August 8, 2023 • 29 mins
Page speed for your website might not be the first thing you think of when it comes to optimizing your website for online performance, but I assure you... it matters more than you expect. Mobile Page Speed Score is one of the key factors that Google uses to rank your website.
Punchmark is so excited to have finally cracked the... erm... code and figured out how to take our websites from a middling score of 30s and 40s to industry smashing 90s! These improvements did not come easily, and nor are they easily explained to listeners that do not have a proficiency with development, which is why Michael brought on Aaron, Director of Technology at Punchmark, to explain why and how we made this a focus for our Summer.
To learn more about getting Page Speed improvements for YOUR website, contact your Account Manager today!
Learn more about AccessiBe's ADA Compliance solutions here: https://accessibe.com/a/punchmark
Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe
Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
Inquire about sponsoring In the Loupe and showcase your business on our next episode: podcast@punchmark.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back everybody to In the Loop.
What is up everybody?
My name is Michael Burpo.
Thanks again for listening toIn the Loop.
This week we're talkingPageSpeed and I know PageSpeed
not something you probably thinkabout every day, but for us, we
think about it constantly atPunchmark, and I'm joined by our
(00:21):
director of technology, aaronPlacharsik, and we're talking
about this enormous project thatwe recently released for
Punchmark website clients andhow we took a lot of PageSpeeds
from being very middle of thepack you know, 35 to 55.
And we took them and we havesome scores in the high 90s,
which is, you know, anythingabout PageSpeed completely
(00:42):
unheard of.
And Big A actually showsexactly how we did it, and we
talk about what we were doingbefore, the improvements we made
and how that will impact notjust you and your business but
also your customers, and whythat's going to be a good thing.
So it's a really fun talk.
It's a little bit more highlevel and techy than we normally
get, but I hope you enjoy apeek behind the curtain.
(01:03):
This episode is brought to youby Punchmark, the Julie
industry's favorite websiteplatform.
Whether you're looking forbetter e-commerce performance,
business growth or campaignsthat drive traffic and sales,
punchmark's website andmarketing services were made
just for you.
It's never too late totransform your business with a
(01:25):
user friendly, point of sale,integrated website platform
designed for growth and results.
Sign up for your free demotoday at Punchmarkcom.
While enjoying this week'sepisode, take a moment and leave
us a star rating on the Spotifymobile app or, if you're on
Apple Podcast, leave us a starrating and a review.
It's the best way to help usgrow into show that you really
(01:47):
enjoy in the show.
Thanks, and now back to theshow.
What is up everybody?
I'm joined by Aaron Placharsik,the director of technology at
Punchmark.
How are you doing today, aaron?
Good, how are you doing?
Doing?
Alright, I refer to him as BigA, so that's probably what
(02:09):
you're going to hear me call him.
Aaron recently led an enormousdevelopment project at Punchmark
all around page speed.
Aaron, can you kind of set upwhat you do at Punchmark and
what the page speed project wasabout?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, I'm the director of technology at
Punchmark, so I take bigprojects and push them to the
finish line.
That means organizing what theteam's going to work on at any
given point, what prioritythings should have, who's doing
QA on our projects, when allthis basically to push projects
(02:50):
that will make clients happy tothe finish line by a certain
deadline.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, One thing that's really important to know
is that, as we've built out ourdev team, I used to be our Scrum
Master and when we were doingthat, we had fewer devs, or at
one point we had fewer devsThings were really fast-paced
and we had a different attitudearound development.
So it was sometimes we wouldbuild things and we were
(03:16):
launched things in peace.
Now Big A has been a bigproponent of building things
around an entire project andthen launching it with a fully
fleshed out QA we say QA,quality assurance making sure
that there's zero bugs that comeout with it, so that, ideally,
a client would never reallynotice when a project has been
(03:38):
released, except for maybe somepositive benefits.
Is that like a moderatelydecent summation?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Totally, especially with what we've been working on
recently PageSpeed.
Pagespeed is something that theideal release is.
Nobody even knows.
You released it, yeah, becausereally what it is is something
that Google is going to pick upon, not the user.
So we want to make sure thatthe user is affected in
absolutely zero way until youask for it to be turned on, and
(04:05):
then they get some PageSpeedimprovements that help them but
ultimately help your Googleresults most.
So this was an absolutemountain of code.
The QA on this, the qualityassurance, was a huge push,
because when there's so muchcode, there's that much
potential for things to go wrong, and we had to be really
(04:26):
scrutinous with this release andwe made sure we were.
It was nice and successful.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, I think it's been out for about a week now
and it's been really interestinghow we've been able to release
it and then monitor.
Everybody braces themselves forimpact.
Is there going to be anything?
So far?
Nothing really, and I thinkthat has to do with building a
scalable infrastructure aroundwhat we've released.
(04:55):
This might go over the heads ofsome people that are maybe
surface level or they're new tothe website idea when it comes
to running their business, butcan you set up what PageSpeed is
and why it's important for ourclients?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah for sure.
So PageSpeed at its core isjust how fast your website shows
, and by show I don't mean startthe show, but you can still
tell it's loading in and stuffpops up.
What I mean is, how quicklydoes it reach a stable state?
So you load the webpage, allthe images load in, like you're
(05:34):
ready to scroll around and lookat the homepage.
That's what PageSpeed is and toget a great PageSpeed score,
that pretty much has to beinstant.
Like you load the page and it'sjust like it's there and you
might have some pieces thatstill load in, but they
shouldn't be primary pieces ofyour website and they should
load at a certain time to makeyour PageSpeed score high.
(05:57):
So is this something visual thatyou can see?
Yeah, it is.
It doesn't mean your experienceas a user is going to be
negative If you don't have ahigh PageSpeed score, because
pretty much nobody on theinternet puts a ton of effort
into getting 100 on theirPageSpeed score.
They all settle for somebalance of what they want on the
(06:17):
webpage and how fast they'rewilling to go.
