Steve Souders is the current king of Web performance gurus. His mantra, which is sound and can be borne out by empirical evidence, is that 80% of performance issues occur between the Web server and the Web browser. He offers a fantastically detailed methodology for approaching these issues.

But fixing the 80% of performance issues that occur on the front-end of a Web site doesn’t fix the 80% of the problems that occur in the company that created the Web site.

Huh? Well, as Inigo Montoya would say, let me explain.

The front-end of a Web site is the final product of a process, (hopefully) shaped by a vision, developed by a company delivering a service or product. It’s the process, that 80% of Web site development that is not Web site development, that let a Web site with high response times and poor user experience get out the door in the first place.

Shouldn’t the main concern of any organization be to understand why the process for creating, managing, and measuring Web sites is such that after expending substantial effort and treasure to create a Web site, it has to be fixed because of performance issues detected only after the process is complete?

Souders’ 80% will fix the immediate problem, and the Web site will end up being measurably faster in a short period of time. The caveat to the technical fix is that unless you can step back and determine how a Web site that needed to be fixed was released in the first place, there is a strong likelihood that the old habits will appear again.

Yahoo! and Google are organizations that are fanatically focused on performance. So, in some respects, it’s understandable how someone (like Steve Souders) who comes out of a performance culture can see all issues as technical issues. I started out in a technical environment, and when I locked myself in that silo, every Web performance issue had a technical solution.

I’ve talked about culture and web performance before, but the message bears repeating. A web performance problem can be fixed with a technical solution. But patching the hole in the dike doesn’t stop you from eventually having to look at why the dike got a hole in the first place.

Solving performance Web problems starts with not tolerating them in the first place. Focusing on solving the technical 80% of Web performance leaves the other 80% of the problem, the culture and processes that originally created the performance issues, untouched.

One of the traditional areas of frustration for Operations and Development teams in the Web world is that their performance, Web performance, is measured from the outside-in.

The resistance of this camp is strong, and they will appear without warning, even from amongst the most enlightened of companies.

How can they be recognized?

You will hear their battle-cry, their mantra, their fundamental belief that their application, their infrastructure is a misunderstood victim. That if they could only get their one idea across, the whole of the company would be enlightened.

The fundamental tenet of this group is simple and short.

How can we manage the Internet?

The obvious fallacy of this argument is clear to any Web performance professional or business analyst: Customers get to our business across the Internet, not via psychic modem. In order to keep close tabs on the experience of our customers, the site, application, code must be measured from the outside-in.

In order to prevent making enemies and perpetuating already ossified corporate silos, take the initiative. Gently steer the discussion in a new direction by making this incredibly vast problem into one everyone in the company can understand. By adding a single word to the initial question, the fearful and reactive perspective can be dramatically shifted to one that could make the members of this camp see the light.

Make the question:

How can we manage for the Internet?

Now the focus of the discussion is now proactive – is there something we are missing that could reduce the problems and/or prevent them from ever happening?

Taking the all-encompassing and awe-inspiring challenge that is the Internet and turning it into a Boy Scout moment may reinvigorate the internal conversation, and give people a sense of purpose. Now they will be galvanized to consider whether everything in their power is being done to prevent performance issues before bits hit the Internet.

Effective Web performance hinges on taking the obvious challenges that face all Web sites, and turning them into solutions that mitigate these challenges as much as possible. So, in the next team meeting, the next time you hear someone say that it’s just the Internet, ask what can still be done to manage the application more effectively for the Internet.

A hallway conversation this morning brought up a very interesting point about the relationship between Web performance measurements and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). When choosing between a Web performance measurement solution and a CDN, which service should come first?

Companies facing dire and obvious Web performance issues will want immediate results, leading them to fall into the CDN-First camp. Deploying a CDN will have a positive effect on response times, increase user satisfaction, and may even increase customer conversions, in the short term.

In six months, deeper questions may start to be asked. A core question that will need to be answered by CDN-First organizations will be “Are we using the CDN effectively and efficiently?“.

