It isn’t easy to optimize page speed for enterprise-level websites. Understanding the web team’s tech stack and performance budget is crucial to your success as an enterprise SEO specialist, even beyond making improvement suggestions.
This post streamlines the procedure and provides valuable information to help you customize suggestions and successfully bargain for a more robust page speed plan.
Enterprise Website Page Speed: Critical Factors to Consider
Crafting page speed recommendations after a technical audit may seem straightforward, yet implementing these suggestions presents a distinct challenge.
Significantly impacting enterprise-level search demands a deeper understanding of the web team’s responsibilities and effective collaboration with them.
Within enterprise search, gaining buy-in often involves persuading the web team and individuals managing web and business operations technology.
To ensure your recommendations hold weight and translate into actionable steps both now and in the future, it’s imperative to:
- Grasp the intricacies of the web team’s tech stack.
- Comprehend their performance budget constraints.
These measures streamline your efforts, preventing the proposal of solutions that won’t find traction for implementation.
Decoding Enterprise Web Technology
Understanding an enterprise business’s tech stack is crucial when collaborating with its web team. This encompasses all essential elements contributing to the website’s entirety, ranging from the Content Management System (CMS) to analytics and marketing tracking scripts.
A tool like BuiltWith proves invaluable for analyzing a website’s tech stack. Input the website URL, and it furnishes a comprehensive technology profile, offering a precise understanding of the existing infrastructure.
For instance, examining NBA.com through BuiltWith reveals numerous bandwidth-consuming elements integrated into their site, such as:
- Marketo: Enterprise email software.
- Eloqua: Enterprise marketing automation platform.
- Adobe Omniture: A website analytics tracking platform.
This insight offers a glimpse into the site’s current technological landscape, serving as a starting point for evaluation.
However, the real challenge lies in constructing a compelling business case to implement your page speed recommendations. To prepare for this, it’s vital to scrutinize your web team’s performance budget beforehand.
Grasping the Significance of Your Web Team’s Performance Budget
According to Google, a performance budget signifies “a set of limits imposed on metrics affecting site performance.” These metrics can encompass the overall page size, mobile network loading time, or the count of HTTP requests. Establishing such a budget kick-starts discussions on web performance, acting as a guiding framework for design, technology, and feature integration decisions.
Ideally, the organization you’re engaged with might already have a performance budget established, offering insights before initiating your page speed or technical audit.
However, if you need a performance budget within the web team, I recommend exploring the web. dev’s resources on this subject. These resources can provide valuable guidance in understanding and setting up a performance budget, enabling informed decision-making for improved web performance.
For the enterprise site I was assisting, I proposed establishing a performance budget to provide the web team with clear directives for prioritizing aspects of page speed—initially, their lack of one created uncertainty. However, upon a subsequent check-in, I discovered they had successfully implemented a performance budget.
So, what role does the performance budget play in optimizing page speed?
It serves as a guardrails, directing the web team’s focus and resource allocation toward specific elements crucial for speed and performance optimization.
Understanding these “guardrails” becomes pivotal as you delve into your audit and recommendations, aiding in navigating conversations with your web team.
This information becomes integral to your page speed optimization strategy, potentially encompassing aspects like Core Web Vitals.
For instance, during an audit of a category page, if you observe subpar performance scores following a Lighthouse audit, you might uncover issues linked to the current server setup impacting First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
Navigating Enterprise Web Collaboration: Maximizing Performance and SEO
By amalgamating insights into your business’s website setup (tech stack) and the allocated performance budget, you can approach your page speed/technical audit with greater intelligence and depth. This positions you to negotiate effectively toward enhancing site performance and securing SEO victories.
Reflecting on my early agency tenure, I learned a pivotal lesson: never accept a definitive “it can’t be done” from a web developer. Engaging in negotiations regarding URL fixes and redirects revealed that solutions often exist within web development.
Recently, a product manager shared a similar revelation with engineers. Despite initial resistance, presenting evidence from competitors or reframing requests frequently led to breakthroughs. Remember, how you convey your message can be just as influential as the content itself.
Optimizing enterprise pages for speed: comprehending technology stacks and performance budgets
Knowledge is essential when trying to maximize enterprise page speed.
Examine the tech stack of the website to identify any limitations on suggestions. Comprehend performance budgets to match the priorities of the web team.
Using these insights, you can suggest workable optimizations that complement the web team’s roadmap.
It can be challenging to persuade them to follow page speed recommendations. Collaboration and impact can be facilitated by approaching them with an understanding of their tech stack limitations and performance priorities.
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