Offering consumers customized web experiences is a winning strategy, but the average web viewer today will wait only two seconds before abandoning a site. Here’s how the new web performance optimization (WPO) industry is helping to speed things up.nOn the web, being dynamic sells. Being slow, however, can cost you sales.nThat’s the challenge facing e-commerce, media portals, gaming sites and other Internet sites today. Dynamic content allows web operators to customize an experience. For example, browse most dynamic sites and you’ll see ads that are customized to your preferences, articles being recommended to you and even updated stock market results. Contrast that with static content like articles or YouTube videos that are there for you to find, but not served up or recommended to you. nThe web was built on static content, but is now shifting to dynamic content, ranging from sports scores of your favorite teams, to suggested books and products on Amazon. Even video, the ultimate in static content, is becoming dynamic. Facebook’s addition of Skype video chats is a precursor to this; as web users can seek out and initiate video conversations whenever they want.nThe Need for SpeednDynamic content is generated by databases, and then must be sent from a central (also known as an origin) server. The challenge to using dynamic information to sell is speed as measured by how long it takes for the webpage to load. Today’s online consumer, on average, expects to wait no more than two seconds for a webpage to render and will wait no more than three seconds, before abandoning the site, according to a recent study by Akamai and Forrester Consulting.nWhile consumer thresholds for webpage load times will likely vary by industry, online retailers can be sure that any delay in webpage load times can be detrimental to number of page views, ads served, search engine rankings and revenues derived from these metrics. In fact, Amazon has reported that a 0.1 second increase in load time decreased its sales by 1%.nIn the past, website operators were better able to meet these speed demands because static content could be distributed to regional servers, cutting the transport time significantly. Called “content delivery networks,” these high-speed servers allowed consumers to access or download audio, video, software and other content from a nearby server instead of the company’s central, or origin, server. These networks are perfect for cacheable content because they can dramatically lower network transport latency.nBut now a solution is needed for the fast growing trend toward dynamic content, and also for optimizing how the content is organized. Thus, the web performance optimization (WPO) industry is born.nSo what is WPO you ask?nTo address the new issues that dynamic content brings, web operations teams currently are thinking beyond the content delivery networks to new technologies such as front-end optimization and origin content acceleration.nOne of the innovations of web 2.0 architectures is that web objects – different bits of data or information (thinks ads or sports scores) – can be served up independently from different servers. As web sites get better at anticipating what a user wants, the number of objects on a page has grown from tens of objects to hundreds over the past few years. nFront-end optimization delivers content faster by optimizing and reducing the number of web objects and other page resources required to download a given page on-the-fly. This market was given a boost in late 2010 by Google, which made available an open-source tool called mod_pagespeed for Apache servers that can significantly reduce page load times.nOrigin content acceleration speeds the delivery of origin-served content from the server all the way to the end-user. As the newest web performance innovation, this technology uses algorithms to fix inefficient network protocols and reduce the transport latency between the origin server and the user.nOrigin content acceleration speeds the transfer of all content – dynamic and static – all the way to the end-user’s computer or mobile device. By accelerating webpages and applications, it delivers significantly faster dynamic website performance and faster file downloads, resulting in more highly engaged and satisfied end-users. One such solution from FastSoft can improve dynamic website performance by up to 30% and improve file download speeds by up to 500%.nA Combination for SuccessnWebpage load time is more critical than ever and is necessary to ensure a satisfactory end-user experience and successful commerce, and the two-second demand from users is a significant gauntlet. Used together, content delivery networks, front-end optimization and origin content acceleration provide a complete optimization solution that will deliver the ultimate customer experience and ensure that websites have the performance they need to maximize sales.n nBy Jerry Hall, Vice President of Marketing FastSoft, Inc.
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