We're trying to troubleshoot the cause of our slow site. Google Analytics tells us the average product page speed is running around 5 seconds.

I've checked the page speed FAQ and parse/query times, which for one product ranged as follows:

Parse: 1.006 - 1.774
Query: .489 - .794

queries: 1101

Based on my understanding of the FAQ, this points to a slow server and not a database issue. Would that be a correct assumption?

The FAQ also references "very large" parse time - -but doesn't say exactly what that would be. Do my results indicate a large parse time? Is it time to look for a new host?

Have you an URL that we could perhaps peek at and see the issue to better help you? :lookaroun

Of course -- sorry

http://www.quinceandco.com

A specific page which is slow is:
http://quinceandco.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=1

jgold723:

Of course -- sorry

http://www.quinceandco.com

A specific page which is slow is:
http://quinceandco.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=1

Hmmm ... loads pretty quick at my end.

Could you enable 'show parse time' in admin for us to have a look?

OK -- I'll leave this on for a bit.

jgold723:

OK -- I'll leave this on for a bit.

Thanks - this is what I am getting:

chickadee: Parse Time: 1.264 - Number of Queries: 1101 - Query Time: 0.55803435664368

finch: Parse Time: 1.199 - Number of Queries: 1189 - Query Time: 0.62510407896423

osprey: Parse Time: 1.086 - Number of Queries: 1189 - Query Time: 0.51170254393005

tern: Parse Time: 0.658 - Number of Queries: 531 - Query Time: 0.25184608319092

Looks like the 'culprit' are your attribute images. 'tern' has very few attributes compared to the other yarns.

Why? simply don't know - but here is a clue for the more experienced zenners.....

Loads fine here, too (clicking on Yarns)

Parse Time: 0.337 - Number of Queries: 145 - Query Time: 0.093631898910522

stevesh:

Loads fine here, too (clicking on Yarns)

Parse Time: 0.337 - Number of Queries: 145 - Query Time: 0.093631898910522

Yep, getting Parse Time: 0.524 - Number of Queries: 145 - Query Time: 0.11047480123901 on that page

BUT: no attribute images / queries.... on that page

too many queries on the other pages as per my post above - that seems to slow things down

I thought it might be attribute images, but they're all optimized as much as possible. Is the actual number of images, or the size of the images. And I wondered about the number of queries - -but I wasn't sure as to how many constituted "too many"

And yes -- it does seem to be the actual product pages that are slow, not the index pages.

jgold723:

........And I wondered about the number of queries - -but I wasn't sure as to how many constituted "too many"

I am not experienced enough to answer this - but, having said that - someone may come up with suggestions - don't think it is your server.

Sorry, can't help any further

OK -- thanks for looking. If anyone else has any ideas, they'd be much appreciated. I've turned off the query display for now, but I can activate it again if someone needs me to. In the meantime, the figures noted above are pretty representative of what we are seeing.

Did you make sure that you

4 (b). In your individual attribute assignments, set "Apply Discounts Used by Product Special/Sale: No" (assuming that the options don't have cost associated with them); this will heavily reduce your parse times. 

The product you referenced has a ton of attributes (the colors) and if you don't configure each of the attributes as above they will really weigh down on the parse times.

Is this image on your server? It appears to be missing and does waste a little time trying to find it ...
/store/includes/templates/quince/images/sub-header.gif

While I am not great at FireBug ... I use it to find slow downs via the Inspect Element with FireBug ...

With that turned on, I click on NET and then start to navigate a site ...

What it shows is when images/elements of the site are slow and/or missing and adding to the times as well as the sizes on things ...

You might try that on your site as some things are missing and others are just slow and you may be able to see your slow downs in order to correct them ...

Thanks to all for the suggestions -- I'll start looking.

John

Your server generates the page in around 1.5 seconds which is waaaaay too much for an e-commerce site. I would consider anything above 0.5 seconds as slow. Both Your database server and web server take too much time generating the output (0.5-0.7 sec for database queries and rest for php execution) - which may mean that either Your hosting company has overloaded servers or (more probably) some contribution You installed takes too much time to run.

As for Google Analytics. What Google Analytics reports is not time Your server takes to generate page but time that on average takes visitors to load the page completely (html code, javascript files, css files and images). That's why this time is much higher. 5.0 sec is pretty bad and for You this is good news actually (when You fix performance issues with Your site You should see conversion ratio jump by 10%-100%).

Your visitors to see Your page need to download 855kb of data and make 106 requests. You should try to optimize Your site to load as quickly as possible (3.0 would be much better) and make as few requests as possible (20-30 is acceptable number - not great, just acceptable). There are techniques that can help You with that:

• CSS sprites
• data:uri images,
• merging css & javascript files,
• load javascript asynchronously.

Also images on the page are not as small as possible. At least 100kb of download could be saved if You would compress them properly. You also don't use caching, You mix loading of javascript with css, You don't have gzip compression enabled, Your css & javascript files are not minimized and You don't specify image dimensions. There are other optimizations that can be done too.

Thanks -- I'll take a look at those.

Others have suggested CSS sprites, but I'm not sure how I'd use them to display the attribute thumbnails. Any suggestions?

My first shot would be to use value of attribute to create css class (like 'attribute_name_value') and define that class to show part of sprite. It ain't easy but can be done.