Speed merchants are out in front in the race for internationalisation

Speed merchants are out in front in the race for internationalisation

Any travel firm that operates internationally must make sure that their websites are operating at the maximum possible efficiency.

Pictured: David McNeil at the Travolution Summit

Any travel firm that operates internationally must make sure that their websites are operating at the maximum possible efficiency.

David McNeil, solution engineer at CDNetworks, told a Travolution Summit workshop said website speed is a vitally important factor.

Research by Microsoft Bing has shown a three second page load time reduces customer satisfaction by 50%.

Speeds one second below the average sees a 3% drop in sales and a five second load time leads to a 50% decrease in the number of page views.

McNeil said reducing the physical distance information has to travel is vital to increase website speeds.

“The end result is it should not matter where your customers are coming from, they should all have the same experience on your site,” he said.

As well as customer experience issues poor load times could also impact on third party web analytics meaning firms are paying for a service they can’t use.

“Speed is important both for the user but also for your business and business intelligence,” McNeil said.

And advertising partners can have issues if certain site elements they have paid to be present on don’t load before the customer leaves.

CDNetworks distinguishes between static content like photos and descriptions and dynamic content like customer information and anything that changes like prices.

It can accelerate the delivery of both of these due to the local presence it has in 169 locations globally.

McNeil said China has particular issues due to the “Great Chinese Firewall” and the fragmented nature of its ISPs. Here eight to 10 second page load are considered good.

Security is also a growing issue and CDNetworks says it can identify bad or malicious bot traffic as opposed to normal behaviour and intercept it before it impacts site performance.

“We want to make sure users can come back again and again to a service they like to use and they trust,” said McNeil.