Getting Started With Web Performance Optimization

This document is an introduction to using Yottaa Optimizer to optimize website performance. For background and general information on how to use Yottaa, please see Using Yottaa to Manage Web Performance.

Yottaa Optimizer Access

You need to create a free Yottaa account and add at least one site to your account. Then your dashboard will look like the screenshot below. You will see a link called "optimize" next to the "monitor" link. The "optimize" link allows you to start Yottaa Site Speed Optimizer for your site.

At first, the "optimize" icon will be grayed out because your site is not optimized yet. Click the "optimize" button, you will be brought to the "optimization" page for your site, as shown below:

Optimizer Preview Mode

If you click "Try Optimizer Now" from the above screen shot, Yottaa Optimizer will be initiated for your site in preview mode. During "preview mode", you can configure optimization settings and evaluate the impact without disrupting your live traffic.

During preview mode, Yottaa will provide the following:

• A special URL to access your optimized site
• Summary stats on the results on using Yottaa Optimizer for your site
• Link to the next step: activate Optimizer

Special Preview URL to access your optimized site

On the optimization page, a special URL is provided as shown in the screen shot below:

If you click this special preview URL, you will see how your site works with Yottaa Optimizer. This URL is a special URL for you to access the Yottaa optimized version of your site. From here, you can evaluate whether there are issues as well as measure performance differences.

In certain rare situations (e.g. if your website uses client-side JavaScript to check the browser's URL) your site may not look or behave exactly the same when accessed via this special preview URL. Such issues will not prevent Yottaa from properly optimizing your site! It's just a limitation of the special preview URLs, if your site uses these rare techniques -- which is not recommended by Yottaa nor in the industry.

Summary result from using Yottaa Optimizer for your site

As soon as the Optimizer preview begins, Yottaa starts monitoring your site key pages using its worldwide browser agents. Each page is monitored directly as well as via the Yottaa special preview URL in order to measure the effect of using Yottaa Optimizer for your site. Performance statistics are reported on this page to help you assess the impact. These stats are organized in the following categories:

Reducing server load and bandwidth consumption

Yottaa optimizes your site by applying front end optimization techniques to reduce the number of requests. Further, Yottaa leverages content delivery networks (CDN) to offload asset delivery from your web infrastructure. All of these happen automatically, with the net result of reducing the number of requests going to your server and significantly reduced bandwidth consumption from your data center.

These stats are collected in real time, accumulated together and reported here, as shown in the example below:

Though there is no real user traffic going through Yottaa Optimizer during the preview, Yottaa Monitors from worldwide locations are visiting your site simulating real user browsing. The reported data are from such simulated traffic. Though the volume is different from your website real traffic, the reported performance measurements are similar to what you should experience once you go live by activating Yottaa Site Speed Optimizer.

Note that these stats are accumulative, so it can take a day or so to see meaningful stats on these pie charts. So if you don't see data from the pie charts, just come back a little later.

Improving your page load user experience

Similarly, Yottaa Monitors monitor your site key pages with and without Yottaa Optimizer, measure the key metrics and report them here to help you evaluate the impact of Optimizer from a page loading user experience perspective. An example is shown below:

The data shown are from the most recent samples in the last 24-hour period.

Yottaa starts by applying generic optimization settings. However, generic optimization settings may not work well for your site. If you don't see performance benefits, you should change optimization settings.

Configuring Optimization Settings

Domain Name and Web Hosts

The first thing to do is to make sure you have your site domain names and web hosts configured. Yottaa only optimizes content from configured domains and web hosts. By default Yottaa only optimizes resources coming from the hosts where your website domain name is associated with. If your site has resources loaded from different web hosts but you didn't configure Yottaa to optimize these web hosts, Yottaa will not optimize these resources and thus you may not see as many page load user experience improvements.

To configure domain name, web servers and web hosts, go to "configuration"->"Domain Names", as shown below:

In general, the more web hosts you add, the more resources Yottaa has permission to optimize and thus the more benefits you will likely see. An example of adding web hosts and domain names is shown below:

Once you change the web site domain names configuration, wait for a while for the change to propagate to the entire Yottaa cloud network. Refresh the optimization page to see the results. The propagation process itself is relatively quick (approx. 1 minute). However, due to the relatively low sample frequency from our monitors, you may have to wait for a few hours to as long as a day to see the full impact measured.

If you don't know which web hosts your site is using, you can always find them out from the page load waterfall diagrams on the "Trending" page or the public performance assessment page on yottaa.com.

Optimization Settings

The next thing is to is to tune Optimization Settings. Again, this is available from the site configuration menu by clicking "configuration"->"Optimization Settings".

Yottaa has automated most of the optimization settings. In general, we don't think that you should come and tune optimization settings here. Further, a lot of advanced optimization settings are not exposed to our users yet. If you don't see performance benefits or if there are problems, we recommend you post your problems at Yottaa Support Forum (feel free to make it private if necessary) or contact us at support@yottaa.com directly.

Make It Real - Activate Optimizer for Your Site

From preview mode, the next step is to activate Yottaa Optimizer for your site and thus bring a faster experience to your web visitors.

This is straightforward to do. Simply click "Activate Optimizer Now" and a wizard will guide you through the process. A brief explanation is available at Activate Optimizer.

Summary

Using Yottaa Optimizer is really straightforward. Many sites reap much greater benefit after configuring domain names and web hosts, since otherwise Yottaa will not optimize these resources. In general, the more you tell Yottaa to optimize, the better results you can expect.

If you have questions or comments, please post them at Yottaa Support Forum (feel free to make it private if necessary) or contact us at support@yottaa.com directly.

Make your site faster today!. Your visitors will thank you for it.