Speed Matters: The business, psychology and technology of high-performance web apps

Speed Matters is a short, highly readable book that approaches web performance optimization holistically. It begins by focusing on the business implications of web performance--why speed matters to the bottom line--and then moves on to the technology by analyzing the life of a page, from load to unload, and assessing what changes can make the performance better. It concludes by looking at the psychology of performance and how designers and developers can improve the perception of speed (and the user experience) even when the objective time stays constant.