Why eCommerce sites need low latency CDN?

So you have launched an eCommerce store and have ordered services of a decent hosting provider. Shoppers are satisfied with your goods, social media praises you store, and everything seems to be perfect. Why would one need a CDN then?

Purchasers are highly demanding. If in 1999, people were ready to wait 8 seconds for a website to load, today, their patience allows waiting for 3 seconds only. So if your website is too slow, you can lose up to 79% of potential shoppers who would not return to make a purchase. Furthermore, about 40% of them will tell a friend they had negative online experience. Thus, low latency CDN is crucial as Internet users are very demanding (Read about speed importance in 2017: https://www.spacecdn.com/blog/content-delivery-network/the-importance-of-page-load-speed-in-2017/).

Another problem users have is slow speed when using mobile devices. This is why eCommerce websites should use responsive design and do their best to boost web performance. 73% of mobile users claim that websites are slow, and 38% reckon that there are sites totally unavailable via mobile devices.

Accessibility has become very important for online stores, because half of content goes from mobile devices. In situations when bandwidth is limited, low latency CDN becomes crucial for user experience: it improves the speed of website, no matter what gadget is used. That particularly concerns emerging markets where access outside the country is poor, and PoPs can improve the situation.

Statistics show that eCommerce sites with daily revenue of $100.000 per day may lose up to $2.5 mln in a year, if they have 1 second delay in loading. On the contrary, even 0,1 second improvement in loading can increase revenue by 1%. Thus, low latency CDN is very important for developing eCommerce sites. Using it, you boost speed, improve customer experience and maximize revenue paying just a few dollars a month.

Why PoP count is not always crucial for CDN?

The choice of CDN depends on many factors, and the number of PoPs is one of them. Being the link between users and CDN, PoPs are located in mission-critical places to bring content to users effectively. Quite often, companies regard the number of PoPs as indicator of hosting quality. But while PoP itself makes up for faster loading, its excess is also no good.

When the more PoPs is the better?

Being the link between users and content, PoPs reduce the distance, make up for load balancing and better redundancy. As a rule, a large number of PoPs is beneficial for companies that want to reach global coverage and host bandwidth-intensive files like videos. If you are going to expand your presence in new regions, choose CDNs that offers PoPs there. This way, content won’t have to travel too long

When More PoPs Doesn’t Matter?

Not every company needs an expensive CDN with hundreds of PoPs and customization options. If you need presence in a few regions, you only need to choose a network that has points of presence in these very regions. The closer to visitors – the better. Extra PoPs in regions you don’t serve won’t make the difference. A third party CDN, or their combination will be a cost-effective and reliable option.

These two factors should be taken into account when evaluating CDN infrastructure. What matters is the relation to users, not the number of PoPs.

Cash and cache issues

Prior to ordering a CDN, make sure that it features PoPs only where you need. In most cases, users overpay for extra servers, because providers usually have them everywhere. Find a CDN solution that is relevant to your target audience. This way, you will make sure that every dollar spend is worth: you build up a reliable and effective network that works for YOUR company.

Most CDNs are tailored to deliver static files, while dynamic content is hard to cache, so users are often redirected to the origin server. That limits the advantages of CDN and causes waste of efforts when CDN always tries to replicate data over PoPs. Therefore, if you have need acceleration of dynamic content delivery, choose CDN solutions created especially for that.

Read more about CDN and PoPs: https://www.jodihost.com/blog/news/is-the-number-of-pops-in-cdn-is-so-important/

When should I move from shared hosting to dedicated server?

Most sites and blogs are hosted on shared hosting servers: it becomes the first step in their development. But while shared hosting is less costly, easy to set up and provides some great features, it has a lot of limitations. While your business is growing, hosting plan should also grow with it to meet all demands. How can one know that it’s high time to move hosting to the next level? 

There are several signs that the move from shared hosting is inevitable:

1. Your website deals with high traffic pretty often

If your website traffic volume constantly increases, present shared hosting plan may be not enough to sustain it, and you should switch to a VPS or a dedicated server. It will provide you with sufficient amount of resources and bandwidth.

2. Your website’s load time increases

Shared hosting distributes resources over several websites, and when one of them starts demanding extra bandwidths, other websites start run slower, or even crash. If you have noticed downtime on your website, it’s time to get independent from your neighbors. Besides, if it takes much time to load for a website with several plugins that make several PHP and SQL database requests, it’s time to switch and maintain your server environment.

3. You need more security

Although shared hosting servers are protected with firewalls and other security applications, the risk appears because of other users. If one website causes vulnerability, other websites on the server can be hacked, as well.

With VPS and dedicated server, your site is separated from the others. You get your own IP address and mail server, so your projects won’t be blacklisted, and email letters won’t be marked as spam because of others’ actions.

4. Your project requires more resources

When using shared hosting, all available resources like bandwidth, CPU, memory, and disk space are shared among sites not equally. If some websites consume extra traffic and bandwidth, it will affect your usage limits. With dedicated server hosting, you will get a defined amount of resources in your virtual environment. Besides, VPS and dedicated servers provide far more disk space, bandwidth and more scalability, so you can define certain amount of bandwidth and change it.

5. You want overall control

If you need more control over web hosting account and the opportunity to install any software, to manage cPanel accounts and setting permissions, the switch to a VPS or a dedicated server is necessity.

Now when you’ve made a decision, you only need to find a suitable provider who has the desired product and configuration. To choose between VPS and dedicated servers, read this article: https://inxyhost.com/blog/5-reasons-to-upgrade-from-vps-to-a-dedicated-server

Technologies that will become popular in 2017

After discussing information technology trends in 2017, many specialists agree that artificial intelligence is one of the most actively evolving spheres. Find out why, and what IT directions are as relevant in 2017 as never.

AI(artificial intelligence)

As many other technologies, artificial intelligence can be implemented in a large number of spheres starting from automation of manufacturing finishing by self-driving cars. IoT devices use it, as well. AL is the future of our work, because it makes up for automation of processes around saving time and efforts. Probably, smart agents with AI will soon replace mobile applications and behavioral algorithms. A self-learning app may serve as personal assistant. However, rapid development of AI can lead to job loss, too.

Specialists also claim that in some cases AI is just a refresh of an old product and a marketing hype. For instance, you don’t need a toaster with Internet connection and self-learning when a usual $30 model will be enough. Another debatable issue is security: when all personal devices, homes and cars get technical, you can’t really feel safe. Anyway, machine learning can accelerate the development of AI, making robots and devices learn on their own.

New mobile competitors

The market of smartphones can become different with new players emerging. A lot of Chinese smartphone producers offer top-notch quality products, and HP Elite x3 and the Kodak Ektra have recently caught attention of publicity.

Blockchain

Blockchain technology has caused a lot of buzz. This is a secure transaction tracking technology that can be used in many industries, not financial services. If it expands the presence to cover all transactions, it may become the new standard of purchases.

Hyperconvergence

Hyperconvergence is another sphere that grows considerably: it is predicted that this market will double every year in the future. Security is one of the main features today, and not for the reason of hacking and DDoS attacks. What companies focus on is control over pipes and content, as well as storage options (that are likely to become cheaper).

CDN

 Again, security makes companies implement this technology. While accelerating websites, content delivery networks make up for higher safety and provide DDoS protection on layer level. Besides, load balancing protects the origin server from break. More info about the benefits of CDN is here: https://inxy.hosting/blog/why-you-should-start-using-cdn-right-now