I’m trying to find documentation on what Qualtrics loads when in a public-facing survey. The survey I’m getting ready to launch goes like this:

10-12 seconds load the first page from whatever referring link. This page only contains html and one MC (it’s a consent form). 

10-17 seconds to load the 2nd page. This contains 5 multiple choice questions, one of which uses in-page display logic based on the answer to one of the earlier questions.

2-3 seconds to load the 3rd page, which has a MC choice question with 60 answer choices that each have an image for an answer (a 150pxx220px png).

2 seconds to load the 4th page, which has a slider question that’s visible, and several hidden questions doing some heavy lifting around checking for room in quotas based on the answer to a regular multiple choice question on page 2.

2-3 seconds to load the 5th page, one MC question visible, several hidden questions with two-layer display logic on each answer choice using  the answers to the image answer question from page 3 and the quota-space-for-your-answer-group from page 4. 

Remaining pages load times range from almost immediately to 2-3 seconds (remaining pages are all pretty basic question pages (though they use javascript during loop and merge segments) without any fancy display logic/quota action.

I’m not concerned about the 2-3 seconds to load most of the pages, but those first two pages taking up to 20 seconds to load makes it seem broken, and I’m worried people will leave before they even start. So I want to do anything I can to reduce those first two load times, but I need to understand what’s getting loaded that is slowing it down so excessively.

Is Qualtrics loading up the entire survey before it ever displays the first page? If it’s loading absolutely everything up front, I might expect the 1st page to load super slow, but then I’d think the 2nd page would go faster. If it’s only working a page ahead at a time, I’d expect the slowness to not start until loading the 3rd page. 

I know that javascript and display logic and quotas will all slow things down, but I expected a few seconds maybe, not more than 15. The pages with js are all fast-loading ones, so the only thing I can think of is the quotas and display logic that are heavy on pages 4-5. Is there any documentation someone can point me to on what loads when? I don’t know that I have many other options on how to construct this -- everything that could be done with survey flow instead of display logic is done that way, but the way quotas and answer choice displays work seem to force this setup (unless I tried to move all the display logic for checking quota space into js, which is a little beyond my ability).

Any tips or pointers to documentation greatly appreciated.