On Tue, Dec 03, 2013 at 12:30:00AM -0800, Ori Livneh wrote:
We ran a controlled test and found that module storage reduced page load times by 156 ms, on average. Aaron has some data available at < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Module_storage_performance%3E, but we still need to write several sections. The size of the effect is substantially smaller on mobile, for some reason, which is surprising. We hope to make the dataset public soon.
That sounds great, Ori. Nice work, from both of you :)
156ms shaved off of 90% of page views is pretty nice. http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/10/31/TheCostOfLatency.aspx is worth reading for context and scale:
"This conclusion may be surprising -- people notice a half second delay? -- but we had a similar experience at Amazon.com. In A/B tests, we tried delaying the page in increments of 100 milliseconds and found that even very small delays would result in substantial and costly drops in revenue."
I couldn't agree more. It's widely accepted across the industry that bad site performance/latency is detrimental to user engagement (simply put: speed is a feature). It's exciting to see some much-needed good work in this area.
Regards, Faidon