High performance websites lead to higher visitor engagement, retention and conversions. Fine tuning websites to increase their performance is Website optimization or Web performance optimization or WPO. As per Yahoo “80% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end. Most of this time is tied up in downloading all the components in the page: images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc. Reducing the number of components in turn reduces the number of HTTP requests required to render the page. This is the key to faster pages.”
Faster website speed helps in increasing visitor retention and loyalty. It also boosts user satisfaction, especially for users with slow internet connections and those on mobile devices. Web performance optimization also results in less data travelling across the web which in turn lowers a website’s power consumption and environmental impact.