A company that makes the leap to CDN deployment without assessing the overall performance environment of their Web site may be faced with a situation where they can’t tell if they need more, less, or different CDN strategies in order to continue to succeed.

As a result of the buyers remorse that can result from the leap directly to a CDN, I highly recommend the Measurement-First approach when selecting a CDN.

To help you become an advocate for the Measurement-First approach, come to the table during the CDN discussions and ask three questions. The answers will allow your organization to make the best and most appropriate CDN decision.

1. Is the CDN necessary?

In most cases, the answer to this is a resounding yes. But what can happen with a sudden shift to the CDN is that a organization overlooks those things that they can do themselves to gain some initial performance improvements.

Baselining the existing site before deploying a CDN will allow items and elements that need to be improved to be clearly identified. In some cases, an organization can fix some of these on their own to improve performance before investing in a CDN. In other cases, measuring the performance of a site may clearly indicate that third-party content is responsible for the performance issues, which would likely not be fixed by a CDN deployment.

A Measurement-First policy helps clearly identify the geographies that have the worst performance before deploying the CDN. If performance in the US is acceptable, while performance in Europe or Asia-Pacific is intolerable, then the CDN deployment may initially be targeted to respond to the greatest pain first.

Understanding the current performance of your existing site can reduce the cost of the initial deployment and maximize the the long term effectiveness of the deployment.

2. Which CDN is best for us?

For a complex modern Web site, content comes in many different shapes, sizes, and formats. The thing is, so do CDNs. As I’ve discussed before, understanding what the CDNs vying for your business do and do well is as critical as the process of vetting their effectiveness compared to delivering the site yourself. The performance boost given to you site by a CDN may vary by region, leading your team to select one CDN for Europe and another for the Asia-Pacific region.

CDN performance can also vary based on the content you are asking them to accelerate. One CDN may be good at streaming media, while another may be better at static content (JS, CSS, Images, etc.), while yet another is better at accelerating the delivery of dynamic content.

Choose your CDN(s) based on what you need them to deliver. In some cases, one size does not fit all.

3. Is the CDN delivering?

This may look like a question for after the purchase has been completed and the solution deployed, but you will never know if the solution is working effectively unless you have a baseline of your performance before the deployment, and from your origin servers after deployment.

Measuring the performance of the CDNs under all conditions and from all perspectives (Datacenter, Last Mile, and from within the Browser) doesn’t stop with the selection of a CDN(s). It becomes even more critical once the CDN solution(s) is rolled into production in order to ensure that the level of service that was promised during the sales cycle is delivered once you become a customer.

Constantly validate the performance of the CDN-accelerated site with the performance of the non-accelerated origin site. Have regular meetings with, and channels of communication into, your CDN(s) to discuss not only existing performance, but how changes you and/or the CDN provider are planning may affect performance in the future.

Takeaway

CDNs are a critical component for any Web business that wants to scale and deliver services to a national or global audience. But selecting a CDN should come after you have a very strong understanding of the current performance of your own Web site.

After you have measured and identified the items you can do to improve your own performance, your team will have greater insight into the areas of your site where the services of a CDN(s) can have the greatest impact.

The Measurement-First approach to selecting a CDN will ensure that you select a set of services that exactly meets the unique performance challenges of your site.

Every so often, you wake up and realize that the world has changed around you. Or, to say it better, your view of the world has changed so profoundly, but also so subtly and slowly that it is imperceptible unless you take the time to look back at where you came from.

Six years ago, if you had asked me what the most important problems in Web performance were, I would have reeled off a list that was focused on technology and configuration: HTTP compression, HTTP persistent connections, caching, etc. In fact, six years on, these are still the concepts that dominate Web performance conversations.

Slowly, glacially, shaped by six years of working with customers and clients, listening to the Web performance conversations that flow across the Web and within companies, I realize that technology is only one component of the Web performance solution.

Web Performance is NOT Just Technology

Most organizations focus too much of their efforts on solving the technical problems because they are discrete, easy to track, and produce quantifiable results.

Fair enough.

But a highly tuned engine with a rusted chassis, four flat wheels, and a voided warranty still has a Web performance problem, even if it is technically sound.

