Very curious that NYT's is so slow given their fairly advanced tech team. They do a lot of neat stuff with that team. Though maybe it's another part of the company that manages the rest of the site. Or maybe it's all their neat stuff that makes it slow.
I am a NYT subscriber and I love what they do online. Some of the one-off special effects are a bit excessively heavy, but I appreciate the creativity and willingness to push the boundaries or explore the design space of the web.
I also get the actual paper delivered in the morning, so if I need something "performant" or have a poor connection I can simply read it in print. So I appreciate that the website offers something more than just an online duplicate of the print experience.
I wonder if the NYT would see an increase or decrease in conversions if they switched to a more performant but less progressive design system. Would more people convert on the fast load time? Or are the special effects diving more conversions (as they did for me personally)? I think they must have done the math and concluded that their business aligns more with the latter.
