I need help on web page load time, its very bad!

[Hyrule]

Note: This is KILLING my customer experience.

Here is my webpage: http://www.stbands.com

Here is a speed test that may help you (look at the poor ratings in the upper corner)

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110628_MW_Y8CQ/1/details/

I have an F on "Cache Static Content" - anyone know how I can fix this?

Also, it is a e-commerce website hosted through core commmerce. I have some access to code but not all of it. Some of it is dynamic. However, if you tell me specific things I can forward it to their very awesome tech department. They are very willing to work with me and are now considering implementing a CDN after I schooled them.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Don't be afraid to get very technical - I may not understand it, but the engineers there will.

[bozzie311]

I am a huge fan of Cloudflare!

[john4math]

A lot of items on your home page are getting served securely... which isn't necessary, and will prevent the browser from caching them properly.  For example:

• https://www.stbands.com/javascript/jquery/jquery.min.js
• https://www.stbands.com/css/dynamic-css.php?currentlyActivePageId=1
• https://www.stbands.com/uploads/image/Custom Wristbands(1).jpg
• https://www.stbands.com/images/categories/783.jpg
• https://www.stbands.com/images/categories/785.jpg
• https://www.stbands.com/images/categories/786.jpg
• https://www.stbands.com/images/categories/787.jpg
• https://www.stbands.com/images/categories/788.jpg

Since it's not a secure page, I wouldn't be serving all of these securely.  I'd use http:// instead of https://

[Damien-Anderson]

Sure, there are two areas to address on your server config. One is the cache-control which is returned in the header. I set a longer period of cache for all images and scripts to save users downloading new copies time and again to their cache.  ie: max-age=3600, must-revalidate - see more here: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html

Then I would also set some rules around using 304 status on page furniture and other assets which do not change frequently.

Aside from this, as far as I am aware, you should ensure your stack is optimised. The recent Search Insight session from Google was interesting as in that presentation they talked a lot about the average load and latency times they see, useful to use as a benchmark in tuning your own speed.

Cheers,

Damien

[Hyrule]

My site uses SSL, which means I have to pay $20 / month. I need to make sure it is going to be worth it before I do that. Is it?

[bozzie311]

My load time went down by 50%. Non eCommerce though. I would say yes. However I would definitely look into all the variables with eCommerce. Should be great though.

[networkelites]

You might also want to try to Google speed plugin, http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/, it identify issues and will give fix suggestions that you can pass to your tech guys/gals.

[Hyrule]

John - Thanks, i'll start here. I'm not sure why they are set up like this (facepalm)

[Hyrule]

John - Thanks, i'll start here. I'm not sure why they are set up like this (facepalm)