The complexity of the issue arises from the terminology used. Web performance, in current parlance, refers almost completely to the delivery of the site in an appropriate and measurable manner.

Web performance is not simply the generation and delivery of HTML and other objects. Web performance is conversation that defines the basic nature of any Web site.

Approaching Web performance, as I had for so many years, as a technical problem with a discrete solution overlooks the true nature of Web performance. A culture of effective Web performance absorbs a number of different inputs, and then ensures that the site performs across many different vectors, not just the two-dimensional response/success over time graph.

Web Performance is Culture and Communication

Web performance is an issue of culture. And at the root of all cultures lies communication.

The Web performance conversation has three components, each one shaping the potential response to the problem and providing elements of the solution.

1. Technical Capabilities

Technical organizations spend a great deal of their time defining what they can’t do. In an organization that has a culture of effective Web performance, the technical teams provide clear definitions of the current capabilities, and clearly demonstrate how far they can take the organization down the chosen path, hopefully without spending all of the company’s treasure.

2. Business Objectives

Just as the technical organization has to define what they can do with what they have, the business organization has to come to the table with a clear definition of what they want to achieve. If a business goal is clearly stated to the technical team, then a conversation about where there may be challenges and opportunities can occur. When business and IT talk and listen, a company is becoming far more effective at delivering the best site they can.

3. Customer Expectations

Neglected, forgotten, nay, even ignored, the role of the customers’ expectations in the Web performance equation is just as critical as the other two participants. With clear business objectives and defined technical capabilities, a site can still be seen as a Web performance failure if the expectations of the customer are not met. And it is not simply listening to customer and providing everything they want. It’s understanding why they need a feature/function/option in order to be more successful at what they do, and balancing that against the other two players in the conversation.

Now What?

But where does an organization that wants to take Web performance beyond the technical problem, and into the realm of the strategic solution go?

Do a search on any search engine and you will find page upon page of technical solutions to a supposedly technical problem. Web performance is not solely a technical problem. In many cases, the site is configured and tweaked and tuned and accelerated to such a degree that you have to wonder if is under-performing out of spite more than any other reason.

Scratch the surface. Look beyond the shiny toys and massively-scaled infrastructure and you will find that technology is not the issue. The demand placed on the site by the business are bogging the site down in ways that no amount of tuning could improve.

Perhaps the business goals of the site, the need to support the business, have pushed the technology to its breaking point or beyond, but the technology team cannot clearly articulate what the problem or solution is.

Maybe customers, used to competitors delivering one level of Web performance and experience are simply not happy with the site, no matter how tuned it is and how clearly the call to action may be.

Making a Web site perform effectively means stepping back and asking some key questions:

• Why do we have a site?
• How does this site help our business?
• Why do our customers use our site?
• Do we like using our site?
• What are our competitors doing?
• What are the best Web companies doing?

These seem like silly questions. But you may be surprised by the differing answers you get.

And from there, the conversation can start.

Takeaways

Simply put, Web performance is not about understanding how to make your site faster. Web performance is about understanding what you can do to make your site better. An effective Web site is one that is shaped by a culture of effective Web performance.

Striving to make a better, more effective Web site may lead to such profound cultural and organizational changes that the process ends up making a better company. A company where the Web site is seen as an active conversation shared with employees, shareholders, investors, and customers.

A conversation where you explain what can be done, why you are doing it, and how you will do it. A conversation where you listen to what must be done, how it is expected to work, and what the customer defines as success.

So when you wake up six years from now, and realize that the day you stopped treating your Web site as a technical problem that needed to be fixed, and started seeing it as an opportunity to create a more effective business, I hope you smile.

It’s a rare Web site these days that hosts all of its own content. From the smallest blog to the largest retailer, Web sites farm out their images, streams, and pages to CDNs, and absorb feeds, ads, and data streams from any number of outside providers.

Effective Web performance demands that a site take responsibility for the entire site, not just the parts under direct local management. Why? Because customers see a problem with your site, not with a provider.

How can the performance all of the third-party content on a site be managed? Using the exactly the same strategies already place to manage the performance of local content.