It's really hard to get a 100PageSpeed score, so you're used
to not getting one, but when yousee one, it's fast, it loads
fast.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah.
So let's be real, when are ourwebsites slow before?
Because I never kind of.
I never really thought thatthey were, but now with the new
things that we're seeing, it'slike when you get a brand new
computer and there's nothing onit and you're just like, wow,
everything works so smooth andyou're like this is so nice.
(06:52):
Is that kind of what it waslike?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, that's a good comparison.
You were used to getting whatyou've always gotten from the
internet right.
Like everybody does it that way.
They build the content and then, if they get a good page speed
score, cool.
If they make some minoroptimizations to get a slightly
higher page speed score, cool.
But that's about the levelyou're used to getting.
It's like you're used to eatingat a mid-level restaurant and
(07:18):
you went to a high-levelrestaurant.
It's just there are minordifferences that you notice.
You're probably getting whatyou want out of it as a user
either way, but the impact ofhigh page speed scores really is
that Google treats your websitedifferently.
It gives it differentprioritization.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, we always talk about Google as if it's this
weird deity which it kind of is.
I mean, I trust it with somequestions that I wouldn't ask
anyone else.
But is it noticeable, first ofall with these new improved
scores, like what kind of scoresare we getting and also what is
(07:58):
kind of different now?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, so if you go to , if you just Google the words
test page speed, you can find awebsite.
It'll be your top result.
It'll be Google's website thatthey use to test page speed and
you can actually put your URL inand see what your page speed
score is.
We are getting results of Ithink I saw it in 98 on mobile
(08:22):
the other day which isabsolutely insane when you look
at the competition.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
I've never seen a 98 before this.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
No, like 98 means you're pretty much serving a
blank web page with one image onit.
That's pretty much the only wayyou've ever been able to get an
98.
Through the methodology we usein our code, we were able to
accomplish that with full webpages.
So what does that mean?
Well, the most noticeable placeI want to mention this the most
(08:51):
noticeable place that you'regoing to see these changes is
probably not going to be on yourdesktop, but your mobile,
because your mobile usually hasslower load times and when you
load a website that's getting a98 on mobile and 99 on desktop.
On your phone, it is like youtap the link and it's already
loaded, and that's an experiencethat, if you're on mobile,
(09:14):
you're not used to.
You're used to things on yourmobile taking a couple of
seconds to load in.
So if you're trying toexperience a difference, that's
what I would do.
I would load it on your phone.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, and I think that our previous websites, like
websites before A lot of ourwebsites were scoring in the,
you know, high 30s into the mid50s, something around there, and
it kind of has to do with howbig the images were that would
come in there, and I know thatwe're trained to think like, oh,
50, that's terrible, that'slike a failing grade, and I mean
(09:45):
that's true if you're in, like,you know, high school, but this
is slightly different.
What I would recommend is yourun your page speed test on your
website, and then I recommendthat you try some other websites
that you use.
I always use an example of, youknow, Nike or Tiffany, and all
those websites are getting like50s or whatever, and what we're
(10:07):
noticing is that it doesn'treally have to do with the
content that's on the pageanymore, and also it just has to
do with the methodology that isbuilt around how these websites
are loaded.
One thing that's reallyinteresting, though, is that our
websites, visually before thisupdate, didn't really seem slow,
(10:30):
and I've always kind of beenlike they passed the eyeball
test when it comes to how theyloaded before, but Google never
really gave us that benefit,because Google is looking at how
well it actually loads.
Can you kind of just explainjust that, maybe a little bit?
I don't want to get too deepinto what we were doing.
Can you explain, like, what thekey differences are, because
(10:53):
what were we doing before?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So before everything was baked in.
So how your website renders isif you ever right-click a
website and click View SourceCode, you'll see that ton of
code.
That is your webpage.
And if you scroll through that,sometimes you'll see a little
script tag in there and thatwill be just in there in the mix
(11:17):
with the rest of the code.
And how the webpage is renderedis your internet browser will
read through top to bottom, justlike humans do top to bottom,
and just do things in the orderthat it sees them.
And when you have those scripttags just in the mix, the
browser will stop and load inthat script before it loads the
(11:38):
rest of the page and then itwill continue and so on, and the
whole time you're loading thesethings in and having them
interact and execute.
We are holding up the userbecause we're stopping the.
It's called the DOM.
That's just your webpage.
We're stopping the webpage fromloading because we're doing
unnecessary things in themeantime, and that's something
(11:59):
that's common practice withwebsites.
That's why we're so used towaiting.
You know, three seconds isgenerally how long a user will
wait for a website to load.
We're all trying to do thatbecause that's how websites are
developed.
So that's what we were doingbefore, and the switch away from
that is giving us results thatare improved.
We measure the improvements inmilliseconds.
That's what Google cares about.
(12:20):
Milliseconds is literally athousandth of a second.
It's counting those and sothese optimizations, while to
you, as a user, they might notseem significant, because who
cares about a thousandth of asecond?
Well, google does, and whenwe're able to shave off like
thousands of milliseconds,google takes sharp notice and
(12:40):
that's why we're getting thosehuge 98 results, as opposed to
like a website that's willing towait one more second to render.
So they don't have to do allthis work that we've done,
because as a user, you don'tcare, but as Google, you
absolutely care.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, and to drive this point home just a little
bit more, so Google's whole MO,I mean at least sometimes they
break away with it because theywant to make money and they
serve things that are givingthem money, but let's just say,
on an even playing field, whereno one is giving them additional
money for SEM.
They are purely caring aboutwhat is going to give the most
(13:15):
relevant information in the bestuser experience.
That's how Google ranks thatstuff.
So when you search the termengagement rings near me, they
are going to look at a varietyof plethora of factors.
One of the things that they'regoing to be looking at is
relevancy, but also userexperience, and user experience
(13:36):
that's just.
I'm director of user experience,so like this, it means this
huge compound word that actuallyis talking about all these
other things.
So one of those things is howhappy are you when you use this
website, and a factor in that ishow quickly does your page load
, and it's a really big thingthat Google ranks.
