the secret weapons of the aol optimization team presentatio

The Secret Weapons of the AOL Optimization Team

Dave Artz

Secret Weapon #1:Apache Mods

2.5sec.

4 sec.

modconcathttp://code.google.com/p/modconcat/

Once installed, lets you reference any CSS or JS file on your server like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/optional/path/??filename1.js,subdirectory/filename2.js,filename3.js

Honors the cache headers of the youngest file

modjsminhttp://code.google.com/p/modjsmin/

Once installed, all JS files are minified on demand, leaving commented source intact

Ported from Doug Crockford’s C library

292 KB

40 KB

86% smaller1.5 sec. fasterOriginal

moddimshttp://code.google.com/p/moddims/

Once installed, lets you reference any image on your server like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/dims/resize/320x240/quality/90/http://www.yourdomain.com/images/full-quality-image.jpg

Manipulate image compression levels on the fly

Resize large full quality images to thumbnails

Secret Weapon #2:Friendly Iframes

The Friendly Iframe

Quarantines blocking JS ads in their own little bubble so content can continue rendering

When finished loading, text ads are copied to the parent and pick up CSS styles

Ad creatives can expand out of the frame without any cross-domain issues

Simple demo of the technique: http://www.artzstudio.com/files/fif-demo/

Secret Weapon #3:“On Demand”

Solutions

“Morphing”

môrf·ing verb

1. Using placeholder HTML elements that have all the data necessary to transform into another HTML element (typically heavier in byte size) on demand

ClickTale found that 78% of user page views do not reach the bottom of the page

Source: ClickTale Blog, Unfolding the Fold http://blog.clicktale.com/2006/12/23/unfolding-the-fold/

Keep your eyes on the Net panel...

Sonar

Solution for detecting if an object is visible (on or near) the screen, and then doing something

Example usage:sonar.add({obj:”obj_id”, px : 200, callback : function(){...}});

See http://www.artzstudio.com/files/sonar/

Secret Weapon #4:ESR

(Executive Speed Report)

Executive Speed Report

Provides full transparency on the performance of AOL websites with a competitive focus

Products and pages are “taggable” so people can get a view of what they care about

“Self serve” lets anyone manage the URL sets, ensuring the right pages get measured

Secret Weapon #5:Auditron

“This is wrong.”-Lucius Fox, The Dark Knight

Our Secret Weapons

Apache Mods (dims, concat, jsmin)

Friendly Iframe

“On Demand” Solutions (morphing, sonar)

ESR (Executive Speed Report)

Auditron

Top Secret Weapon:Beacon

Beacon

Loads asynchronously as the first JS object on the page; small unobtrusive library (2K)

Internally used to track page view, visit, clicks, time spent, etc.

Sends load time of the page back on clicks(window.onload time - beacon initialization time)

Currently does not include server response times; purely front end load time measurement

Our First Experiment

Take a sample of visits

For each visit, compute the average load time across the pages viewed

Break the visits into 10 groups (percentiles) based on the average load time

Examine page views per visit of each group, from fastest to slowest

AOL Autos

4

5

6

7

8

10th 20th 30th 40th 50th 60th 70th 80th 90th 100th

Visit Load Time Percentile*

Average Page Views per Visit

*10th is fastest 10% of the visit sample, 100th is slowest 10%

AOL Money & Finance

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10th 20th 30th 40th 50th 60th 70th 80th 90th 100th

Visit Load Time Percentile*

Average Page Views per Visit

*10th is fastest 10% of the visit sample, 100th is slowest 10%

AOL Shopping

3

3.5

4

4.5

10th 20th 30th 40th 50th 60th 70th 80th 90th 100th

Visit Load Time Percentile*

Average Page Views per Visit

*10th is fastest 10% of the visit sample, 100th is slowest 10%

Moviefone

3.5

4.5

5.5

6.5

7.5

10th 20th 30th 40th 50th 60th 70th 80th 90th 100th

Visit Load Time Percentile*

Average Page Views per Visit

*10th is fastest 10% of the visit sample, 100th is slowest 10%

Conclusions

Visits experiencing the fastest load times delivered us the most page views per visit

More study is needed to determine why one site’s “profile” differs from the other

Dave needs feedback on the methodology, and other studies to do with this data

Done.

AOL e-mail: david.artz@corp.aol.com

Personal e-mail: dave@artzstudio.com

Twitter & AIM: artzstudio

Blog:artzstudio.com