Integrating a third-party customisation tool on your site, which requires you to generate calls to external resources, logically adds time to its loading speed. As far as Poool is concerned, we are continually working to optimise our script code and minimise the impact on your site's performance.

Yes, Poool is designed to offer optimal performance in terms of loading speed. Our infrastructure is based on fast and reliable servers, a powerful DNS and an excellent uptime.

According to our comparative analysis conducted in Q1 2023, on a sample of 66 online press sites using Poool or another dynamic paywall and personalisation solution, Poool has the fastest average loading speed - both on Wifi bandwidth and on 3g mobile network.

For example, Poool is 45% faster than the average solution on Wi-Fi (at 155ms), and 94% faster on 3g mobile networks (674ms).

We will repeat this analysis frequently, in order to continue to offer you a fast and reliable technological solution.

Edit 05/2023 :

Following new analyses conducted 3 months after the first ones, we note a stable average execution speed, still placing Poool as the fastest content blocking solution in the benchmark.

The late appearance of the wall on an article is one of the main issues for publishers, as it directly affects the experience you offer to your readers.

This is largely due to the queuing of external requests, which you can see in the network section of your browser console.

The problem with this queue is that it is very often overloaded with calls to external scripts. Wondering what happens behind the scenes when a visitor loads a page on your site? Here's an illustration 👇

The main concern is that most of the time, the browser has no indication of loading priorities.

As a first step, we advise you to limit the call to unused external resources, or to defer the loading of those that do not impact the user experience.

Some tag managers (such as Google Tag Manager) allow you to manage execution priorities, which makes it possible to prioritise personalisation solutions such as Poool.

There are also various libraries that allow you to manage the priority of your third-party scripts.

Finally, you can use techniques such as Preconnect, Preload and Prefetch. These methods allow you to load resources in advance, prioritise important elements and anticipate requests, thus reducing loading times. More details can be found here.

N.B.: Not to be confused with the indexability of your site by search engines. If you are more interested in this topic, we have a dedicated article to read here.

The impact of a wall on SEO can be done through different "Core Vitals" metrics, which represent Google's "user-centric" guidelines to ensure optimal technical SEO. Here are some recommendations:

You can find more details in this article.

To determine whether Poool can influence the various Core Web Vitals metrics, we ran a series of tests on WebPageTest. These tests enabled us to measure these metrics precisely - firstly by using Poool scripts on the various sites tested, and then by blocking them.

Example of a report on the impact of Core Vitals following a series of tests carried out on WebPageTest.

Using this approach, we were able to observe whether there was a difference in score with and without the use of Poool, metric by metric. Finally, we were able to assess the potential impact of this difference on search engine ranking.

Does Poool have an impact on Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)?

According to our tests, Poool scripts have a minimal impact on Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). The LCP measures the time taken to display the largest item of content visible in the viewing window. With Poool, LCP is virtually unaffected, which means that the time taken to display the largest piece of content on your page is not significantly increased.

Does Poool have an impact on the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)?

Poool's impact on CLS is also minimal. CLS measures the sum of all unexpected layout shifts that occur throughout the loading of a page. A low CLS score indicates good visual page stability. Poool scripts do not cause significant unexpected content movements on the page, as long as the tag hosting the wall is below the fold.

Does Poool have an impact on Total Blocking Time (TBT)?

TBT measures the total time during which the main execution thread is blocked, which restricts the interactivity of the page for the user. In the majority of our tests, the presence of Poool scripts generates significant Total Blocking Time (TBT).

However, there are several simple techniques you can use to reduce or even eliminate this impact. In particular, you can postpone the loading of scripts, or make it conditional on the user scrolling. These actions will lighten the main queue and give priority to items at the top of the fold.

👉 More details here.

The difference in weight between advanced and basic appearances is not systematic. It really depends on the amount of elements you add in the editor and the weight of the images you import.

In order to ensure optimal performance, we recommend that you follow the optimisation tips mentioned in the "Images: weight and format" section of this article. By following these best practices, your site will maintain optimal loading performance, regardless of the appearance you choose.

Poool does not natively allow you to split its scripts at will, with the exception of the separation between Access and Audit. This is because our scripts are designed and tested to work together to provide an optimal user experience.

Poool walls are loaded via an iframe to ensure clean integration without interference with your site code. Although we have experimented with using HTML, CSS and other resources directly, this has resulted in a less controlled user experience and design. Using an iframe allows us to ensure a quality integration and an optimal user experience.

It is possible that integrating Poool via Google Tag Manager (GTM) may cause your walls to load slightly slower, as GTM must first load before loading the Poool Access and Audit scripts. However, the impact on the overall performance of your site should be minimal.

You also have the possibility to prioritize the triggering of your different tags, and thus ensure that Poool loads among the first resources.