
Analyzing the Walmart site performance - rammy1234
https://iamakulov.com/notes/walmart/
======
gbrayut
I joined the Edge Foundation team @WalmartLabs about a year ago. We help
manage the HTTP ingress flow (CDNs, WAF, Tier 1/2 proxies and LBs, etc) for
all Walmart eCommerce properties. Our custom proxy also does some basic and
not so basic frontend optimizations (js and css
compression/minification/bundling, image resizing, url rewrites, etc) and
handles a large portion of routing requests to backend servers.

This is a great write up from earlier this year, and from the screenshots it
looks like it was before our new site design launched. That was a pretty
massive modernization effort that included some site performance improvements.
We also now have a sizeable team (100+) focused on some of the other details
from the article. Brotli for instance went into A/B testing this month.

There are a lot of moving parts and changing priorities at a company the size
of Walmart, and development and deployments can be slower than at smaller
shops. But there definitely is active progress on improving our site speed.

And if you like working on any of these kinds of systems we are always hiring!

~~~
watchdogtimer
Glad to hear it. I find Walmart's web site to be so slow on my PC to be almost
unusable. I hate to think what the experience must be like for users on old
computers or really low end phones.

~~~
londons_explore
I think [http://www.foundem.co.uk/](http://www.foundem.co.uk/) is a good
example of how lightweight and fast an ecommerce site can be.

And I bet it was made by just one guy in a few weeks too.

~~~
dagoat
Click on hotels and you get this:
[http://www.foundem.co.uk/hygiene/Temporary_Announcement_2016...](http://www.foundem.co.uk/hygiene/Temporary_Announcement_2016.jsp)

------
aresant
What is particularly striking about this article is that Walmart was - in 2002
- publishing influential studies about the correlation between site speed and
conversion rate:

[http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2012/02/28/4-awesome-
slid...](http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2012/02/28/4-awesome-slides-
showing-how-page-speed-correlates-to-business-metrics-at-walmart-com/)

Get back to the basics guys!

~~~
ashelmire
I imagine the conversation went like this:

Dev: faster page loads make us more money!

PM: we NEED to use this custom font. This is non-negotiable.

~~~
throwaway16512
I work for Walmart Labs. While your comment is funny, I just came here to say
that this is not really how Walmart works.

The technology division of Walmart known as Walmart Labs that is responsible
for developing and maintaining the website along with all backend
infrastructure performs A/B testing for every new feature (including custom
font) that is introduced. Any change to production systems or applications
goes through a rigorous review process which involves only engineers (not
managers).

No PM in Walmart can define a non-negotiable feature like this. Walmart Labs
has a strong engineering culture and feature definition and testing is largely
driven by engineers. Overriding a developer's recommendation the way you
describe would be found to be in very poor taste.

The report in this article was created prior to the current redesign of the
Walmart website. Back then a lot of technical debt had accumulated. The
website has been redesigned now and a lot of that technical debt has been
eliminated. The website is much faster now. Please give it a try.

~~~
dmarlow
You had me with this: "Any change to production systems or applications goes
through a rigorous review process which involves only engineers (not
managers)."

I'm going to spend some time looking around the site today.

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pg_bot
Some good points, but I would suggest using "font-display: swap;" instead of
"font-display: optional;" This will avoid the problems outlined and will
actually replace the fallback font with the custom one without having to
reload the page.

~~~
ric2b
I think that's addressed in the article, optional is used to avoid a visual
"pop-in" effect.

------
aj7
On the Walmart site, >>if they have it<<, it’s faster.

1\. No dead ends from distractions or on purpose. Amazon usually forces you to
screens you didn’t want to see. 2\. Checkout is faster or just as fast.

And if it’s wrong, it easy to return the same day for credit.

------
Princesseuh
Wouldn't it be better to show the intended font at first page (using font-
display: swap or fallback instead of optional) instead of a potentially uglier
fallback font until second page?

With swap (or fallback) the page is visible early using a fallback font but
you still end up with your "goal font" without having to reload or visit
another page

------
cdoxsey
These claims don't make sense together:

> Walmart is one of the top USA e-commerce retailers. In 2016, they were the
> second after Amazon by sales.

> In e-commerce, the conversion is directly affected by how fast the site
> loads.

Maybe site performance matters a whole lot less than developers think it does.
At least at this scale. Is the claim that users get tired of waiting and head
over to Amazon? Seems like there would be a lot of other factors in a decision
like, most of which would be far more important than load time.

Or do they get tired of waiting and just decide not to purchase something? Do
they end up just purchasing it later? If they don't, then I guess people
didn't need whatever they were trying to buy in the first place? If that's the
case, maybe slow page load times are a good thing for society as a whole.
Perhaps we should be celebrating them as a check on empty materialistic
impulse buying.

FWIW Personally I prefer Walmart's site. I find it easier to use, I like that
I can sort by best sellers, and there seems to be less advertising noise in
the results. However it has a high minimum to get free shipping, a smaller
selection of goods, and some things seem to be more expensive.

But overall I was surprised by how good it turned out to be - give it a whirl
if you've never tried it. Amazon is ahead of the curve, but I'm starting to
wonder if they'll manage to hold onto that lead. A few missteps and things
could look completely different in a decade.

~~~
gbear605
Those claims can both be true; perhaps if Walmart's site loaded faster, they
would have even more sales, even if they already have a lot.

------
blairanderson
to be fair, all the top eCommerce sites are terribly slow EXCEPT for Amazon.

\- bestbuy.com

\- homedepot.com

\- wayfair.com

\- target.com

\- nike.com

\- hm.com

~~~
tyingq
Some airline sites that do billions in revenue are so slow that they need Ajax
spinners when you shop. Ugh.

~~~
thrower123
Airline reservations systems are kind of fascinating, because they were some
of the first really complex computer systems, and a lot of those crusty old
bits are still chugging along fifty odd years later, with newer and newer
piles of code layered on top like a demented tower of jenga.

[http://thecodist.com/article/how_flight_reservations_work_pa...](http://thecodist.com/article/how_flight_reservations_work_part_1)

[http://thecodist.com/article/how_much_is_that_seat_by_the_wi...](http://thecodist.com/article/how_much_is_that_seat_by_the_window_how_flight_reservations_work_2)

~~~
tyingq
There are ones with no TPF at the bottom now. And most res systems have no old
tech in the shopping part... that's more often in the booking, change/cancel
and check-in flows.

