As technology evolves, internet users are becoming more and more aware of website performance. Broadband has had a major effect on this because the average internet user has access to increasingly faster ISP solutions. When dial up was in the mainstream, companies didn’t have to worry so much about bottlenecks because the demand on webservers was tiny compared to what they are today. The fact is, if your website is slow to load, you will lose customers because it’s an unfortunate truth that internet consumers are very impatient. In 2011, a UK survey of more than 1500 web users found that:
- 71% of respondents say they are regularly inconvenienced by slow websites.
- Half believe that websites either have not improved in speed or have become slower over the past five years.
- 42% of Men and 35% of women have decided not to use a company again as a result of experiencing a slow website.
It’s commonly known that online shoppers demand a page load time of 3-seconds or lower and it’s something we’ve known here at Mydeo for some time. If you pay for a fast broadband connection, you expect fast website load times. 3 seconds may sound low but when have you ever gone to a website just to look at the home page? Typically, you’ll need to navigate through searching options or menus to get to where you need. If each page takes 3 second or more to load, there’s a good chance you’ll get tired of the experience and try elsewhere.
In the same report, the top 20 online retailers were compared for page load times and the results showed that Shop Direct, Tesco and Staples had page load times of 1.69, 1.72 and 1.80 seconds respectively. At the bottom of the list was Comet.co.uk who had a page load time of 11.29 seconds – I wonder how Comet are doing? This article is not trying to suggest that if your website is slow, you will go out of business but these report findings do suggest that a slow website will have a negative impact on your company image.
The next part of this article is about how Mydeo can help to prevent slow websites but before we can find a solution, we need to understand the problem. A webpage is made up of many different assets all working together to produce the final product. Whether we’re talking about pictures or css files, each resource does one particular job on that page and each of these assets has to be requested from wherever it’s being stored. All of these requests added together will give you your overall page load time. A webserver is the most common method for delivering resources over the internet and is great for certain jobs but not others. For instance, if you were to put everything on your webserver including pictures, css files, java script files, videos etc. That little webserver has a hell of a lot of work to do when that webpage is requested. Basically, you would be bottlenecking its connection so when multiple users request the page at once, the overall experience is a very slow one at best. Usually, webservers that come under extreme load will crash and your website will subsequently go down. Mydeo receives many requests from companies seeking help with their websites due to experiencing webserver crashes. Your online presence is crucial so I don’t have to tell you how bad it is for your site to go offline…
To prevent the above from happening, it’s a good idea to take some of that load off your webserver and you can do this by integrating a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN is a purpose built global network of super-fast distribution servers which are geared towards handling large amounts of content all at once. By allowing a CDN to deliver your major page assets, your webserver is relieved from that heavy load preventing downtime and slow load times. The other great thing about using a CDN is that the network caches copies of your assets wherever it goes in the world so when foreign users request your website, most of assets are delivered locally which results in a better website experience globally. Content stored on webservers would have to make the long trip each time your site is requested which again is bad news for page load times…
Integrating a CDN doesn’t have to be expensive, Mydeo offer fantastic entry level pricing and buy bulk from one of the largest CDNs in the world, Limelight Networks. By doing this, Mydeo can pass the savings directly onto the consumer but at the same time, they get to utilise some the best CDN solutions in the industry which the likes of Netflix, Coca-Cola and Disney all use.
There’s no need to be the victim of website crashes and slow page load times, contact Mydeo and we will get you started on a 15 day trial which will prove to you the worth of incorporating a global CDN into your company.
Contact us on: +44 208 530 2300 or by email: help@mydeo.com.
