Chatbots have become increasingly popular in recent years, but they can significantly impact a website’s performance, leading to slow loading times and a poor score on SEO. Many chatbots require the downloading of the reCAPTCHA library, which can take a few seconds, hindering the rendering of the site. A slow website can lead to missed opportunities and lost revenue, making it crucial to measure the performance of a website before and after adding a chatbot.
However, one company has found a solution to this problem. By deferring the loading of reCAPTCHA libraries until the chatbot is activated, they were able to make their ChatGPT chatbot ten times faster. Loading reCAPTCHA before it’s needed is a waste of resources, and the poorly written JavaScript library can even block DOM rendering for several seconds on phones. By using this new optimization fix, their chatbot technology scored a perfect 100 on Page Speed Insights, a huge improvement from their previous score of 70 to 80.
There are many tools available for measuring website performance, with PageSpeed Insights being one of the most popular. These tools will load a website, simulating a user’s experience on both a phone and a desktop machine, before giving a score based on performance. A score below 80 is considered intolerable, with Amazon’s research showing that a five percent increase in page load time resulted in a 20 percent loss of customers.
While there are still more optimization tricks to be implemented, such as optimizing the loading of CSS and fonts, the company believes they currently have the fastest ChatGPT chatbot. Before the optimization fix, their chatbot website would block for several seconds on the 3G network, but after the fix, the block time was reduced to roughly one second. They hope to further reduce this time to 0.5 seconds or less.
For individuals interested in implementing a chatbot on their own website, the company provides links to their chatbot technology. They have included the code they are using to dynamically load reCAPTCHA, which can be invoked as the chat button is clicked.
In conclusion, chatbots can be a valuable addition to a website, but their impact on performance cannot be ignored. By deferring the loading of the reCAPTCHA library until the chatbot is activated, one company was able to make their ChatGPT chatbot ten times faster, resulting in improved website performance and a higher score on SEO. It is crucial to measure website performance before and after adding a chatbot and to use tools like PageSpeed Insights to optimize website performance.
