An interesting article I read today by Todd Anglin, Chief Evangelist for Telerik, a provider of development tools and user interface components for .NET. http://dotnet.sys-con.com/node/1054992

In the article entitled "Practical Approaches for Optimizing Website Performance" he asks "How Do You Improve Performance?"

Generally speaking, there are two key ways to improve performance in a website:

• Reduce the number of bits that must be downloaded to load a page
• Reduce the number of HTTP requests a page requires to load
  

He then goes on to talk in more detail about specific techniques such as: compressing HTTP traffic, compressing ViewState (for .NET), reducing HTML, using client-side rendering, reducing requests. using CSS Sprites, script combining and minification, content delivery networks CDN's, loading JavaScript last and some specific tips for .NET environments.

One follow up comment to the article read:

"Great article Todd. I would have found it especially useful to hear your opinion on some of the performance optimization software options out there that can automate the good practice that you mentioned - we're trialling one at the moment (aptimize) and your opinion would be valuable. In my experience techniques are great but their application can be patchy, we're looking for something that we can put on and go and get a consistent level of optimization.

Thanks
JP"

In our opinion Aptimize can deliver reduced size per page and reduced roundtrips using most of the techniques Todd mentions in his article but without the need to make any manual changes to the application code, JS, HTML or CSS. Aptimize works transparently within the web server delivering these optimizations on the fly.

Also from a monitoring point of view we rcommend our own WebTuna product as it collects page load times for all pages from all users unlike synthetic monitors which only simulate one user hitting your site every 5-30 minutes and therefore miss the real end user experience.

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