(13:57):
So when your website goes from,like Big A was saying, from
three seconds down to, let'sjust say, two seconds, I mean
that is a, you know, like a 33%increase, and Google is going to
compare your engagement ringsnear me to the next store's
engagement rings near me andit's going to say well, on
(14:18):
relevancy, they are rather equal.
However, when it comes to userexperience, this site is 33%
faster than this site over hereand, as a result, we are going
to push this one way fartherahead and we're going to serve
it faster, and that is part ofthe reason why these faster
websites will start to be rankedhigher.
(14:41):
That's kind of like a verydumbed down version of how
Google is going to work for this.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, and that improvement in page speed leads
to, like, significantimprovements in conversion rates
.
I forgot the exact stats, but Ithink it's like something like
100 milliseconds will increaseyour conversion rate by like 20
something percent Wow, which iscrazy.
But what I wanted to focus onwas Google switched five years
(15:09):
ago 2018, I think it was July2018, something like that to
mobile focused page speed.
So the fact that people areusing their phones not to load
these websites and we're allused to waiting a little extra
time on your phone means thatpunch marks, advancements, and
mobile page speeds specifically,are particularly significant,
(15:32):
because mobile page speeds areparticularly suffering in the
industry.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yeah, and it's also where it's happening.
I mean, we're seeingincreasingly every single year.
Every single year, we have seenthe share of checkouts and
browsing and every metricrelated to use for our websites
shifting more and more towardsmobile.
(15:58):
I personally, my hypothesis isthat, within you know five to
seven years, desktops as a wholeor, like I guess, laptop I
don't know what that term islarge screen viewing.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, do people still use desktops?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, they will start to go away and it will just
purely become these mobiledevices that you can maybe jack
into a secondary screen, butyou'll still be running off of
only your mobile device.
Because they're gettingstronger.
With Apple it's using these newage chips that are stronger
(16:39):
than what desktops were a whileago, Because we've always used
desktops, because we thoughtthat they had way more power in
processing.
But now there's kind of like acap of when you're going to see
what kind of device actuallyleverage.
It's like, oh, at a certainpoint, when you have these M2
(16:59):
chips or these M4 chips, they'regoing to put them into a phone
eventually and then it's justgoing to be there's no more cap
space.
I really do believe thateverything is shifting towards
these mobile devices and Googlesaw that coming from a mile away
and we're like, OK, instead ofus ranking desktop and then kind
of putting mobile in thesecondary seat, it's purely
(17:21):
mobile first.
I mean, you've heard that termbefore mobile first.
And that's how we've had toaccommodate that and start
moving towards that, because ifthat's what Google cares about,
that's what we care about aswell.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, that's not what I personally care about, but
the world is definitely shiftingthat way.
The casting from your phone tosome kind of monitor is
interesting.
I think that that's kind of thetrend.
I would be interested to see ifthat happens.
You just have these monitorsthat have nothing attached to
them and then you can just clickon your phone and it shoots the
(17:54):
video up and it's processing onyour phone but executing on
your monitor.
Yeah, it could be.
I mean, the world's definitelygoing mobile, right?
Speaker 1 (18:01):
I mean, you already see it with a lot of these new
Apple iOS systems where it'slike working with you can kind
of see it as like a secondaryview.
You can use it for FaceTime offof your phone.
I think it's very interesting.
I do think that there is aspace for using, for example,
ipads.
I'm an Apple guy, you know, butI think that using these iPads
(18:25):
are kind of.
I mean, in the end they arejust larger mobile devices.
That's the.
There's really no difference.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
They just are like larger and they don't fit in
your pocket.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
But I mean, my phone hardly fits in my pocket, man.
So I think that that is.
Yeah, it's kind of wherethey're going.
That's kind of a tangent, butwhatever, and we're still in the
same kind of swing of things.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
It's the importance of mobile right.
That's how it's relevant.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
There you go, Nice.
All right, everybody.
We're going to take a quickbreak and hear a word from our
sponsor.
This week's episode is broughtto you in part by Accessibi,
Punchmark's ADA compliancepartner.
Creating inclusive websites iscrucial in today's digital world
.
The Americans Disability Act,or ADA, requires website
(19:11):
compliance and ensures equalaccess to information services
for individuals withdisabilities, fostering a
positive user experience andsocial responsibility.
If you've had a website for awhile, you might have previously
received a threatening letterfrom a lawyer informing you that
you will be sued for yourwebsite not being ADA compliant.
The vast majority of the time,these letters are just
(19:32):
shakedowns for money, but bettersafe than sorry.
Accessibi provides a litigationsupport package for no extra
charge, and their plugin takesyour website to a passing level
of ADA compliance within 48hours of initial installation.
At Punchmark, we prioritizeyour website's accessibility,
and our in-house efforts inpartnership with Accessibi
(19:53):
provides a comprehensivesolution.
With ongoing scans, we keepyour website ADA compliant and
safeguard your business.
With Punchmark as your websiteplatform, you'll get 20% off
your Accessibi subscription andyou can visit accessibicom.
Slash A slash punchmark formore information.
Again, that's AccessibiA-C-C-E-S-S-I-B-E dot com.
(20:16):
Slash A as in alpha slashpunchmark for more information,
Embrace accessibility, empowerusers and set the standard for
the industry.
And now back to the show.
And we're back, All right.
(20:38):
So we have these super fastpage speeds.
We are calling it page speedoptimization, and what that
requires is a little bit ofmanual work on it, and that's
why it's not fully included ineverybody's accounts, mainly
because we have this kind ofgnaws in the back that we can
(21:00):
hit.
But for a lot of people, yourwebsite is already working fine.
You already received these kindof fringe buffs from a lot of
the code that rolled out.
However, if you want to kick itinto gear, there will be just a
small upcharge on it.
You can contact your accountmanager, but I guess is there
anything else that we missedwhen it came to explaining this.
(21:22):
I know a lot of people won'tfully understand it.
