A lot of articles have been written on website performance optimization lately but I want to share my hands-on-experience and important articles on the subject.

There are two types of performance:

• Server Performance
• Perceived Performance

Server Performance is associated with the number requests that a server can handle at a time and the time needed to process these requests. On high volume websites, since it determines the number of users a machine can serve before additional server is needed, this performance aspect is very important.

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In my previous article 7 Easy-to-Apply Tips to Improve Your Web Site Performance, I described methods to achieve better client-side performance.  The conclusion of the article was: “The most important and effective way to improve web site performance is to make fewer HTTP Requests.”

Since browsers only are able to download two components on parallel per hostname, and every HTTP request has an average round-trip latency of 0.2 seconds, that causes a 2 second latency alone, if the site is loading 20 items, regardless of whether they are style sheets, images or scripts. (On an average broadband connection with a browser capable of downloading two components at a time).

Since browsers spend approximately 80% of the time fetching external components such as scripts, style sheets and images. Reducing the number of HTTP requests has the biggest impact on improving website performance. Moreover, it is the easiest way to make a performance improvement.

This article focuses on ways of minimizing HTTP Requests to maximize web site performance.

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