Aston Darby: Improving site speed through development optimisations

"Speed is critical to the way users interact with websites. Google research shows that bounce rate increases dramatically the longer a site takes to load on mobile. Those that have a 3-second delay risk an increase of 32%, while those that take up to 10 seconds can expect to see it increase by 123%. When we were hired by investment firm Aston Darby to help with their digital marketing, the slowness of their site was one of the first issues we identified. When we first started with them, the site took around seven seconds to load. By the time we'd implemented our optimisations, that figure dropped to just three seconds."

"We quickly identified that the Aston Darby site's biggest problem was the size of the HTML behind it. The site originally clocked in at a sizeable 138.88kb; far greater than the average of 33kb. With so much HTML to load, it was little wonder things were running so slowly. We managed to get the size down to a much more manageable 17.69kb, and to do this we followed a careful process."

"First, we set up a local development environment that reflected the exact system specification of the Aston Darby site. This meant that we could ensure that any changes we made would be compatible. We then updated the Wordpress core and existing packages to ensure that we were starting on the most up to date code possible. We also reviewed existing plugins, removing any that weren't being used or that were irrelevant to the site's core functionality. With this done we could challenge that HTML problem. We installed the W3 Total Cache plugin and, among other things, configured the settings to cache page HTML and serve a compressed version of the site to users. This, in turn, allowed us to minify JS, CSS and HTML."

Site load speed strongly affects user behaviour, with mobile bounce rates rising sharply as load time increases. The Aston Darby site initially loaded in around seven seconds, with an HTML payload of 138.88kb versus an average of 33kb. A targeted optimisation process reduced the HTML to 17.69kb and lowered load time to three seconds. The process included establishing a matching local development environment, updating WordPress core and packages, auditing and removing unnecessary plugins, installing and configuring W3 Total Cache, serving compressed HTML, and minifying JS, CSS and HTML.

Read at Thedrum