An earlier post explained how to optimize our Site for visitors on slow networks and devices. Explanations are all good. But how about if we can see how these optimizations make a site's loading experience look like. In this post, we'll do that by seeing how the homepage for three leading Indian travel aggregator sites load up. On a fast and a slow network. The goal is to see the impact of optimizations. Especially on slower devices and networks.
On a fast network, all the three pages load in under 1 second. The difference in the loading time for the three pages is not more than 200 msec. That should definitely not bother any visitor. Now, lets see how the same pages load up on a slower network:
Things look very different when the same pages are accessed on a slow 3G network. All the three pages load up slower. But, is the effect of slow network the same on all the three pages?
This shows how optimizing to show-up only the most critical content first-up helps reduce the waiting time for visitors. More so for visitors on slower networks and devices. And, reduced wait time helps push our conversions from these visitors.
Blog Post by Punit Sethi
Visitors on slower networks & devices : What can we do about them?
Not every visitor of our site accesses it from blazing fast network and device. What can we do about our visitors using patchy networks and slower devices? How can we optimize our site for these visitors? How can we minimize the loss from slowness in such situations?...continue reading