Measure from the outside-in

Customers come from the Internet. That measuring the performance of a site from the perspective of visitors is being mentioned here should not be a surprise. Critical to this part of managing third-parties is the ability to see into the page and determine if there are performance issues requesting and transmitting data from third-parties.

In the first article of this series, I detailed a number of approaches to actively gathering performance data. This method, whether from the datacenter or the last mile, will provide the early warning signs that there is an issue with a third-party, and feeding this data into the performance issue management plan.

Measure from inside the browser

The network and application performance of a third-party page component is just the start of the process, as this is what it takes to get the object to the browser. But what if this object then launches a number of actions, or starts to render on the screen. This may lead to a whole different range of issues that are a blind spot when analyzing Web performance.

Measuring the performance of discrete page elements from within the visitors browser will provide deeper insight into what effects the customer sees and which third-parties will need to be approached in order to improve the overall Web performance of the site.

Have clear and useful SLOs and SLAs

Service level objectives and service level agreements are often thrown about whenever there is the suspicion that there is a Web performance issue. Using these documents and frameworks as a club to beat up partners with is counter-productive.

SLOs and SLAs should clearly detail:

• the performance expectations of the Web site owner
• the performance and delivery capabilities of the third-party provider

Guess what? Arriving at this in a way that doesn’t lead to resentment and mistrust on both sides requires open and honest discussion.

Share data

If Web site owners and third-parties are going to work together to ensure the most effective Web performance strategy possible, then data must flow freely. Vendors will need access to the same data that Web site owners have (and vice versa) in order to ensure that if an issue is detected, everyone can examine all of the available data, and solve the problem quickly.

Communication

A recurring and critical theme when establishing a culture of effective Web performance is communication. When working with third-parties, this is even more critical, as the performance culture of one organization may be completely different from another. The Web site owner may have one site of criteria that determines a Web performance issue, while the vendor has another, and unless these are understood, problems will occur.

Clear communication paths must be baked into the SLA. Named contacts or contact paths will be there, as will expected response times for inbound requests, and escalation procedures.

When there is a performance issue, both sides will need to be very clear about how each other will respond.

Takeaways

Third-party content on Web sites is a fact. It shouldn’t be a headache. Effective Web performance measurement strategies, shared sources of Web performance data, and clearly understood paths and methods of communication will make using third-party content less stress-inducing to everyone.

A quote from Avinash Kaushik (Occam’s Razor and @avinashkaushik) to start this post.

I have a 10/90 rule . If your budget is $100 then spend $10 on tools and professional services to implement them, and spend $90 on hiring people to analyze data you collect on your website.

The web is quite complex, you are going to access multiple sources of data, you are going to have to do a lot of leg work. Blood, sweat and tears. You don’t just need tools for that (remember 85% of the data you get from any tool, free or paid is essentially the same). You need people!

Hire the best people you can find, tools will never be a limitation for them.

from This I Believe [A Manifesto for Web Marketers & Analysts]

Staring at this as I sipped my coffee stopped me dead.

Beside me I have two full pages of notes on what makes up the Web performance culture of company, and here is one of the most succinct points summed up for me in two short paragraphs.

Web performance is not just about tools and methodologies. Effective Web performance requires dedicated and trained human resources. And those people need to be able to work in a culture that values and understands the importance of Web performance to the business. Without a culture of Web performance, any tool, technology, and methodology purchased to make things better is useless.

In a previous post I touched on the question of whether an organization sees Web performance as a technology or business issue. Answering this question is key to understanding a company’s perspective on Web performance issues.

Start by asking Who is responsible for Web performance? at a company. Is there a cross-functional team that meets regularly to discuss current performance, long-term trends, the competitive landscape, effects on customer experience, and how performance concerns are shaping and guiding upcoming development efforts?

Or is Web performance a set of anonymous charts and tables that have no context ,originating from the inscrutable measurement system, bundled up into an executive report by an unnamed staff member for a once a month meeting?

