. Once you have executive buy-in, congratulations! Now is the time to tackle your first Web Performance Optimization (WPO) project

Document and share results:

Since WPO is not a one-time activity, this is not the time to be shy about your results. Sell your success so your organization embraces and embeds WPO in your processes. Therefore, when you report back to upper management, plan to showcase:

  • Initial baseline
  • Post-WPO results
  • Forecast on the impact of these changes on your business, such as additional time spent on site, returning visitors, conversion rates, etc. Your cross-functional peers will have great ideas on what quantifiable metrics to present so collaborate and present a unified front
  • Identify the next WPO project that you want to tackle

Creating a culture of Web performance is about creating a culture of quality that pays-off big time in the long term. Check out additional tips to ensure IT/marketing/LoB~alignment~and get going!

Good luck with your WPO efforts!

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