The biggest thing is just onyour phone, your website is
going to load much faster.
How's that?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
That's true, but the biggest thing is how Google is
going to treat your website,because it loads much faster.
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
When you start to look around what is kind of the
I don't know the battlefieldlooking like for page speed for,
like you know, our competitorsas well.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, this is where you start to realize how
impressive what Punchmark hasdone here actually is, because I
mean, let me read off somemobile page speed scores from
some of the top people in thetech industry.
So Apple's website.
Apple is known globally forhaving like a beautiful website.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
They invest tons of money into it.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, their mobile page speed score is a 45.
If you look it up, that's a rednumber.
Youtube is a 37.
Let's see we have Amazon out of52.
And then you said 75 was thetarget goal.
I think I have some intuitionas to why that is the case.
(22:31):
Google the people who aremeasuring page speed Googlecom
is a 75 mobile page speed score.
There you go and to remind you,punchmark is serving up like
98s right now, hot and fresh.
So yeah, not doing too bad.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I almost didn't really even believe it when it
was coming through.
It's mainly, I think it's justlike yeah, when you follow the
order of operations, it'samazing how much faster and
cleaner things can load.
Anything else about page speed.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, when you said that you almost didn't believe
the results at first, that isunderstandable.
Most people wouldn't, becauseusually when you hear someone
say they're scoring a 98 to 100on page speed, they cheated
somehow.
Like they are taking the workthat was supposed to be done
within the first five seconds toshow the user the webpage, and
they're saying we're going toserve a dead webpage, something
(23:27):
with no content on it, for thefirst five seconds and then
we're going to load it in,because page speed is calculated
in the first like five or soseconds of your website loading.
We're not doing that.
We actually made theimprovements to get the 98.
So that's something very rare.
It's way more common thatyou'll hear a 98 than it will
(23:48):
actually be a 98 and we'reactually the 98.
So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Well, it took a lot of hard work.
I know that you guys have beencranking on this for a long
minute.
It definitely doesn't come forfree.
I mean, we've had, we have ourteam of developers, as well as
even our CPO and our CTO gettingin there.
It has been the focus for thelast man, several months, and
that's the kind of stuff though.
(24:13):
You can cheat if you wanted to,you could cheat, but it's going
to be figured out.
It's going to the smoke andmirrors will be seen through at
some point and then you're goingto be left where you were and
you kind of you know you won'tget any farther and, honestly,
your name will probably be lessvaluable.
And for us, we decided we'regoing to do the work that's
required and actually get itdone.
(24:33):
So nice job there, big guy.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Totally, and Google appreciate it.
Google will find you out.
So you know like within thenext couple months, google is
releasing new metrics to figureout people who are doing that
stuff Like Google is not stupid.
They're going to find you out.
So you better do it the rightway the first time.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
So, big guy, I mean we just launched PageSpeed.
What's the next project?
I mean, I'm sure that there'slike a million and one things
that you want to work on.
What's next for you guys?
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, I mean, these projects have been spiraling
above our heads for months,right Like trying to get them
down, trying to get themreleased, and we just released a
jewelry wizard on Site Managerthat uses AI to improve your
item titles and descriptionsautomatically, which increases
conversion and puts money inyour pocket.
We also did a PageSpeed pushamong other cool features that
(25:25):
we pushed out, and so our plateis kind of clean right now.
We're clean plate club and weactually we have a roadmap
meeting today to determinewhat's going to be the next
biggest priority for our clients.
So the answer to that right nowis we don't know, but we have
some ideas and we're going tosit down and figure out what's
going to mean the most to youand go forward with that today.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Yeah, it's really cool.
I can't really remember thelast time we had a clean plate.
It's very, very strange andthat's a very powerful position
to be in where we can decidewhat we want to dive into next.
So, instead of beingreactionary, punchmark has
always been a smaller team, orat least when I joined, there
(26:07):
was only seven, eight, nine ofus working here, so there's only
two devs at a time, or threedevs at a time, and it just
didn't allow us to be able tolook forward instead of just
what we have on our plate.
But right now, I think that,because we have this and we are
able to let it breathe, we'retrying to talk about this as
much as we can, as manydifferent people in all of our
(26:30):
channels, and then, as it'sallowing it to breathe, we can
start working on the next thing,because the devs don't really
have to be the ones that aredoing the promotion.
They just do the hard work.
It gets pointed out there andthen I get to do the fun part of
taking the credit.
But the next thing who knows,maybe that's more things related
(26:51):
to products, or maybe we'regoing to give websites their
master pages of facelift, or whoknows what it's going to be.
Maybe we bring on more partnersor more integrations.
I think that we've had a lot ofrecommendations, but I'll leave
it up to our Scrum Master.
Nicole, as well as our CTO, cpoand Director of Technology,
will make the decisions and Itrust them to make the good ones
(27:13):
.
Anything else.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, there is power in planning.
We are going to Power inplanning.
Yeah, we're going to use ournoodles and figure out what's
going to bring the most value.
It's going to.
I'm excited for what comes nextNice, anything else?
No, I think we talked about thestuff that I was excited to
talk about.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
I love it.
Websites go burr man, it'sgoing to be sick.
I'm really pleased with it.
I think that I mean, the nextthing I want to do is optimize
punchmarkcom and just run it onourselves, because I think
anytime we do something cool, Ijust like to use it on ourselves
as well, because then we getthe buff, because punchmarkcom
is built on our own platform,and I think that that's kind of
(27:54):
one of those things about yougot to eat your own dog food,
you got to practice what youpreach, so we'll probably try
that out and then, who knows,we'll figure it out from there.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah, I'm excited to do that.
Big A.
Thanks for joining me, man.
All right, man.
Thanks for having me on, it wasfun.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Cheers, all right, everybody.
We'll be back next week withanother episode.
Cheers, all right, everybody.
That's another show.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Peek me on the curtain.
This week's episode was broughtto you by Punchmark and
produced and hosted by MichaelBurpo.
