test results

This is my first test and it’s all very confusing. I’m wondering if there is somewhere that I can read an explanation of the test results or if you wouldn’t mind giving me some quick thoughts?

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/130806_XE_1V7Y/1/details/

I’d probably start by re-compressing your images: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/130806_XE_1V7Y/1/performance_optimization/#compress_images

At 7MB, the page is one of the heaviest I’ve seen and you can shave off 5MB of that just by better compressing the photos (with no visual impact). If you look at the bottom of the waterfall, the bandwidth is completely pegged so even at 5Mbps you can’t deliver what you are trying to deliver any faster.

After you get the images under control I’d recommend looking at the css and js files and merging them together as best as you can. You might try a plugin like W3 Total Cache which can help with the merging but there are ~25 separate files that the browser is having to load before it gets to the first bit of user content.