During the Glazer-Kennedy Info-Summit a few weeks ago in Atlanta (see my earlier post here), one of our talented sales representatives, Jordan Hatch, made me aware of something from one of our customers was experiencing: slow Web forms. Web forms are used to capture leads from your website and put them into your customer database … a primary feature of Infusionsoft.
The customer commented that once a site visitor submitted the form in some cases it was taking too long to process, resulting in visitors to abandon (and never make it into the customer database). Not good.
Instead of packing away the issue at the bottom of the suit case along with his dirty socks, Jordan returned home and in true Infusionsoft style, immediately started to dig in and troubleshoot (did I mention that Jordan is a sales rep?). He rigged up an automated test to see how long, on average, it took for an Infusionsoft Web form to be processed.
Our Web forms are unique because not only do they add the visitor’s data to the customer database, they also perform a series of automated commands that can effortlessly segment and group the new contacts, initiate or stop an auto-responder sequence or follow-up campaign, notify the site owner of the new opt-in, and dozens of other actions. Through Jordan’s grassroots testing, he discovered that forms were taking an average 3-4 seconds to process… not bad, but could be improved, especially if it meant increasing response rates for thousands of our customers and their prospects.
Jordan’s advocacy for customers and his initiative are characteristics that we strive for everyday and I wanted to publicly share my gratitude for it.
Next, Jordan brought the issue to Marc Chesley, our VP of Development & Technology, who pulled out the big guns. Marc felt it was important to investigate and improve, even if we could only shave off a handful of milliseconds from the processing time. After a “Special Forces” team of developers invested a week of testing, tweaking code, and playing with ‘threads’ (did I mention that I’m a marketing and sales guy?), they nailed it!
The special forces team who went in, found the issue and fixed it for a customer: Ross Beamish, Ryan Peterson, Marc Chesley, James Thompson, Joseph Mask, Jordan Hatch and Mike Daniels. Thank you!
The result was that our Web form processing time was cut from four seconds down to a paltry 70 milliseconds … or 7/100ths of a second. Now that’s fast! Mind you, this was done in a scientifically-sound proven development environment so we could correctly measure the impact. Here is a chart that demonstrates the impact of their work:
The best part of this is not only the initiative, the compassion for our customers and a solid example of how we set out to make the best darn marketing software for small business … the enhancement is planned to roll out tonight! Everyone should feel this benefit and have even more confidence in our software and service!
–Dave
UPDATE 12/18: Our developer, Mike, has increased Web Form Performance even more. In an internal email, he states, “You may be interested to hear that I made it even faster. 
It is down to 37 milliseconds now. (Down from 70). I was able to squeeze a little extra speed out by pushing the [double] opt-in email and notification to the app owner that their form was filled out into their own thread.” Nice work again, Mike!
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Jordan Hatch is an incredible asset to the team at Infusionsoft. Always looking for ways to improve our product and make life easier for clients! Great job to all team members!
This was awesome work that we accomplished! I love the passion and never-ending support for customers that Infusionsoft has for them. Keep it up guys!
An excellent way to let your customers know you're looking out for them. Certainly gives me ideas how we can do it for our customers.
Thank you special forces team! 4000 ms down to 70 ms? Those are some incredible results, especially considering everything Infusionsoft is doing in the background during the processing time. I appreciate your hard work and innovation.
Jarrod Morris
this is the way to support customers. Thanks
Thanks for the kudos Warren! I think customers are gonna love our upcoming release!
Great job. I love dedicated and talented developers. Plus “kudos” to Jordan for bringing up the issue.
Along the lines of being dedicated to customer satisfaction, and 'digging in' to wrestle with a real problem… there is a serious issue that needs to be fixed regarding order forms.
Recently a new variable name was introduced for the name of the form when customers use the “Pass Person's info to “Thank You” page url” option. The developers chose to use the variable name for the form and call it 'name'.
Result is that if you pass that info to a WordPress based 'Thank You' page, then WordPress will issue a 404 error. We have made tech support aware of this issue and have been told that we need to host the order forms on our own site so that we can control what is passed in the URL to the 'Thank You' page.
My suggestion is that y'all change the 'name' variable to something a lot more unique – perhaps 'isformname' and do it quickly.
Thanks for providing an open and transparent environment where real customers can read and comment.
Great job. I love dedicated and talented developers. Plus “kudos” to Jordan for bringing up the issue.
Along the lines of being dedicated to customer satisfaction, and 'digging in' to wrestle with a real problem… there is a serious issue that needs to be fixed regarding order forms.
Recently a new variable name was introduced for the name of the form when customers use the “Pass Person's info to “Thank You” page url” option. The developers chose to use the variable name for the form and call it 'name'.
Result is that if you pass that info to a WordPress based 'Thank You' page, then WordPress will issue a 404 error. We have made tech support aware of this issue and have been told that we need to host the order forms on our own site so that we can control what is passed in the URL to the 'Thank You' page.
My suggestion is that y'all change the 'name' variable to something a lot more unique – perhaps 'isformname' and do it quickly.
Thanks for providing an open and transparent environment where real customers can read and comment.