My guest this week was AaronPlacharsik, the director of
technology at Punchmark, andthis episode was edited by Paul
(28:29):
Suarez with music by Ross Cockro.
Don't forget to rate thepodcast on Apple Podcasts and
Spotify and learn more about thepodcast at punchmarkcom.
Slash loop and leave us somefeedback.
I'd love to hear what you thinkabout these technology based
episodes.
We'll have another episode nextweek, tuesday.
Stay with us, thanks.
Welcome back everybody to In the Loop.
What is up everybody?
My name is Michael Burpo.
Thanks again for listening toIn the Loop.
This week we're talkingPageSpeed and I know PageSpeed
not something you probably thinkabout every day, but for us, we
think about it constantly atPunchmark, and I'm joined by our
(00:21):
director of technology, aaronPlacharsik, and we're talking
about this enormous project thatwe recently released for
Punchmark website clients andhow we took a lot of PageSpeeds
from being very middle of thepack you know, 35 to 55.
And we took them and we havesome scores in the high 90s,
which is, you know, anythingabout PageSpeed completely
(00:42):
unheard of.
And Big A actually showsexactly how we did it, and we
talk about what we were doingbefore, the improvements we made
and how that will impact notjust you and your business but
also your customers, and whythat's going to be a good thing.
So it's a really fun talk.
It's a little bit more highlevel and techy than we normally
get, but I hope you enjoy apeek behind the curtain.
(01:03):
This episode is brought to youby Punchmark, the Julie
industry's favorite websiteplatform.
Whether you're looking forbetter e-commerce performance,
business growth or campaignsthat drive traffic and sales,
punchmark's website andmarketing services were made
just for you.
It's never too late totransform your business with a
(01:25):
user friendly, point of sale,integrated website platform
designed for growth and results.
Sign up for your free demotoday at Punchmarkcom.
While enjoying this week'sepisode, take a moment and leave
us a star rating on the Spotifymobile app or, if you're on
Apple Podcast, leave us a starrating and a review.
It's the best way to help usgrow into show that you really
(01:47):
enjoy in the show.
Thanks, and now back to theshow.
What is up everybody?
I'm joined by Aaron Placharsik,the director of technology at
Punchmark.
How are you doing today, aaron?
Good, how are you doing?
Doing?
Alright, I refer to him as BigA, so that's probably what
(02:09):
you're going to hear me call him.
Aaron recently led an enormousdevelopment project at Punchmark
all around page speed.
Aaron, can you kind of set upwhat you do at Punchmark and
what the page speed project wasabout?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, I'm the director of technology at
Punchmark, so I take bigprojects and push them to the
finish line.
That means organizing what theteam's going to work on at any
given point, what prioritythings should have, who's doing
QA on our projects, when allthis basically to push projects
(02:50):
that will make clients happy tothe finish line by a certain
deadline.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, One thing that's really important to know
is that, as we've built out ourdev team, I used to be our Scrum
Master and when we were doingthat, we had fewer devs, or at
one point we had fewer devsThings were really fast-paced
and we had a different attitudearound development.
So it was sometimes we wouldbuild things and we were
(03:16):
launched things in peace.
Now Big A has been a bigproponent of building things
around an entire project andthen launching it with a fully
fleshed out QA we say QA,quality assurance making sure
that there's zero bugs that comeout with it, so that, ideally,
a client would never reallynotice when a project has been
(03:38):
released, except for maybe somepositive benefits.
Is that like a moderatelydecent summation?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Totally, especially with what we've been working on
recently PageSpeed.
Pagespeed is something that theideal release is.
Nobody even knows.
You released it, yeah, becausereally what it is is something
that Google is going to pick upon, not the user.
So we want to make sure thatthe user is affected in
absolutely zero way until youask for it to be turned on, and
(04:05):
then they get some PageSpeedimprovements that help them but
ultimately help your Googleresults most.
So this was an absolutemountain of code.
The QA on this, the qualityassurance, was a huge push,
because when there's so muchcode, there's that much
potential for things to go wrong, and we had to be really
(04:26):
scrutinous with this release andwe made sure we were.
It was nice and successful.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, I think it's been out for about a week now
and it's been really interestinghow we've been able to release
it and then monitor.
Everybody braces themselves forimpact.
Is there going to be anything?
So far?
Nothing really, and I thinkthat has to do with building a
scalable infrastructure aroundwhat we've released.
(04:55):
This might go over the heads ofsome people that are maybe
surface level or they're new tothe website idea when it comes
to running their business, butcan you set up what PageSpeed is
and why it's important for ourclients?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah for sure.
So PageSpeed at its core isjust how fast your website shows
, and by show I don't mean startthe show, but you can still
tell it's loading in and stuffpops up.
What I mean is, how quicklydoes it reach a stable state?
So you load the webpage, allthe images load in, like you're
(05:34):
ready to scroll around and lookat the homepage.
That's what PageSpeed is and toget a great PageSpeed score,
that pretty much has to beinstant.
Like you load the page and it'sjust like it's there and you
might have some pieces thatstill load in, but they
shouldn't be primary pieces ofyour website and they should
load at a certain time to makeyour PageSpeed score high.
(05:57):
So is this something visual thatyou can see?
Yeah, it is.
It doesn't mean your experienceas a user is going to be
negative If you don't have ahigh PageSpeed score, because
pretty much nobody on theinternet puts a ton of effort
into getting 100 on theirPageSpeed score.
They all settle for somebalance of what they want on the
(06:17):
webpage and how fast they'rewilling to go.
It's really hard to get a 100PageSpeed score, so you're used
to not getting one, but when yousee one, it's fast, it loads
fast.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah.
So let's be real, when are ourwebsites slow before?
Because I never kind of.
I never really thought thatthey were, but now with the new
things that we're seeing, it'slike when you get a brand new
computer and there's nothing onit and you're just like, wow,
everything works so smooth andyou're like this is so nice.
(06:52):
Is that kind of what it waslike?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, that's a good comparison.
