Web-Page Complexity and Optimization Mechanism to Reduce Web-Page Load Time

Webpage load time is a critical issue in today's world of Internet. It directly affects the user's satisfaction. Recent studies have proposed the concept of 'Web Page Complexity'. Complexity of a website eventually affects the web page load time. A set of metrics to characterise the complexity of a Website has already been formulated. The complexity of a website can be measured at content level and service level. Based on this fact, metrics such as 'number of objects requested', 'MIME type of the objects', 'number of servers used' and 'non-origin contribution' have been identified to be important. While there have been extensive study regarding websites and related issues, little work has been done on understanding the complexity of an individual website and how it is measured and manipulated to improve the user's experience and reduce webpage load time. This paper tries to fill this gap by utilising the concept of 'Complexity of website' and the metrics proposed by prior studies to measure and analyse the complexity of a website. For that purpose, an Analyser tool is proposed which will help determine the complexity of a website in terms of the complexity metrics mentioned above. The analyser tool will generate a report containing information regarding the nature of complexity of a website. Recent studies have mentioned the need to explore more systematic tools and mechanisms to improve page load time. Extending this line, this paper also aims to study the impact of optimization mechanisms such as combining external JavaScript, combining external CSS, minimizing redirects and minify-js to reduce the complexity of a website thereby reducing the page load time. This is to be done by balancing the trade-off between page load time and the complexity of a website because measures taken to reduce page load time should not affect the user's experience and web publisher's revenue.