The PerfOps revolution – Shutterfly’s journey to FAST

The QA Trends Summer Edition is on its way. And better be ready for a deep technical dive, because the focus is on PerfOps from the Shutterfly’s perspective.

In 2016, Shutterfly, the leader in photo services and personalized gifts in the United States, embarked on a major program to accelerate every aspect of its website while building a PerfOps culture spanning across engineering, operation and product teams. The goal? Offer the fastest experience to customers while increasing revenue, conversion and SEO traffic. Some of the largest retailers and marketplaces went through this journey: As an example, Pinterest announced that their initiatives resulted in a 40% decrease in wait time, a 15% increase in SEO traffic and a 15% increase in conversion rate to signup. There is a strong correlation between faster web performance and higher business KPIs and Shutterfly saw a big opportunity for their customers and business. 

For the past 18 months, with strong support from Shutterfly’ senior staff, Fred Beringer, VP Digital Customer Experience is acting as champion for performance and with help from his product and engineering peers, crafted a strategy to rip the benefits of FAST web performance. They together kicked off a number of major initiatives, all targeted at faster performance. These initiatives include:

• Revamped NFR (Non-functional Requirement) process to address performance and scalability requirement during the design phase.
• Continuous testing on pre-production using a Gatling based framework to identify speed degradation during sprints.
• Back-end optimization via profiling (using YourKit) to identify CPU and Memory inefficiencies (aka hotspots).
• Implemented the top 10 front-end optimization industry best practices.
• Benchmarked CDNs providers to find the best suited for Shutterfly performance requirements.
• Leveraged AppDynamics to understand, troubleshoot and optimize key business transactions.
• Implemented a RUM solution (SOASTA mPulse) to provide real-time visibility into each customer experience.
• Implemented Synthetic Monitoring (NeuStar) for continuous testing and performance analysis of key user journeys.
• Implemented a comprehensive Production Load and Performance program leveraging SOASTA CloudTest to prepare for Q4 peak days.

Join Fred on June 20th to hear talk about this web performance program but also to share your own initiatives!

NOTE: Seats are limited!

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Fred Beringer

Our host will be Fred Beringer, VP, Digital Customer Experience and Quality Engineering at a Silicon Valley company called Shutterfly. As а Quality Engineering expert, blogger and passionate photographer he will share some of his experiences in software development, software testing, productivity and life.