You were used to getting whatyou've always gotten from the
internet right.
Like everybody does it that way.
They build the content and then, if they get a good page speed
score, cool.
If they make some minoroptimizations to get a slightly
higher page speed score, cool.
But that's about the levelyou're used to getting.
It's like you're used to eatingat a mid-level restaurant and
(07:18):
you went to a high-levelrestaurant.
It's just there are minordifferences that you notice.
You're probably getting whatyou want out of it as a user
either way, but the impact ofhigh page speed scores really is
that Google treats your websitedifferently.
It gives it differentprioritization.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, we always talk about Google as if it's this
weird deity which it kind of is.
I mean, I trust it with somequestions that I wouldn't ask
anyone else.
But is it noticeable, first ofall with these new improved
scores, like what kind of scoresare we getting and also what is
(07:58):
kind of different now?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, so if you go to , if you just Google the words
test page speed, you can find awebsite.
It'll be your top result.
It'll be Google's website thatthey use to test page speed and
you can actually put your URL inand see what your page speed
score is.
We are getting results of Ithink I saw it in 98 on mobile
(08:22):
the other day which isabsolutely insane when you look
at the competition.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
I've never seen a 98 before this.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
No, like 98 means you're pretty much serving a
blank web page with one image onit.
That's pretty much the only wayyou've ever been able to get an
98.
Through the methodology we usein our code, we were able to
accomplish that with full webpages.
So what does that mean?
Well, the most noticeable placeI want to mention this the most
(08:51):
noticeable place that you'regoing to see these changes is
probably not going to be on yourdesktop, but your mobile,
because your mobile usually hasslower load times and when you
load a website that's getting a98 on mobile and 99 on desktop.
On your phone, it is like youtap the link and it's already
loaded, and that's an experiencethat, if you're on mobile,
(09:14):
you're not used to.
You're used to things on yourmobile taking a couple of
seconds to load in.
So if you're trying toexperience a difference, that's
what I would do.
I would load it on your phone.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, and I think that our previous websites, like
websites before A lot of ourwebsites were scoring in the,
you know, high 30s into the mid50s, something around there, and
it kind of has to do with howbig the images were that would
come in there, and I know thatwe're trained to think like, oh,
50, that's terrible, that'slike a failing grade, and I mean
(09:45):
that's true if you're in, like,you know, high school, but this
is slightly different.
What I would recommend is yourun your page speed test on your
website, and then I recommendthat you try some other websites
that you use.
I always use an example of, youknow, Nike or Tiffany, and all
those websites are getting like50s or whatever, and what we're
(10:07):
noticing is that it doesn'treally have to do with the
content that's on the pageanymore, and also it just has to
do with the methodology that isbuilt around how these websites
are loaded.
One thing that's reallyinteresting, though, is that our
websites, visually before thisupdate, didn't really seem slow,
(10:30):
and I've always kind of beenlike they passed the eyeball
test when it comes to how theyloaded before, but Google never
really gave us that benefit,because Google is looking at how
well it actually loads.
Can you kind of just explainjust that, maybe a little bit?
I don't want to get too deepinto what we were doing.
Can you explain, like, what thekey differences are, because
(10:53):
what were we doing before?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So before everything was baked in.
So how your website renders isif you ever right-click a
website and click View SourceCode, you'll see that ton of
code.
That is your webpage.
And if you scroll through that,sometimes you'll see a little
script tag in there and thatwill be just in there in the mix
(11:17):
with the rest of the code.
And how the webpage is renderedis your internet browser will
read through top to bottom, justlike humans do top to bottom,
and just do things in the orderthat it sees them.
And when you have those scripttags just in the mix, the
browser will stop and load inthat script before it loads the
(11:38):
rest of the page and then itwill continue and so on, and the
whole time you're loading thesethings in and having them
interact and execute.
We are holding up the userbecause we're stopping the.
It's called the DOM.
That's just your webpage.
We're stopping the webpage fromloading because we're doing
unnecessary things in themeantime, and that's something
(11:59):
that's common practice withwebsites.
That's why we're so used towaiting.
You know, three seconds isgenerally how long a user will
wait for a website to load.
We're all trying to do thatbecause that's how websites are
developed.
So that's what we were doingbefore, and the switch away from
that is giving us results thatare improved.
We measure the improvements inmilliseconds.
That's what Google cares about.
(12:20):
Milliseconds is literally athousandth of a second.
It's counting those and sothese optimizations, while to
you, as a user, they might notseem significant, because who
cares about a thousandth of asecond?
Well, google does, and whenwe're able to shave off like
thousands of milliseconds,google takes sharp notice and
(12:40):
that's why we're getting thosehuge 98 results, as opposed to
like a website that's willing towait one more second to render.
So they don't have to do allthis work that we've done,
because as a user, you don'tcare, but as Google, you
absolutely care.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, and to drive this point home just a little
bit more, so Google's whole MO,I mean at least sometimes they
break away with it because theywant to make money and they
serve things that are givingthem money, but let's just say,
on an even playing field, whereno one is giving them additional
money for SEM.
They are purely caring aboutwhat is going to give the most
(13:15):
relevant information in the bestuser experience.
That's how Google ranks thatstuff.
So when you search the termengagement rings near me, they
are going to look at a varietyof plethora of factors.
One of the things that they'regoing to be looking at is
relevancy, but also userexperience, and user experience
(13:36):
that's just.
I'm director of user experience,so like this, it means this
huge compound word that actuallyis talking about all these
other things.
So one of those things is howhappy are you when you use this
website, and a factor in that ishow quickly does your page load
, and it's a really big thingthat Google ranks.
(13:57):
So when your website goes from,like Big A was saying, from
three seconds down to, let'sjust say, two seconds, I mean
that is a, you know, like a 33%increase, and Google is going to
compare your engagement ringsnear me to the next store's
engagement rings near me andit's going to say well, on
(14:18):
relevancy, they are rather equal.
