Seatwave was growing fast, success was unabated, and industry awards were landing on their doormat. Infrastructure had been revamped, load patterns were understood. Everything was going just great… Until… The marketing team planned Seatwave’s first UK TV campaign – all regions – simultaneously, but only told the engineering team the day before the first advert was due to run! 10 seconds into the advert the site melted and there was a collective thud as heads hit desks. It was expensive lesson to learn but also the wake up call that forced everyone in Seatwave to focus on the performance of their site. In this session we’ll share that pain we experienced, and how we improved performance so that when all our competitors crashed during the UKs largest concert ticket sale, we were able to take 20 days revenue in just 2 hours! However, maintaining performance is a challenge, product owners want new features, the site starts to put on weight and slowly performance starts to degrade once more. Will it take another disaster to focus everyone on performance or is there another way to avoid “boom and bust”? We’ll talk about the steps we’re taking to avoid “boom and bust” by making both performance and the impact performance has on our customers visible to everyone across Seatwave including: Our Adobe Site Catalyst installation with a custom implementation of the W3C Navigation Timing API allowing us to segment our business KPI’s by speed. How we’re using a WebPageTest within continuous integration for our QA and production builds. How we constantly review our performance against competitors using our own installation of the HTTPArchive. Join us on our quest in search of the Holy Grail of truly understanding how web site performance affects our business, and the processes and systems we are putting in place to ensure we keep speed at the heart of our product development roadmap.

1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/damien_m_in_japan/575938779/

2. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gareth1953/7057132797

4. http://www.flickr.com/photos/radulovski/7837486702/

5. http://www.flickr.com/photos/yimhafiz/5119955475/

6. http://www.flickr.com/photos/evablue/6184132023

7. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ful1to/3783198574/

9. http://www.flickr.com/photos/imnohero/2330548144

10. Photo courtesy of Florian Wieder wiederdesign.com

11. http://www.flickr.com/photos/24365773@N03/9211817009

13. http://www.flickr.com/photos/julianlim/4598412264/

14. http://www.flickr.com/photos/8001265@N08/2259250324

16. http://www.flickr.com/photos/capttaco/6939970676

17. http://www.flickr.com/photos/westmidlandspolice/8169072160/

18. http://www.flickr.com/photos/neospire/3595638270

19. 0
29/10/2010
CPUPerSession
DBCallsPerSession
0.6
60
0.5
50
0.4
40
0.3
30
0.2
20
0.1
10
0
DB Calls Per Session
0.7
22/10/2010
0.8
15/10/2010
08/10/2010
01/10/2010
24/09/2010
17/09/2010
10/09/2010
03/09/2010
27/08/2010
20/08/2010
13/08/2010
06/08/2010
30/07/2010
CPU Per Session (sec)
Database Usage per Web Session
80
70

20. http://www.flickr.com/photos/olly247/2831803988

21. User
All Limit Checks
Traffic
counters
Queuing
iRule
Increment /
Decrement
Data Group
Site | Limit
Original client request is
passed from queue back
to F5 so customer goes to
the exact page they
originally requested when
queue is inactive
Site Limit Checks
Does
Cookie
Exist?
Yes
No
Does
All Sites Limit
Exist?
Yes
No
All Sites Limit
Exceeded?
Yes
No
Does
Site Limit
Exist?
No
Yes
Site Limit
Exceeded?
No
Infrastructure B
Infrastructure A
Main Site
When client
timer reaches
zero
Server
controlled timer
served to client
Yes

22. 29-Oct-2010

23. One site didn’t go down….

24. Traffic Profile 29th October 2010
60
1 months revenue in 1 day
10 days revenue per hour for 2 hours
40
30
20
10
Time
23:00
22:00
21:00
20:00
19:00
18:00
17:00
16:00
15:00
14:00
13:00
12:00
11:00
10:00
09:00
08:00
0
07:00
Traffic multiple
50

25. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ful1to/3783198574/

26. http://www.flickr.com/photos/katescars/5228508617

27. http://www.flickr.com/photos/imnohero/2330548144

28. Photo courtesy of Florian Wieder wiederdesign.com

29. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bensutherland/5920185547

30. Traffic Profile 14th November 2010
60
Spikes within 15 seconds of TV advert start
40
30
Traffic boost in ad breaks when we had
no active advertisement
20
10
Time
23:00
22:00
21:00
20:00
0
19:00
Traffic multiple
50

31. http://www.flickr.com/photos/75001512@N00/3938175748

32. http://www.flickr.com/photos/epsos/4929687589

33. complacency
Com·pla·cen·cy[kuhm-pley-suhn-see]
a feeling of quiet pleasure or
security, often while unaware of
some potential danger, defect, or
the like;

34. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pointshoot/861934878

36. http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeevveez/7095563439

37. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tico24/57164061

38. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluefountainmedia/8191245592
2013 : Analytics Refocused

53. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sebilden/8472188590

60. http://www.meetup.com/London-Web-Performance-Group/events/100061982/
http://www.webwob.com/html/webpagetest.html

63. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dan_culleton/4908793028

65. WebPageTest Private Instance
•
•
https://sites.google.com/a/webpagetest.org/docs/private-instances
http://andydavies.me/blog/2012/09/18/how-to-create-an-all-in-one-webpagetest-private-instance/
HTTPArchive Private Instance
•
We will publish the HTTPArchive customization we have developed – watch this space!
WebPageTest / Jenkins mash-up
•
http://www.webwob.com/html/webpagetest.html
Events
•
•
•
http://velocityconf.com/velocityeu2013/public/schedule/detail/32943
http://www.webperfdays.org/events/2013-london/index.html
http://www.meetup.com/London-Web-Performance-Group/

66. http://www.flickr.com/photos/slgc/5970360335

67. http://www.seatwave.com/movember

68. http://www.flickr.com/photos/damien_m_in_japan/575938779/