Strangeloop president Joshua Bixby
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web content optimization solutions provider Strangeloop (www.strangeloopnetworks.com) recently released its Mobile Site Optimizer, which is the industry’s first website acceleration solution designed from the ground up to meet the specific needs of mobile users.
Currently in beta, Mobile Site Optimizer is set to officially launch in the fourth quarter this year. Strangeloop is also the first to offer advanced site optimization via the cloud, as well as the first to integrate Google’s SPDY protocol into its products.
The company already has an impressive roster of clients including eBay, PayPal, Visa, PETCO, and Travelocity.
These companies all use Strangeloop’s advanced optimization solutions to accelerate their websites and enterprise applications to boost their online revenue, conversions, page views, customer retention, and Google search ranking.
In an email interview, Strangeloop president Joshua Bixby previews the upcoming Mobile Site Optimizer solution and details how content providers are able to offer optimization solutions to their customers.
WHIR: What made Strangeloop decide to develop and offer the Mobile Site Optimizer?
Joshua Bixby: We came up with the idea for Mobile Site Optimizer after working with key customers who are starting to see a significant growth in their mobile traffic. They wanted an easy turnkey solution, like our desktop Site Optimizer, to deliver a faster user experience for mobile visitors. But mobile presents some tough challenges. For starters, handheld devices simply don’t have the same horsepower as even a basic desktop computer. Mobile browsers have serious limitations, as well. We’re also dealing with severe bandwidth and network limitations. The upshot of all this is that sites can take three or four times longer to load on your phone. At the same time, mobile users expect sites to be as fast on their phones as they are on their home computers. We realized early on that we couldn’t just slap a new label on our existing Site Optimizer. We needed to develop a new solution from the ground up – one that speaks to the unique challenges of mobile environments.
WHIR: How does it work?
JB: Described in the simplest terms, Mobile Site Optimizer intercepts code generated by a website’s servers and translates it into the most efficient, effective language for the mobile browser reading it, without changing the design of the site. Mobile Site Optimizer goes about doing this in a few different ways. It applies a handful of core optimization best practices – like Consolidation and Compression – to reduce the overall page size and the number of round trips between the browser and the host servers. It also applies eleven advanced techniques that we’ve developed in-house. For example, we have a treatment called Mobile SuperCache that leverages an HTML5 feature called Local Storage to create a mobile browser cache that is comparable to a desktop cache.
We have another treatment called Dynamic Payload Decision Making, which recognizes if a user is visiting via Wifi or 3G/4G and customizes site optimizations so that they don’t consume unnecessary data. I could go on, but you get the gist. Each treatment fixes a problem that is unique to mobile environments. Mobile Site Optimizer doesn’t just apply a bunch of treatments to your pages and walk away. It looks at your site’s overall traffic patterns and sees how all the pages in a visitor’s navigation path relate to one another, and it constantly looks for opportunities to make those paths even more efficient. And if your code changes, which is the case constantly for dynamic sites, Mobile Site Optimizer adapts in real time to keep your site running as fast as possible.
WHIR: What is the partnership arrangement with hosting providers?
JB: Right now, we don’t have any hosting providers as partners. We do have a great partner program [LINK: http://www.strangeloopnetworks.com/partners/partners-overview/], and our partners include companies like Akamai, Level 3, and Exceda.
WHIR: Will it be bundled in with their existing packages, or will they offer it as an add-on product?
JB: Our service is bundled into Akamai and Level 3′s advanced CDN offerings.
WHIR: How are they installing the service?
JB: They are using our physical appliances or virtual appliances.
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