Minimize MailChimp embed.js: Size Matters!
Monday, March 30th, 2015
Reduce (credit: www.gotcredit.com)
Optimizr sent us a note.
The file-size for the HTML-document should be as small as possible.
Turns out Optimizr was picking up every page of non-disclosure agreement service EasyNDA that had MailChimp’s new Susbcriber Popup installed. MailChimp was adding the crushing weight ofa javascript file hosted on Amazon AWS.
We checked EasyNDA’s Legal Advisory page and found it to be ~759 KB.
The code snipit for MailChimp’s popup calls embed.js from an Amazon AWS instance, which it turns out, is MailChimp’s hosting of the Dojo toolkit.
The hosted toolit is a 640 KB file. That’s HUGE! – 84% of the entire page!
If you use MailChimp’s new Subscriber Popup on your site, minimize the embed.js file and host it yourself.
We used JSCompress to minimize MailChimp’s embed.js instance of the Dojo Toolkit. The file compressed from 640 KB down 80% to 131 KB.
Now MailChimp’s use of the Dojo toolkit is 39% of the page – a 54% reduction!
Download our mimized version of MailChimp’s embed.js here as embed.min.js.
Visit our new, faster loading, EasyNDA Legal Advisory Panel page.
Thanks for this great post. We use MailChimp too – didn’t realize their script used un-minimized javascript libraries.
Thank you! That’s exactly what I was looking for!!
Can’t believe that they don’t do this by default… 636KB – it was *by far* the heaviest resource being loaded on my site, just for a little popup. I’m still not happy with 140KB, but it’s a lot better than before.
You’re welcome Oliver. It’s irresponsible of MailChimp, don’t you think?