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Reduced load time increased ROI (31)

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Hey Guys,

Haven't posted much but wanted to share this A/B splittest I've been running.

By reducing the load time on a email submit landing page my ROI went from 3% to just over 100%. Removed excess css and minimized javascript reduced image size by 75%. Ran an A/B splittest over 5 days. Every day was the same 3-10% verses 67-115%.

All images and JS was on my server on the winning landing page. The other landing page was using S3 to host images and javascript. Don't think that was the factor of where they were hosted as much as the 60% reduction in loadtime.

FYI...I am running a dedicated server i5 8GB mem.

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what was the load time in seconds for the landing pages - the winner and the loser?

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Using the plugin httpfox. The loser was 12.8 seconds and had 3 404 errors. The winner was 5.3 seconds with 1 404 error the favicon. There is an mp3 streaming when the page loads. I reduce the mp3 by reducing the bit rate which reduce the size from 143KB to 61KB and also reduce image and eliminated the 404's except 1. 2 of the 404's on the losing landing page I was not aware of and a javascript was looking for the images, uploaded a 1x1 pixel and named like the 404 but can't remove them from the script.

In future I will be running my landing pages http analyzer to make sure no 404's. I'm going to test the load time of a graphic from S3 and my server let you know the results.

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good job but 5.3 sec is still not good, i wanna try and keep it under 1 sec.now im on a vpn and the load time is 1.5 sec

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might I highlight this post..... http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-and-Run-a-CDN....

load time has a def effect on CVR

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Load a lot quicker than that but that what httpfox reports. This is the time to load the complete website. Visually it load very quick. let me know if you have something else to test it with or can someone run httpfox see what there load time is fo a complete landing page.

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well not sure I really understand you....but a CDN helps alot....kinda what I was trying to explain in that post.....its worth the effort if you have a working camp......

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http://tools.pingdom.com

Landing page 1 = 3.6 seconds
Landing page 2 = 1.4 seconds

Google.com load time = 1.6 seconds

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hmm I've got some high numbers too but aside from using a CDN (i'm definitely considering it)
how else can I optimize this? I've cut down large images and cut out useless CSS so far. I want to learn how to make it as lean as possible.

Overall this LP is getting high 3 seconds... 3.8 3.7 or so. Its a simple copy of the advertisers lp with a big animated call to action button (already reduced the image size on that)



one thing i don't understand is how thumb 13 and 14 can be so small but have such comparitvely long load times. i thought those go hand in hand?

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What server are you using for your LP...Apache? It is well worth looking at Nginx if you can.

I'm really surprised to see such long load times...you can't blame users for not converting as people tend to make up their mind within 0.5 seconds of seeing a page...which means in these cases they'll be making decisions on a blank page.

Check out this guide for what is pretty much the definitive set of tips for reducing load time: http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html

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yes it's on apache. I've done almost everything from gtmetrix and it now gets a 99% pagespeed and 91%YSlow....hosted on stormondemand

On GTMetrix page loadtime is 2.1s
On Pingdom still 3.7-4.0s

EDIT:
got my admin to install nginx...no idea how to use it or anything...was that a mistake? what will that help with?

Now GTMetrix shows 2.02s and 1.9s
Pingdom shows 1.7s after many tests..awesome!!
could be statistical variation...but i'm thinking it must be because of nginx. got any other amazing tips to bring it under 1.5 or 1?

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install also
php-fpm
memcached

i have not tried this myself but others (like heavyt) swear by something called "varnish"

also

two things you could try:

1) use css sprites for the thumbs. this is basically a single images file of all the images, and then it uses css to position the relevant part of the image. it reduces the latency of loading several images.

2) do you need the background?

3) animated button - if its just a flashing button, you could replace it with some timed javascript that swaps 2 images (or shows different parts of a single image, ie as a css sprite).

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the background is the image I copied from the offer's LP. pretty necessary IMO. the animated button has a swooshy thing going on. I'll try out the sprites thing and the modules. thanks!

here's a useful too for making sprites that I came across:

http://csssprites.com/

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I don't recomend switching to nginx..... Apache is just easy and it works fine most cases unless you are doing crazy vol.....I have pushed alot of volume thru Apache and had very few issues overall.....my 2 cents anyways....

try a CDN.....I bet you will see a rather large improvement in load time with that page.......and really for $40 I wonder why anyone hesitates.....

side note......also maxmind....using their javascipt can slow load times down a lot because of the way the js interacts with the browser.....I would recommend switching to the php/apache version (if you want to keep things on your server WILL NOT work with CDN)

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yea i think I'll switch the geolocation stuff over... I did see a big improvement with nginx and those add-ons. I loved your CDN video and its next on my list of things to get. Do load times matter as much with non-ppv LPs as well?

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food for thought about a CDN for u...

http://loadimpact.com/result/baconat...8740ccb68a315d

http://loadimpact.com/result/cdn3.ba...a2b05975313757

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Thx dude just setting the cdn up now.

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I use this: Page Speed Online

This gives me a list of things I need to do to decrease load times.

Also this to compress my images: Yahoo SmushIt

And this to minify javascript: Closure Compiler

This was probably mentioned somewhere, just thought I would add it in in case someone could find it useful.