Most companies understand Web performance is crucial. They understand it affects the bottom line and customer experience. They understand all of the ideas and concepts of Web performance. But like the proverbial horse and water, they don’t drink from the stream in front of them. They don’t drink because they are too busy watching for cougars, wolverines, and poachers. They have too much going on to make Web performance a priority.

Part of developing a strong culture of Web performance is creating a business culture that is customer-centric. When a company turns their perspective around and makes delighting the customer a part of everything they do, the customer experience on the Web becomes a critical component of the culture.

The key to making Web performance a part of a customer-centric culture is to shift Web performance discussions from the abstract (full of numbers and charts representing the potential of Web performance to affect customers) to the real (effect of Web performance on towns and cities and people and the bottom line). Attaching a name, a place, or a value to every number on a Web performance chart makes it easier for people in an organization to absorb the effect it has on them as an employee.

Moving the discussion about Web performance from the testing lab and NOC to the breakroom and the hallway takes a greater effort. It starts by making Web performance data available to all, not just those who are tasked with monitoring it.

A culture of Web performance means that the $90 you spent on people is supplemented by a team of avid amateurs who notice changes and trends that may slip through the cracks. These amateurs are encouraged to participate in Web performance discussions, where the experts are encouraged to listen then contribute.

Why listen to avid amateurs? In many cases, they are the people who work directly with customers and use the products on a daily basis. Their feedback comes from real experience, set alongside abstract values. Once a measurement has a story, it makes it easier to understand the problem.

An example of the success of amateurs is Wikipedia. A population of amateur contributors, as well as a core of experts in certain fields, have ensured that this is a useful resource. A Web performance culture full of avid amateurs allows comments and stories to flow from the customer-centric parts of an organization into the technology and business parts of the organization. These stories and inputs make the Web performance more real, and make a chart in a report more important.

A culture of Web performance is one that is adopted by an entire company. It is a way of examining the reality of a site in a way that is customer-centric and customer-driven. A strong Web performance culture absorbs information from many sources, and filters the data through a customer filter, and makes every measurement count.

In the rush to the mobile computing era, what is often lost by advocates of this technology are the actual needs of the modern mobile consumer. Do most users need to have a handheld computer with them at all times? Is that what they desire? What does the market say?

In March 2009, 23% of mobile phone sales in the US were smartphones. Yet this is where all the energy of tech writers and analysts is focused. What about the 77% of the market that uses what would be considered dumb-phones? Is there nothing interesting going on in this market?

Smartphone market share is growing, and quickly. But, if you step back and ask yourself what you want from your phone, your decision to buy a smartphone may start to slip a bit.

Go through a checklist of must haves before making a phone decision.

• Do you need to check your email all the time?
• Do you need access to social-networking sites?
• Do you need access to your calendar?
• Do you crave shiny new apps that entertain you?
• Will this device be a single mobile computing/communication/entertainment device?
• Do you need to make calls?
• Do you need to take pictures?
• Do you need to send SMS messages?

Advocates of smartphones will tell me that it is the fastest growing market share in the mobile phone market. Great.

But does the latest and greatest smartphone serve the needs that I have (or you have, or your mom has, or your sister has) for mobile communication?

I am an advocate for smartphones. I have one and I use it. I find that it serves the needs I have everyday. But I am not a phone-user. I am a data-user and a messaging-user. I have a massive phone plan, but unless I am travelling, I make very few calls (more due to my personality than anything, I suppose).

So I ask readers: do you carry more than one phone? Do you have a smartphone and a standard mobile phone? And if you do, why?

Is your smartphone a ball and chain for work, and when you aren’t working, you carry something that works for you? Do you have one plan for data and one for calling or messaging?

And if you have had a smartphone, have you found it a good thing? Or have you wished you could go back to something simpler?

Web performance is everywhere. People intuitively understand that when a site is slow, something’s wrong. Web performance breeds anecdotal tales of lost carts, broken catalogs, and searches gone wrong. Web performance can get you name in lights, but not in the way you or your company would like.

It’s a mistake to consider Web performance a technology problem. Web performance is really a business problem that has a technological solution.

