Site seems fast at test but unbearably slow in real

[VelvetIndieGround]

Hello

 

when i tested my page with gtmetrix.com, pingdom.com, google pagespeed. the results show that it's not perfect but quite acceptable. as you can see on the link below. the test results by gtmetrix.

 

https://gtmetrix.com/reports/vibeby.com/llTx1eXt

 

yep. Yslow shows some F score. but what i really don't understand is when i compared other competitor's site. their results are worse than mine. but in real my site is super slow. it's unbearable to browse.

 

i've set all recommended backoffice setups such as Smarty, CCC and all. except CDN and Caching. after realizing this i deleted some useless modules on the front page. but no changes.

 

 

1. Hosting

 

after talking with hosting provider, i used A2 Hosting Shared Swft, we found out that my site reached the limit for several factors. so decided to change to Turbo hosting, supposed to be 20 times faster. It's not moved up there yet. 

 

but  what's strange is that a daily visitor to the site is under 80.  max. 237 (only once) usually around 50 a day. 

is it normal to reach the CPU limit at this volume of visitors? if not, there must be a problem of my site. i guess.

 

2. CDN. Cache Manager Module / Express Cache and so on.

 

other than changing the hosting option, i'm also thinking to use CDN or Cache Manage Module

 

- CDN : A2hosting provide Cloudflare free. but all i found out is some says it's not working properly. so i'm a bit hesitant to use that. any experience?

 

- Cache Managing Module : when i move up to faster hosting option, i can use Memcached caching. even after that, can modules like these (Cache Manage Modue or Express Cache) be useful?

 

 

Cache Manage Module(https://addons.prestashop.com/en/website-performance/6413-cache-manager.html)

Express Cache (https://www.xtendify.com/en/modules/prestashop/front-office-features/111-express-cache-speed-up-your-prestashop)

 

 

as you can see from my questions, i'm really new to all these. so i think maybe the problem is the site i made. i may have done a fatal mistake while making a site.

 

any thoughts, suggestions will be greatly appreciated

 

my site is https://vibeby.com

 

 

thanks in advance

[Scully]

Your start page load 5.2 MB of data. This must be slow. I am sorry to say that, but a start page must be under 1 MB of size.

All you cache modules do not help in terms of large media files. The help to prepare the HTML part only. But this isn't the main goal here.

 

So work on the size of your images, optimize them in size, make them smaller and reduce the number of items on the start page.

After you have done that, we can look further.

 

By the way, your html only loads within about 1 seconds, which seems acceptable to me.

Edited July 5, 2017 by Scully (see edit history)

[VelvetIndieGround]

Hi Scully 

 

thank you for your suggestions. 

 

i recognized that the size of the main page is quite heavy. but it's kind of inevitable. since the front page products are changing quite often i can't optimize every image. 

what's concerned is compared to competitor's site which is heavier than mine loads quite fast.  

all the test results also show that my site should be way faster than that of competitor. but not in real world.

 

so i have been worrying i may made a fatal mistake while building up the site. 

 

i've implemented Caching module and changed the server, set the Memcached. after that pingdong, yslow and pagespeed results are improved.

but site speed in real world? still much needs to be improved.

i'm figuring out setting up CDN. since i'm targeting only the local market (Turkey), i'm not so sure if CDN can help that much. hope i'm wrong.

 

thanks again

[Scully]

First of all:

You worry too much about metrix, that we all not know exactely how they are measured. Where are the machines located with how much bandwith. How much traffic was at the very same time....

 

And nothing is inevitable.

Why not make smaller images and let the browser blow them up a little?

Why not put less items on the start page?

 

And what the text-only part concerns: you have appx. 1 second for the test on the main page. This is ok, but It also could be less than 200 ms.

Much of this depends on server and database setup and optimization.

 

Have you an own machine or are you working on a shared hosting. If latter is the case - you will never run fast.

How much memory?

How is memory assigned?

How is the database set up?

How many and what kind of modules are you using. Uninstall all not really used modules.

 

Als this little things may help to improve the HTML page loading faster by may be 0.5 second.

But with images you could save 1 seconds plus.

Edited July 6, 2017 by Scully (see edit history)

[VelvetIndieGround]

First of all:

You worry too much about metrix, that we all not know exactely how they are measured. Where are the machines located with how much bandwith. How much traffic was at the very same time....

 

And nothing is inevitable.

Why not make smaller images and let the browser blow them up a little?

Why not put less items on the start page?

 

And what the text-only part concerns: you have appx. 1 second for the test on the main page. This is ok, but It also could be less than 200 ms.

Much of this depends on server and database setup and optimization.

 

Have you an own machine or are you working on a shared hosting. If latter is the case - you will never run fast.

How much memory?

How is memory assigned?

How is the database set up?

How many and what kind of modules are you using. Uninstall all not really used modules.

 

Als this little things may help to improve the HTML page loading faster by may be 0.5 second.

But with images you could save 1 seconds plus.

Thank you much again,, Scully

 

i agreed. those matrix could not be the main concern but  the user experience.

that's the starting point of this thread. 

since all the factors say that my site needs to be faster than competitors. when it comes to the user experience, that's not the case. 

 

so for the server, i'm using the shared hosting. but even my server response time is faster than competitors. 

 

as suggested, i reduced the products on the main page and deleted one category slider. but those didn't help that much.

even if i reduce the size of each image, i don't think that could be a real solution for my problem. 

 

i'm still trying to reduce the size of the page but i really don't know.

 

thanks again

[Scully]

I don't think shared hosting is the best way with a rather complex prestashop setup.

My developer tools still show 4.74 mb of size. Way to much in my opinion.

 

An easy calculation: In our country, most of the mobile device users have 1 GB of free traffic per month.

Loading only your start page 200 times would result in 1 GB of traffic.

 

The 3 largest images take already 400 KB. You have 97 graphics and images on the start page. It can't be fast this way.

 

On the other hand:

The HTML part of your start pages takes only appx. 100 ms to load in average - which is quite fast.