Speed and today’s webby whippersnappers
With slow internet connections page elements and media had to be choosen carefully because of their restrictions; page loading times were possibly the most important aspect of website design. Fast broadband means we don’t even have to think about it anymore, well until now.
Do you remember having to wait 20 minutes for a page to load on an old phone line and modem?... Those were the days! Now we live in a world that demands instant gratification, and Google has cottoned on to this.
Search engines aim to return the best possible results and adverts to their customers. Today Google indexes websites using sophisticated techniques but they also know that when someone clicks on a result they expect the website to be available instantly.
So, Google are now including a speed signal into their already massive 200+ strong indexing criteria. They are measuring how quickly a website responds to requests and how quickly it loads.
Results from a study performed by Google showed that visitors spend more time on a website when the pages load quicker. So from a usability and SEO perspective, speed looks like it’s going to be another one of the many things that needs to be optimised for improved rankings can be gained, exposure time of relevant information increased and a better conversion rate harvested.
Do big websites benefit more than the little guys? No, not necessarily as quite often smaller websites are quicker to react to change than large websites that require lots of planning. At the moment it is thought to affect only 1% of all websites but as this proves itself will be made more prevalent.
Content changes such as optimised rich media, videos and audio, will be required but generally the website load times are based on the content management system (CMS). A good content management system not only allows for changes to be made or new pages to be added easily, but it also builds the pages, thus requiring effective page building methods to ensure good live build speeds.
The live build scenario and the technology involved has a lot to do, it has to get the templates, build the site, fill in any gaps or rich content and then present it to the browser. We feel that we have an advantage because our custom built CMS, emeraldCMS, is built using intelligent techniques. When a user response requires a page build “on the fly” emeraldCMS is able to build them quickly and efficiently because it only uses code and system aspects that are necessary; each page build is totally streamlined depending on the pages purposes.
Design and page semantics are also paramount. Once the page is ready to be presented to the visitor it is interpreted by the browser. Good design determines how efficiently the browser deals with the website, how images are retrieved and more.
