RE: Re: OT: Web site speed

["Graham Howe" <graham@xxxxxxx>]

Minor point, it is Mark who was asking the questions, I was one of those
answering :-)

Graham

> -----Original Message-----
> From: keith marlow [mailto:keithmarlow_97@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: 13 October 2001 13:12
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subject: [ukha_d] Re: OT: Web site speed
>
>
> --- In ukha_d@y..., "Mark Harrison"
<Mark.Harrison@e...> wrote:
> > Graham
> >
> > Thanks for this. The brand-marketing is the utter lead here,
hence
> the
> > insistence on exactly the right "corporate" fonts
which, as you say,
> > effectively means graphics.
> >
> > As you suspected, there's a _lot_ of back-end integration on this
> site -
> > I don't see how we could run a site with 80,000 different items
on
> it
> > without ;-)
>
>
> Hi graham,
>
>   I have used the B&Q site on several occasions - speed seems to
have
> never been an issue - although it can prove a chore sometimes to find
> what you are looking for.
>
>   If you really want to speed things up 'compressing' the CGI values
> and variable names would make massive savings across the site from
> what I can see. You can also do tricks with improving the 'density'
> of the html to gain further speed advantages.
>
> If you do the above - the site should wizz.
>
> the other big win from speeding up sites for users using such tricks
> is that your users per Mb bandwidth ratio improves - so you lower
> your rate of increase in the cost base - means more profit for
> someone..
>
>   Concerning backend integration - I have a story that might prompt
> you to check that the backend database is indeed completely in sync
> with the frontend interface....
>
>   My wife and I recently moved into a house which needed all the 60's
> style doors replacing with a consistant colonial styling - we found
> on the site that prepainted white doors were available at 29.99 -
> bargain, with no need to paint too boot. So I ordered 10 of these;
> when they turned up they were actually primed white doors, not
> prepainted (i.e. finished) white doors - so we sent them back and
> asked B&Q to send us the right doors.  Same wrong doors came
again..
> By this time we had given up on B&Q and got the local homebase to
> send us the primed doors and I'll paint them at a later stage..
>
>   Throughout this ordeal - it appeared that what was on the web site
> didn't tally directly with what B&Q staff thought was spec'ed..
they
> said they would raise this with the IT staff to see what happenned..
> I know this could be a whole range of possible problem sources, from
> duff data file to hung-over staff member doing stock control and
> assignment..  be interesting to see what the core problem was.
>
>   On a completely different topic, I have a comfort system, and I'd
> like to do something 'special' for christmas... I have an 18"
'hip
> hop' dancing santa I'm thinking of inflicting on anybody who strays
> into the front garden PIR range.. but I was wondering what people
> have done with lights/etc?
>
>   thanks
>
>     Keith
> >
> > Your point about "reloading fast on return" is
excellent!!!
> >
> > Mark Harrison
> > Head of Systems, eKingfisher
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Graham Howe [mailto:graham@xxxxxxx...]
> > Sent: 12 October 2001 11:08
> > To: ukha_d@y...
> > Subject: RE: [ukha_d] OT: Web site speed
> >
> >
> > If you are talking about www.diy.com then I have to say I thought
> it was
> > pretty quick for a 'marketing driven'  site. I cleared out my
cache
> and
> > loaded the page in under 20 seconds on ISDN 64k line. A lot of
the
> > content that usually slows sites down (like flash, sound,
animated
> gifs
> > etc etc) are not present which is good, so the only real
> performance hit
> > is the graphics. Most of the graphics seem to be small gifs with
> only a
> > few jpgs so that is not bad.
> >
> > I don't believe that the marketers would allow you to strip off
the
> > photos, but that would certainly speed up the page a bit. There
is a
> > fair amount of use of gifs to represent words and of course if
those
> > words were instead created using style based text then it would
be
> > faster. But the marketers are again likely to put their foot down
> > because they will want the specific fonts and those might not be
> > possible to accurately reproduce on the page. The other problem
> will be
> > that even the same font can be displayed at slightly different
> sizes by
> > different browsers, so to force consistent appearance across
> browsers it
> > is often necessary to resort to graphics. I would say that they
> should
> > check out the competition and see how their pages load, for
example
> > www.homebase.co.uk is much slower as they have several photos on
the
> > front page, likewise the wickes site is pretty slow.
> >
> > In summary I'm nt so sure there is anything that can be done
without
> > removing a fair bit of the look of the page, but you may want to
> see if
> > the marketers would be willing to lose the fancy fonts and have
all
> > words and numbers displayed as text (with appropriate styling)
> rather
> > than graphics.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Graham
> >
> > P.S. if there is any code or database interaction involved in
> actually
> > building the page on the server (looking at the source I suspect
> there
> > is), then you might want to look for any inefficiencies there as
> well.
> > But to be honest it loads almost immediately on a return visit,
so
> it
> > does appear that all delay is down to graphics.
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Mark Harrison [mailto:Mark.Harrison@xxxxxxx...]
> > > Sent: 12 October 2001 10:18
> > > To: ukha_d@y...
> > > Subject: [ukha_d] OT: Web site speed
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > An off-topic request to all you Web gurus.
> > >
> > > B&Q are concerned that there web site's home-page takes
too
> > > long to load
> > > (it does!)
> > >
> > > So the question is, what would be your recommendations for
making
> it
> > > load faster? Bearing in mind that marketers control the look
;-)
> > >
> > > Not sure if this should be on-group, so feel free to email
me
> > > direct if
> > > you prefer!
> > >
> > > Mark Harrison
> > > Head of Systems, eKingfisher
> > >
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