However, when it comes to userexperience, this site is 33%
faster than this site over hereand, as a result, we are going
to push this one way fartherahead and we're going to serve
it faster, and that is part ofthe reason why these faster
websites will start to be rankedhigher.
(14:41):
That's kind of like a verydumbed down version of how
Google is going to work for this.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, and that improvement in page speed leads
to, like, significantimprovements in conversion rates
.
I forgot the exact stats, but Ithink it's like something like
100 milliseconds will increaseyour conversion rate by like 20
something percent Wow, which iscrazy.
But what I wanted to focus onwas Google switched five years
(15:09):
ago 2018, I think it was July2018, something like that to
mobile focused page speed.
So the fact that people areusing their phones not to load
these websites and we're allused to waiting a little extra
time on your phone means thatpunch marks, advancements, and
mobile page speeds specifically,are particularly significant,
(15:32):
because mobile page speeds areparticularly suffering in the
industry.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yeah, and it's also where it's happening.
I mean, we're seeingincreasingly every single year.
Every single year, we have seenthe share of checkouts and
browsing and every metricrelated to use for our websites
shifting more and more towardsmobile.
(15:58):
I personally, my hypothesis isthat, within you know five to
seven years, desktops as a wholeor, like I guess, laptop I
don't know what that term islarge screen viewing.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, do people still use desktops?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, they will start to go away and it will just
purely become these mobiledevices that you can maybe jack
into a secondary screen, butyou'll still be running off of
only your mobile device.
Because they're gettingstronger.
With Apple it's using these newage chips that are stronger
(16:39):
than what desktops were a whileago, Because we've always used
desktops, because we thoughtthat they had way more power in
processing.
But now there's kind of like acap of when you're going to see
what kind of device actuallyleverage.
It's like, oh, at a certainpoint, when you have these M2
(16:59):
chips or these M4 chips, they'regoing to put them into a phone
eventually and then it's justgoing to be there's no more cap
space.
I really do believe thateverything is shifting towards
these mobile devices and Googlesaw that coming from a mile away
and we're like, OK, instead ofus ranking desktop and then kind
of putting mobile in thesecondary seat, it's purely
(17:21):
mobile first.
I mean, you've heard that termbefore mobile first.
And that's how we've had toaccommodate that and start
moving towards that, because ifthat's what Google cares about,
that's what we care about aswell.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, that's not what I personally care about, but
the world is definitely shiftingthat way.
The casting from your phone tosome kind of monitor is
interesting.
I think that that's kind of thetrend.
I would be interested to see ifthat happens.
You just have these monitorsthat have nothing attached to
them and then you can just clickon your phone and it shoots the
(17:54):
video up and it's processing onyour phone but executing on
your monitor.
Yeah, it could be.
I mean, the world's definitelygoing mobile, right?
Speaker 1 (18:01):
I mean, you already see it with a lot of these new
Apple iOS systems where it'slike working with you can kind
of see it as like a secondaryview.
You can use it for FaceTime offof your phone.
I think it's very interesting.
I do think that there is aspace for using, for example,
ipads.
I'm an Apple guy, you know, butI think that using these iPads
(18:25):
are kind of.
I mean, in the end they arejust larger mobile devices.
That's the.
There's really no difference.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
They just are like larger and they don't fit in
your pocket.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
But I mean, my phone hardly fits in my pocket, man.
So I think that that is.
Yeah, it's kind of wherethey're going.
That's kind of a tangent, butwhatever, and we're still in the
same kind of swing of things.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
It's the importance of mobile right.
That's how it's relevant.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
There you go, Nice.
All right, everybody.
We're going to take a quickbreak and hear a word from our
sponsor.
This week's episode is broughtto you in part by Accessibi,
Punchmark's ADA compliancepartner.
Creating inclusive websites iscrucial in today's digital world
.
The Americans Disability Act,or ADA, requires website
(19:11):
compliance and ensures equalaccess to information services
for individuals withdisabilities, fostering a
positive user experience andsocial responsibility.
If you've had a website for awhile, you might have previously
received a threatening letterfrom a lawyer informing you that
you will be sued for yourwebsite not being ADA compliant.
The vast majority of the time,these letters are just
(19:32):
shakedowns for money, but bettersafe than sorry.
Accessibi provides a litigationsupport package for no extra
charge, and their plugin takesyour website to a passing level
of ADA compliance within 48hours of initial installation.
At Punchmark, we prioritizeyour website's accessibility,
and our in-house efforts inpartnership with Accessibi
(19:53):
provides a comprehensivesolution.
With ongoing scans, we keepyour website ADA compliant and
safeguard your business.
With Punchmark as your websiteplatform, you'll get 20% off
your Accessibi subscription andyou can visit accessibicom.
Slash A slash punchmark formore information.
Again, that's AccessibiA-C-C-E-S-S-I-B-E dot com.
(20:16):
Slash A as in alpha slashpunchmark for more information,
Embrace accessibility, empowerusers and set the standard for
the industry.
And now back to the show.
And we're back, All right.
(20:38):
So we have these super fastpage speeds.
We are calling it page speedoptimization, and what that
requires is a little bit ofmanual work on it, and that's
why it's not fully included ineverybody's accounts, mainly
because we have this kind ofgnaws in the back that we can
(21:00):
hit.
But for a lot of people, yourwebsite is already working fine.
You already received these kindof fringe buffs from a lot of
the code that rolled out.
However, if you want to kick itinto gear, there will be just a
small upcharge on it.
You can contact your accountmanager, but I guess is there
anything else that we missedwhen it came to explaining this.
(21:22):
I know a lot of people won'tfully understand it.
The biggest thing is just onyour phone, your website is
going to load much faster.
How's that?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
That's true, but the biggest thing is how Google is
going to treat your website,because it loads much faster.
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
When you start to look around what is kind of the
I don't know the battlefieldlooking like for page speed for,
like you know, our competitorsas well.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, this is where you start to realize how
impressive what Punchmark hasdone here actually is, because I
mean, let me read off somemobile page speed scores from
some of the top people in thetech industry.