Business problems have solutions that any mid-level executive can understand. A site that can’t handle the amount of traffic coming in requires tuning and optimization, not the firing of the current VP of Operations and a new marketing strategy.

Can you imagine the fate of the junior executive who suggested that a new marketing strategy was the solution to brick-and-mortar stores that are too small and crowded to handle the number of prospective customers (or former prospective customers) coming in the door?

Every Web performance event costs a company money, in the present and in the future. So when someone presents your company with the reality of your current Web performance, what is your response?

Some simple ideas for living with the reality that Web performance hurts business.

1. Be able to explain the issue to everyone in the company and to customers who ask. Gory details and technical mumbo-jumbo make people feel like there is something being hidden from them. Tell the truth, but make it clear what happened.
2. Do not blame anyone in public. A great way to look bad to everyone is to say that someone else caused the problem. Guess what? All that the people who visited your site during the problem will remember is that your site had the problem. Save frank discussions for behind closed doors.
3. Be able to explain to the company what the business cost was. While everyone is pointing fingers inside your company, remind them that the outage cost them $XX/minute. Of course, you can only tell them that if you know what that number is. Then gently remind everyone that this is what it cost the whole company.
4. Take real action. I don’t mean things like “We will be conducting an internal review of our processes to ensure that this is not repeated”. I mean things like listening and understanding what technology or business process failed and got you into this position in the first place. Was it someone just hitting the wrong switch? Or was it a culture of denial that did not allow the reality of Web performance to filter up to levels where real change could be implemented?
5. Demand quantitative proof that this will never happen again. Load test. Monitor. Measure. Correlate data from multiple sources. Decide how Web performance information will be communicated inside your company. Make the data available so people can ask questions. Be prepared to defend your decisions with real information.

The most successful Web companies have done thing very well. It is the core of their success and it is what makes them ruthlessly strive for Web performance excellence.

These companies understood that in order to succeed they needed to create a culture where business performance and Web performance are the same thing.

I have been monitoring this trend for a couple of weeks to see if it remained constant, and it appears to be a real thing. Since the end of May 2009, Internet Explorer 7’s browser share in the US has collapsed, with a requisite increase in the use of Firefox 3.0.

This is a staggering change. Either this is an artifact of the way that StatCounter is capturing browser data or a very large organization(s) suddenly switched the default browser that it allowed its customers to use.

Does anyone have any insight into why this may have occurred?

Last Tuesday, I created a Windows 7 RC virtual machine for VMWare Fusion. As a fairly technical user of operating systems and the like, our internal IT department figured that I would be the right person to put this new OS through its paces.

Unlike a lot of people who are using Windows 7 and commenting on the new features and functionality, I am here to comment on how well it works with someone who is ingrained in a Windows XP workflow to get his job done.

As a virtual machine (2 processors, 1GB RAM, 40GB disk), Windows 7 is not as resource intensive as Vista threatened to be, and is just as responsive as my XP virtual machine is with the same machine configuration.

Subtle changes to the Start Menu and the Task Bar are easy to adapt to, and so far all of my applications run smoothly (I am using mainly Microsoft applications, so this should not be surprising).

My virtual machine doesn’t have an Aero compatible video card, so I don’t get all of the cool transparencies and visual effects, but frankly those are eye-candy. I need an OS that just works, and so far, Windows 7 lives up to expectations.

The most surprising thing is that there are no surprises. Building on 2-3 years of Vista development and improving the performance means that most applications already run efficiently. The only complaint I suppose is that the OS takes up a very substantial amount of the 40GB disk. However, as this is not the OS where I store media, pictures, etc., I am not as concerned as I would be if this was my primary computer.

That said, on an old Dell Latitude D610 (60 GB disk, 2 GB RAM, single core processor carved by cavemen) that I installed this the same OS on, it is running fine, except for a large amount of fan action that I didn’t hear when the same machine was running Ubuntu 9.04. As well, this older machine has no apps on it, other than Skype, and it has a large amount of the 60BG of disk still left.

Overall, as a day-to-day user of Windows, I am satisfied that Windows 7 is a giant leap over Vista, and I am looking forward to migrating my work permanently to this OS.