High Performance Websites

Performance of a website refers to how effectively it meets it's goals/delivers, to it's owners and to it's visitors. Every websites has it's unique objective, so does every visitor. A high performance site meets both the owner and user objectives. Performance is measurable by the following benchmarks.

Benchmarks

Speed. This is the single biggest measurable indicator of performance. How fast do the pages and content take to load? You significantly improve your visitors experience if you don't keep them waiting, though some content is worth the wait.

Maintenance. A high performance website should enable you to update it easily. This ease will make you and your visitors build a recurring relationship. Content is key. If you cant add to your site, then regardless of how fast it loads, it will soon age, and become worn out, eventually affecting your traffic. Content Management systems like Joomla make it possible to update your site, even daily, as easily as you 'facebook'.

Security. If your site has any sensitive data, you should be able to control who can view or edit that content. If your security looks good, users will be more open and willing to transact with you online.

Design. Your website should be user friendly and attractive. A good design is intuitive. Users should be able to manoeuvre the content easily. The beauty aspect boosts your image in the users eye, they will think of you as more capable of meeting their needs.

Cross browser/platformness. A high performance site should work anywhere. It's good if it works the same in all browsers, and better if it works on mobile phones. This makes it more accessible and there fore more useful.

Features. Features increase capabilities of a visitor on your site. These may include catalogues, feedback forms, search, order systems and the like. Be careful with the features you put on your site. Not  all features will help you. e.g.,  don't have a login box, with nothing to login to. This could cost you more users than it attracts. The same may apply to chart rooms, google maps, galleries... Anything you add to you site that does not bring you closer to your objective should not be included.

Benefits of running a high performance website

Retention. A good site keeps users online and keeps them coming back because they enjoy their experience with it. If one visitor is happy, he is likely to mention your site in a good light, leading to more hits.

Probe worthy. As the site continues to deliver, users are motivated to dig deeper and deeper into your site, more and more of your message goes out, and by the end of the day, you and your visitor will get what you want.

Less bandwidth. As I, and many others use connections that charge per MB downloaded, a good site will save me money. When units run low, I begin to become choosy of the sites im visiting, so my range narrows to high performance sites to save money.

Save time. On a good site, I can accomplish more as a visitor in less time. In today's fast paced economy, time is precious.

Runs anywhere. Your users benefit from a good site when they can interact with it even on their mobile phones. As the phones and their software become more capable, people will use more and more of their phones, making it easier for them to reach you, if your site can handle more devices.

Google visibility. High performance websites, as a by product are also listed easily on search engines. They tend to have simple text, rather than images and flash widgets, which is the bread and butter of search engines.

Strategy to get performance out of your site

Keep it sleek, and objective oriented. Don't get carried away with every new AJAX widget or catch phrase and add it to your site. Any additions you make come at a cost.  Be sure you need to before you add anything that may reduce the performance of your site. Remember the bottom line... Performance of a website refers to how effectively it meets it's goals/delivers, to it's owners and to it's visitors.