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Poor Image Optimization Can Negatively Affect User Experience

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

Poor image optimization on web pages has a clear measurable impact on the user experience, according to a new report entitled Progressive Image Rendering: Good or Evil? published by Radware.

Radware commissioned NeuroStrata, a leader in neuroscientific research, to test three different image renderings. Using facial analysis software, moment-by-moment emotional responses in universal facial expressions of over 250 participants were captured as they were presented with three randomly selected image formats on a web page and were asked to complete tasks that relied on either textual or visual cues. Test subjects were also surveyed about their attitudes and expectations with regard to online images.

Key findings include:

■ Default image formats, used by up to 95% of all websites, do not deliver the highest level of user satisfaction.

■ 65% of participants have felt frustrated by images taking too long to load.

■ 51% of participants wait for most or all of a page’s images to load before they begin to interact with the page.

■ 50% of participants feel that the way in which images load has an effect on their web browsing experience.

Typical web pages generally use two of the three image formats used in the study – a standard lossless GIF file and progressive JPEG. The third image file used was a newly developed file, using a proprietary rendering format not yet available to the public. In the report, this new rendering technique was clearly favored by those who were tested compared to the two typical formats.

“Humans are extremely visual. Imagery grabs our attention, evokes a response and sustains our emotional engagement,” says Tammy Everts, performance evangelist for Radware. “As images comprise over 50% of the weight for a typical web page, this neuroscientific study shows that serving images faster on your website does have a direct and measurable impact on the user experience.”

“As we live in a visual age, the speed with which images load on a website tends to be an important issue,” says Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson, chairman of Mindlab International. “Research suggests that a consumer may experience mental fatigue when presented with a relentless flow of complex information on a website. When images are presented in a two-stage process – a method found in Progressive JPEGs – the brain has to work slightly harder to make sense of what is being displayed and in turn, increases frustration levels of the viewer.”

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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Poor Image Optimization Can Negatively Affect User Experience

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

Poor image optimization on web pages has a clear measurable impact on the user experience, according to a new report entitled Progressive Image Rendering: Good or Evil? published by Radware.

Radware commissioned NeuroStrata, a leader in neuroscientific research, to test three different image renderings. Using facial analysis software, moment-by-moment emotional responses in universal facial expressions of over 250 participants were captured as they were presented with three randomly selected image formats on a web page and were asked to complete tasks that relied on either textual or visual cues. Test subjects were also surveyed about their attitudes and expectations with regard to online images.

Key findings include:

■ Default image formats, used by up to 95% of all websites, do not deliver the highest level of user satisfaction.

■ 65% of participants have felt frustrated by images taking too long to load.

■ 51% of participants wait for most or all of a page’s images to load before they begin to interact with the page.

■ 50% of participants feel that the way in which images load has an effect on their web browsing experience.

Typical web pages generally use two of the three image formats used in the study – a standard lossless GIF file and progressive JPEG. The third image file used was a newly developed file, using a proprietary rendering format not yet available to the public. In the report, this new rendering technique was clearly favored by those who were tested compared to the two typical formats.

“Humans are extremely visual. Imagery grabs our attention, evokes a response and sustains our emotional engagement,” says Tammy Everts, performance evangelist for Radware. “As images comprise over 50% of the weight for a typical web page, this neuroscientific study shows that serving images faster on your website does have a direct and measurable impact on the user experience.”

“As we live in a visual age, the speed with which images load on a website tends to be an important issue,” says Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson, chairman of Mindlab International. “Research suggests that a consumer may experience mental fatigue when presented with a relentless flow of complex information on a website. When images are presented in a two-stage process – a method found in Progressive JPEGs – the brain has to work slightly harder to make sense of what is being displayed and in turn, increases frustration levels of the viewer.”

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As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

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According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

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