CHAPTER 4 Culture of Performance
Not only does performance affect existing users, but it can actually
help you reach new audiences as well. Consider the experience YouTube
had when it improved performance (see Mat Marquis’ chapter). New mar-
kets, increased revenue, improved business metrics, better user satisfac-
tion — the impact of improved Web performance is no minor detail.
None of this should be a surprise. The Web is an interactive medium.
Click a button, scroll down a page, submit a form: interactions are at the
heart of what it means to use a website. Performance is a fundamental
component of the user experience.
We can correct the course, and we must if we want to truly capitalize
on the ubiquity and interactive nature of the Web. To do so, we need to
stop treating performance as nice to have, or a developer task, and start to
ingrain it into our workflow.
Before this can happen, we need to get buy-in from management.Getting Support
No matter how valuable you know performance to be, you need to get sup-
port. If the people dealing directly with budgets and timelines don’t care,
you’ll have a hard time making sure performance is prioritized throughout
the process.MaKe iT PeRSonal
It’s easy to get excited about reducing metrics like load time and page
weight, but they’re probably not what matters to the people you need to
get support from. They want to hear about what it will do for the things
they care about. Some people will want to see how it affects the bottom
line. Others may care more about what it means for page views and bounce
rates. Learn what others care about and focus on emphasizing how perfor-
mance improves those factors. You’ll have a lot more success convincing
them of the importance of performance if you connect it to something that
matters directly to them.