So Apple's website.
Apple is known globally forhaving like a beautiful website.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
They invest tons of money into it.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, their mobile page speed score is a 45.
If you look it up, that's a rednumber.
Youtube is a 37.
Let's see we have Amazon out of52.
And then you said 75 was thetarget goal.
I think I have some intuitionas to why that is the case.
(22:31):
Google the people who aremeasuring page speed Googlecom
is a 75 mobile page speed score.
There you go and to remind you,punchmark is serving up like
98s right now, hot and fresh.
So yeah, not doing too bad.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I almost didn't really even believe it when it
was coming through.
It's mainly, I think it's justlike yeah, when you follow the
order of operations, it'samazing how much faster and
cleaner things can load.
Anything else about page speed.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, when you said that you almost didn't believe
the results at first, that isunderstandable.
Most people wouldn't, becauseusually when you hear someone
say they're scoring a 98 to 100on page speed, they cheated
somehow.
Like they are taking the workthat was supposed to be done
within the first five seconds toshow the user the webpage, and
they're saying we're going toserve a dead webpage, something
(23:27):
with no content on it, for thefirst five seconds and then
we're going to load it in,because page speed is calculated
in the first like five or soseconds of your website loading.
We're not doing that.
We actually made theimprovements to get the 98.
So that's something very rare.
It's way more common thatyou'll hear a 98 than it will
(23:48):
actually be a 98 and we'reactually the 98.
So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Well, it took a lot of hard work.
I know that you guys have beencranking on this for a long
minute.
It definitely doesn't come forfree.
I mean, we've had, we have ourteam of developers, as well as
even our CPO and our CTO gettingin there.
It has been the focus for thelast man, several months, and
that's the kind of stuff though.
(24:13):
You can cheat if you wanted to,you could cheat, but it's going
to be figured out.
It's going to the smoke andmirrors will be seen through at
some point and then you're goingto be left where you were and
you kind of you know you won'tget any farther and, honestly,
your name will probably be lessvaluable.
And for us, we decided we'regoing to do the work that's
required and actually get itdone.
(24:33):
So nice job there, big guy.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Totally, and Google appreciate it.
Google will find you out.
So you know like within thenext couple months, google is
releasing new metrics to figureout people who are doing that
stuff Like Google is not stupid.
They're going to find you out.
So you better do it the rightway the first time.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
So, big guy, I mean we just launched PageSpeed.
What's the next project?
I mean, I'm sure that there'slike a million and one things
that you want to work on.
What's next for you guys?
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, I mean, these projects have been spiraling
above our heads for months,right Like trying to get them
down, trying to get themreleased, and we just released a
jewelry wizard on Site Managerthat uses AI to improve your
item titles and descriptionsautomatically, which increases
conversion and puts money inyour pocket.
We also did a PageSpeed pushamong other cool features that
(25:25):
we pushed out, and so our plateis kind of clean right now.
We're clean plate club and weactually we have a roadmap
meeting today to determinewhat's going to be the next
biggest priority for our clients.
So the answer to that right nowis we don't know, but we have
some ideas and we're going tosit down and figure out what's
going to mean the most to youand go forward with that today.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Yeah, it's really cool.
I can't really remember thelast time we had a clean plate.
It's very, very strange andthat's a very powerful position
to be in where we can decidewhat we want to dive into next.
So, instead of beingreactionary, punchmark has
always been a smaller team, orat least when I joined, there
(26:07):
was only seven, eight, nine ofus working here, so there's only
two devs at a time, or threedevs at a time, and it just
didn't allow us to be able tolook forward instead of just
what we have on our plate.
But right now, I think that,because we have this and we are
able to let it breathe, we'retrying to talk about this as
much as we can, as manydifferent people in all of our
(26:30):
channels, and then, as it'sallowing it to breathe, we can
start working on the next thing,because the devs don't really
have to be the ones that aredoing the promotion.
They just do the hard work.
It gets pointed out there andthen I get to do the fun part of
taking the credit.
But the next thing who knows,maybe that's more things related
(26:51):
to products, or maybe we'regoing to give websites their
master pages of facelift, or whoknows what it's going to be.
Maybe we bring on more partnersor more integrations.
I think that we've had a lot ofrecommendations, but I'll leave
it up to our Scrum Master.
Nicole, as well as our CTO, cpoand Director of Technology,
will make the decisions and Itrust them to make the good ones
(27:13):
.
Anything else.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, there is power in planning.
We are going to Power inplanning.
Yeah, we're going to use ournoodles and figure out what's
going to bring the most value.
It's going to.
I'm excited for what comes nextNice, anything else?
No, I think we talked about thestuff that I was excited to
talk about.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
I love it.
Websites go burr man, it'sgoing to be sick.
I'm really pleased with it.
I think that I mean, the nextthing I want to do is optimize
punchmarkcom and just run it onourselves, because I think
anytime we do something cool, Ijust like to use it on ourselves
as well, because then we getthe buff, because punchmarkcom
is built on our own platform,and I think that that's kind of
(27:54):
one of those things about yougot to eat your own dog food,
you got to practice what youpreach, so we'll probably try
that out and then, who knows,we'll figure it out from there.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah, I'm excited to do that.
Big A.
Thanks for joining me, man.
All right, man.
Thanks for having me on, it wasfun.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Cheers, all right, everybody.
We'll be back next week withanother episode.
Cheers, all right, everybody.
That's another show.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Peek me on the curtain.
This week's episode was broughtto you by Punchmark and
produced and hosted by MichaelBurpo.
My guest this week was AaronPlacharsik, the director of
technology at Punchmark, andthis episode was edited by Paul
(28:29):
Suarez with music by Ross Cockro.
Don't forget to rate thepodcast on Apple Podcasts and
Spotify and learn more about thepodcast at punchmarkcom.
Slash loop and leave us somefeedback.
I'd love to hear what you thinkabout these technology based
episodes.
We'll have another episode nextweek, tuesday.
Stay with us, thanks.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.