Boosting Website Performance: GoDaddy's Success Story

In this summarized version of GoDaddy's case study, we explore how their Websites + Marketing service significantly enhanced customer Core Web Vitals, achieving a remarkable 75% improvement. The case study delves into the journey from lab-based performance testing to real-world data analysis using Core Web Vitals.

Lab-Based Performance Tracking with Lighthouse: Initially relying on Lighthouse data for performance tracking, GoDaddy used an internal tool called "Lighthouse4u." This allowed them to measure the performance of millions of hosted sites, identifying features impacting speed, such as pop-up modals. Strategic code updates, including deferred loading of JavaScript, resulted in notable improvements.

Real-World Data with Core Web Vitals: To better reflect actual user experiences, GoDaddy incorporated the web-vitals library, measuring data on real devices and diverse network conditions. This shift from lab to field data highlighted a specific challenge: Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), impacting the overall Core Web Vitals pass rate.

CLS Improvement Strategies: Focusing on CLS, GoDaddy implemented various improvements. Reserving space for loading images, optimizing image sizes for different breakpoints, and dynamically scaling image quality based on connection speed were key strategies. They also utilized resource hints, preconnecting to necessary resources, and externalized inline scripts for asynchronous loading.

Results and Achievements: The concentrated effort on CLS paid off, with the Core Web Vitals pass rate surging from 40% to nearly 70%, marking a substantial 75% improvement. The performance gains were consistently applied to live Websites + Marketing sites as users updated and republished their content.

Conclusion: This case study underscores the importance of transitioning from lab-based testing to real-world data analysis for accurate performance insights. GoDaddy's journey not only improved Core Web Vitals but also led to the identification and replacement of non-performant patterns within their codebase. It emphasizes the iterative nature of performance optimization in the dynamic online environment.

Original Case Study Link: For those interested in a more detailed exploration, the full case study can be accessed here.

Note: This summary provides a condensed version of the original case study for easy reading and consumption.