[256DEV]

As someone who runs a SaaS[1] I'm always really surprised by how slow many websites are, even those clearly run by well funded teams pushing hard to grow their service.

The following two things seem axiomatic by now to me:

1. It's well established that faster websites convert better in a strongly correlated relationship. From Google/Amazon scale case studies down to smaller ones, the faster your website is the more money you'll make...

2. How fast your website runs is almost entirely within your control, whereas factors like competitor positioning, Google's ranking algorithm, whether your service is mentioned in a viral twitter thread etc. etc. are all not!

Given these it seems spending a few developer hours after each set of site changes to keep things at a perfect 100 PageSpeed score is a very high return investment of time. Especially when some performance improvements affect 100% of prospective buyers, whereas say adding a specific feature might only improve conversion for a small segment of your funnel's first step.

[1] https://www.exchangerate-api.com - you're welcome to judge how fast my site is, I'm always open to suggestions!

[villasv]

Your arguments are what makes landing pages be fast. It’s still not enough to push for the SaaS internals to be fast, or really any other page not related to conversion.

[256DEV]

This is definitely a good point. I wonder does anyone know if the Chrome User Experience Report [2] dataset will be used in the upcoming Google Page Experience Update [1]? If it will be included then perhaps this will create pressure for faster whole-site experiences. Basically if your landing pages are fast but your actual SaaS dashboard is slow then this will be reported back to Google by Chrome users - and then potentially affect your ranking.

For those who aren't familiar with Chrome User Experience, Chrome collects website performance data while you browse under certain circumstances (I think you need to be opted into sync) and so Google essentially has detailed RUM data for any web origin with a decent amount of traffic.

[1] https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/11/timing-for...

[2] https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-user-experien...