Comments on: Shopping Cart Speed Test Challenge

By: Dave Beck

Dave Beck — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 04:21:55 +0000

Thanks Nick you are 100% correct. At the end of the day everybody should do their own testing and this article was designed to show that there can be huge variances.

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:53:09 +0000

Adding a little more to my last message. For example on the Google page speed test

On CoreCommerce:

http://www.cierracandles.com/ 85/100

On Shopify

http://store.foofighters.com/ 73/100

On Volusion

http://www.thegreenloop.com 58/100

On BigCommerce

http://www.petrolfordogs.com/brands/Petrol.html 74/100

So as you can tell the test depends on which sites you use.

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:44:21 +0000

I can tell you speed tests are not all equal. For example if you have a site in shopify vs volusion. Lets say volusion has more images on the site you are testing or different features then you compare it to shopify which has less features and less images for the comparison. Then you say shopify is faster. That isn’t true though since it was not at all an apples to apples comparison. The only true measure of server speed is to put a blank html page up there and then test it.

Also running google page speed or yslow isnt accurate in this measurement for the same reasons. Let say someone on shopify is a good html coder and follows the appropriate guidelines. Then you have a someone on volusion who is a poor coder and has mega large images or many get request for images. You aren’t comparing apples to apples again.

Food for thought :_)

By: Dave Beck

Dave Beck — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:27:00 +0000

Mary,

Unfortunately I am not familiar with Americommerce.com. I might take a quick look at the trial.

Having invested most of my time with BigCommerce/Interspire in recent times I haven’t paid too much attention to other options.

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 07:15:40 +0000

Dave,

Good info! Do you have any experience or information you could share regarding Americommerce.com? They seem to offer a lot of features; but as with BigCommerce, things aren’t always what they seem. Any insight would be appreciated.

By: Quinn

Quinn — Sat, 29 May 2010 14:38:43 +0000

Steve,a lesson that I learnt a long time ago was to never make changes just for the sake of Google, your customers are much more important. In saying that, I really welcome this element being added to their algorithm as it ultimately promotes a better user experience through faster load times. It also rewards quality developers that are going the extra yard with best practices and clean code.
+1

By: Dave Beck

Dave Beck — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:18:03 +0000

That’s a good question and to be honest I wouldn’t have a clue, but I would have thought that at the end of the day it would come down to file size. Once again it is probably something that could make a very minute amount of difference and the time that you spend working it out would be much better spent on other initiatives.

By: Dave Beck

Dave Beck — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:15:24 +0000

Steve,
a lesson that I learnt a long time ago was to never make changes just for the sake of Google, your customers are much more important. In saying that, I really welcome this element being added to their algorithm as it ultimately promotes a better user experience through faster load times. It also rewards quality developers that are going the extra yard with best practices and clean code.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:50:05 +0000

A question in regards to image file formats. Is one faster than the other? JPG’s v’s PNG’s??

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:59:46 +0000

Great post Dave! We have been reading a lot about this lately and it is really scaring me.
My site is very slow compared to your tests. I am weighing up the our IA recommendations v’s too much content. I am tweaking it hard at the moment and your post has really helped me shave some crutial seconds off already. Once again thanks again