Kind of like the old geezer behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, back-end applications on an eCommerce website help to drive the magic happening on the front-end. So like Dorothy and her entourage, eCommerce website owners must pay attention to what’s happening behind the scenes. That’s because, for front-end applications to work, they must make requests to back-end applications, like a database, to pull all of the dynamic content together for a page to be rendered at the client...

When a website is slow to load, consumers are quick to leave. And when consumers don’t stick around, revenues suffer. According to an often-cited study conducted by the Aberdeen Group, something as minimal as a 1-second delay can result in 11 percent fewer page views, a 16 percent decrease in customer satisfaction and a 7 percent drop in conversions. For most business owners, a 7 percent decrease in online sales is motivation enough to improve page performance. Unfortunately, however, sales aren’t...

Consumers are a demanding bunch. And apparently, they’re also a busy bunch. They don’t have time to twiddle their thumbs waiting for a website to load. So, when a website doesn’t render fast enough, they’ll take their business elsewhere. It’s as simple as that. Because of these time-strapped consumers, eCommerce website owners must make performance optimization a priority. Tuning a site to load quickly is a multi-faceted effort, however, seen in the fact that page load performance is often broken into...

Let’s face it. Although there are tons of surveys and research projects focused on issues prevalent to the eCommerce community, there aren’t a lot that drill down on website page performance. That lack of insight has led numerous individuals to continue to reference outdated studies, like the one conducted by Akamai in 2009. Five years ago, when Akamai reported that 47 percent of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, the eCommerce environment was much different...

A recent survey conducted by Load Impact, a company that produces a cloud-based, on-demand load testing tool, revealed that eCommerce sites “are some of the worst performing as a category even though availability and performance directly impact their bottom line.” For those in the eCommerce business, the statement is sure to cut to the quick, but at the same time, it should also be a statement that will inspire positive changes in the community.   The survey’s findings, which don’t just...