When compiling APMdigest's recent list of 20 Top Factors That Impact Website Response Time, I found it interesting to see several examples where intended improvements to websites can actually degrade the website's performance.
Features and Functionality
Every time you add new features and functionality to your site, which is a must to be competitive, you can be adding complexity, interdependencies, new components, all of which are cited as factors that impact web performance on the list.
Third-Party Services
Third-Party Services are always meant to improve websites, to add some sort of functionality for the benefit of the users, however, these same services can cause serious problems with website performance, says Drit Suljoti of Catchpoint and David Jones of Dynatrace.
Responsive Design
Like me, did you think that responsive design is a must for the mobile web age? Gibu Mathew of Site24x7 mentions that it can create performance problems if resources, such as images, are not properly managed.
Web Content
When adding new content to your site, your intention is to improve the user experience, but certain types of content, and ways of handling that content, can be counterproductive and actually reduce web performance, notes Amanda Karkula, Paessler AG.
Changes in infrastructure or code
Any kinds of changes to infrastructure or code, intended to improve your site, can easily backfire and cause performance issues, warns Steve Rosenberg of Dell and Mike Paqquette of Prelert.
Information Architecture
Even the type of information you provide on your site and how you provide it can indirectly impact the performance of your site, says Charley Rich of Nastel.