Got a thorny Web application that needs some help? If it’s truly bad, you might consider exposing its flaws publicly for a chance at some free performance-boosting advice.

Keynote Systems just kicked off a new competition to find five applications “that are deemed to represent the most stubborn, prevalent performance challenges on the Web.”

An entry might consist of a navigation path through a catalog and shopping cart on a retail Web site, for example, or a Webmail application that uses Ajax. “Anything done over the Web is fair game,” Keynote says of its FastWeb Race competition.

A panel of Web technology and performance experts will judge the entries, and winners will receive a performance assessment and advice for fixing their application problems, says Keynote, which specializes in Internet test and measurement tools.

Research has shown that customers aren’t going to stick around if a Web application is too slow. Aberdeen Group found that business performance begins to suffer after 5.1 seconds of delay in the response times of Web applications. An additional one-second delay in response times can impact customer satisfaction by up to 16% and impact conversions by up to 7%.

There are also revenue consequences: In a separate survey, Aberdeen found that issues with application performance affect overall corporate revenue by as much as 9%.

To enter Keynote's contest, developers need to record the Web site path or transaction that they want to improve using KITE (Keynote Internet Testing Environment), which can be downloaded for free. Entries are being accepted through June 30th -- but those who submit their entries by June 15 are also eligible to receive a free pass to the Velocity Web Performance and Operations Conference, which is being put on by O’Reilly Media and runs June 22-24 in San Jose, Calif.

“Every day we work with Web developers, QA and Web operations professionals, and there’s a great wealth of knowledge which we can all learn from if we share our experiences,” said Corinna Krueger, chair of the FastWeb Race. “Taking this approach, everyone in the race will benefit from our performance experts’ best practice advice and tips.”

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.