Greetings and salutations! I’m Matt Poepsel, VP of Performance Strategies for Gomez. I’ve been in the web application performance business for more than 10 years, and I’ve had the distinct pleasure of analyzing 1,000+ web applications. I can’t say that I’ve seen it all (since the web is constantly evolving), but I’ve seen quite a bit and I look forward to sharing my observations here on the Gomez Blog.

I’ll be writing about a range of topics, including web performance, business performance, user experience, application design and testing, and industry trends. I’ll also be writing about the “people side of performance” including communication, organizational change, goal-setting, and education.

In case you didn’t pick up on my subtle Heathers reference in the opening line, I should probably mention that I like to keep things a bit less formal. I might make a feeble attempt at humor or share my own experiences from around the web. Who knows? You may even see an A-Team reference (because that show was so awesome).

I do have a favor to ask, though. If you see something you like, please weigh in. If you see something you don’t like or don’t agree with, definitely weigh in. You can use the comments feature below, follow me on Twitter using @mattpoepsel, or email me at mpoepsel@gomez.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

And now onto the real meat of the matter …..

About a year ago, I finally jumped on the HDTV bandwagon. High Definition Television is one of those things that’s difficult to describe until you experience it for yourself. You’ve either seen it or you haven’t.

When I first turned on my shiny new television, I’d watch anything in HD. Sports, movies, home improvement shows, Kathy Griffin – you name it. For weeks, I’d stare at the screen, marveling at the sharpness and clarity of the picture.

Over time, the newness wore off. I got used to seeing the individual blades of grass on the Fenway Park infield and all of the other incredible visual details. Now, when I’m forced to watch a low-def television (or Kathy Griffin), I want to throw myself out the nearest window.

What happened? Easy – my expectations around what constitutes an “acceptable television watching experience” evolved. What’s really amazing is that I find the visual experience even impacts my interpretation of the actual content of the show.

A similar increase in expectations has happened online. Twelve or fifteen years ago, it was cool if a company had a website at all. (If you want to take a trip down memory lane, check out the Internet Archive). In 1996, even brochure-ware was welcome. Today, web visitors expect fully-featured websites and web applications that are zippy to load and to use.

In my consulting work, I frequently reference this evolution. I encourage clients to baseline the technical experiences they’re delivering along several dimensions that mirror visitors’ expectations, including:

• Availability – Can users successfully load pages and complete their desired tasks?
• Responsiveness – Do pages load quickly?
• Consistency – Do pages load in a uniform manner for every user, every time?

But, while most business’ IT groups regularly track these metrics, they’re not always collected from – and therefore are not reflective of – the end-user’s perspective. After all your customers don’t live in data centers, do they? A better approach is to monitor your web performance from the same geographies, connection speeds, and browsers that real users choose. (And, judging from the wide range of results in our benchmarks, I’d say there’s a lot of work to be done.)

Unlike A-Team reruns, web users’ expectations have changed over the years. They have come to expect more, and they will punish companies who don’t meet those expectations. Experience tells us that they will click over to a competitor, call your call center, or complain to friends and co-workers.

Companies who aren’t regularly making sure they’re meeting these heightened expectations are taking unnecessary chances that may be impacting both their brands and their bottom lines.

My advice: measure, analyze, and improve the experiences you’re delivering. Your users will appreciate it, and it’s a lot cheaper than the alternative.