JD Williams optimises web performance
By Retail Technology | Friday April 11 2014
Fashion retailer uses web performance optimisation technology to cut website load times by up to 25% and enhance customer experience
Home shopping retailer JD Williams has recently deployed new load balancing technology to cut page load times for its website by over 25%.
The Manchester-based online and catalogue retailer operates 28 branded websites served over desktop, tablet and mobile devices. It recognised growing challenges from new tablet and smartphone devices and the need to deliver a richer multichannel experience to its customers.
The requirement to deliver larger images through smaller communication links provided a driver to improve customer experience by reducing page response times.
Maximising conversion rates
“Engagement and conversion rates are affected by the speed in which a website responds to the customer. As content gets more complex the technical challenge increases and website performance degrades. If we can’t serve up a page quick enough, our chance to convert a browser to a buyer diminishes rapidly,” said Neil McGowan, IT director for JD Williams.
“With web page load times increasing to around five seconds, we were interested in finding a solution to address this problem.”
JD Williams also investigated mobile acceleration, as the volume of visitors using mobile devices and tablets to access websites is now approximately 40%.
As part of this work the company identified a major improvement that could be made by deploying front end optimisation (FEO) technology.
After evaluating a number of vendors, JD Williams selected load balancing and distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) protection technology provider Radware based on its knowledge and experience with FEO solutions.
Ensuring performance predictability
The company worked with Radware to implement a solution that reduced the number of server requests per page and response payload, which shaved over two seconds off its page load times.
Using its out-of-the-box products, JD Williams is able to ensure performance predictability and high application service level agreements (SLA) at all times.
It is also able to reduce the number of server requests per page and response payload, which in turn enables higher conversion rates, more revenues and increased customer satisfaction.
“This is great technology which has enabled us to deliver top quartile website response time performance, for media rich web applications accessed through smartphones and tablets,” added McGowan.