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Apache may work fine, but if you're going for performance litespeed, lighttpd, and nginx both outperform apache. It's totally worth it to switch if you can. The one thing to keep in mind for the free version of litespeed is that it limits concurrent connections to 150. The enterprise version is probably the best out of all of them, but it's also extremely expensive.

Other suggestions: minify your HTML/CSS/Javascript.

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Ok cuz I am getting tired of hearing this......I will test this out.....head to head nginx vs apache.....and see the so called difference because what I have read and seen isn't conclusive.....esp in our environment...

also I do expect nginx to win .....but I bet with a few tweeks to apache the dif will be almost nothing....cuz that is what nginx is....striped down code.....

ok this is on the officially on the to-do list....

there are many things that can be done waaaaaay before switching out apache see this post...... http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread......**UPDATED**

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-run both without any cpanel/whm crap.
-nginx/lighttpd/litespeed (for a test I'd do lighttpd because it'd be easier to setup) vs apache
-mysql 5+

Run decent volume (my tests were both servers with the same specs getting ~50k clicks) between the two and you'll definitely see a big difference in resource usage and overall conversion rates especially during those large bursts when you change budget/turn on traffic for large FB campaigns and other stuff. Apache is just clunky and isn't that great with big bursts of traffic.

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ok so after putting varnish on, i lose my IP information in prosper...everything shows up as the servers ip...anyone dealt with this?

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If your using apache AND you have done everything you can think already to your CSS and JS and images... try this the htaccess file of the root and folder your displaying the page from:


# BEGIN GZIP
<ifmodule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/text text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript
</ifmodule>
# END GZIP

#A first-time visitor to your page will make several HTTP requests to download all your sites files, but using the Expires and Cache-Control headers you make those files cacheable. This avoids unnecessary HTTP requests on subsequent page views.
<ifModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 1 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 604800 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
</ifModule>

#and to set Cache-Control headers add:
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
<filesMatch "\\.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592000, public"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\\.(css)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\\.(js)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=216000, private"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\\.(xml|txt)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=216000, public, must-revalidate"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\\.(html|htm|php)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=1, private, must-revalidate"
</filesMatch>
</ifModule>

#By removing the ETag header, you disable caches and browsers from being able to validate files, so they are forced to rely on your Cache-Control and Expires header. Entity tags (ETags) are a mechanism to check for a newer version of a cached file.
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
Header unset ETag
</ifModule>
FileETag None

#If you remove the Last-Modified and ETag header, you will totally eliminate If-Modified-Since and If-None-Match requests and their 304 Not Modified responses, so a file will stay cached without checking for updates until the Expires header indicates new content is available!
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
Header unset Last-Modified
</ifModule>


I use it for my content sites and it works great, not sure how it will work on PPV pages, but it might help a very small bit.

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both of you are doing this wrong.

Want to know whats fastest? its not Apache and its not lightttp/liespeed/nginx. Its both. What you should be doing is running BOTH of them on 1 server, using Nginx as a reverse proxy to Apache. You will not get any faster then this setup...

If you want to use just 1 web server, look into Cherokee. Shit is blazing fast. If I were to use just 1 it would be Cherokee or Nginx, but if I want the king of the hill, best of the best, it would be combining Nginx and Apache.. nothing beats those 2 together set up as reverse proxy.

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/using-ngin...-your-vps.html
http://tumblr.intranation.com/post/7...-reverse-proxy
http://wp-performance.com/2010/10/ng...dpress-apache/
http://markmaunder.com/2009/how-to-h...n-a-360mb-vps/

You can thank me with a cold beer if we meetup at asw or something...

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that's what my guys at Liquid web setup for me....varnish-->nginx--->apache.
huge speed gains but i may have to drop varnish.

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Well, I seen you said you install nginx, but did they explictly set it up as reverse proxy to apache? Just want to be clear on that. You can have both installed and listening on diff ports, but that doesnt mean they set it up as r. proxy usage.. just wanna check on that

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yuck !! apache

varnish -> nginx --> php-pfm

I not sure how to modify p202 to get your visitor ip, but the $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] is pointing to the server ip address, you can get someone or yourself to hack p202, so it can grab $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'], i use cpvlab, I hack the code, hardcore, i can't share the code here, CPVLab's robert is looking into this issue.

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http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...ish/misc/15237

Here additional code to pass the visitor ip to the varnish backend

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Is that too slow for a PPV LP?

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I currently am facing problems with load times in conjunction with my SSL certificate. I'm on a BH hybrid VPS but when checking the https version of a very simple site (using pingdom), I get load times of ~7seconds. Using the normal http version gets me around 2-3 secs.

Any ideas on how to improve the https performance?

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I run apache, and get loads times of 1.5 to 2.2 seconds.

Loading a 141.9kb page

So it's not apache that is the issue for him, it's crap bandwith. You could check that by doing a traceroute to your domain from your home.

Windows > Start > CMD .. then tracert yourdomain.com

If you can post a screenshot of that, it would help. Just block out your starting ip and ending ip/domain.

Who is your hosting with?

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