If Amazon Used Web Application Streaming They Could Drive 9% more revenue

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IF AMAZON USED WEB APPLICATION STREAMING THEY
COULD DRIVE 9 MORE REVENUE
BY PETER BLUM
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This is the first in an ongoing series where we
take a look at the benefits of using the Instart
Logic Web Application Streaming Network with
popular web properties. We are starting with one
of the giants in e-commerce who we know is
already fanatical about web performance
Amazon.com. According to Amazons own numbers,
every 100ms of improvement can increase revenue
by 1. Amazon knows performance matters, and as
a result are already following current web
performance best practices. As you will see,
though, Web Application Streaming provides an
impressive boost on top of all that.
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For this test we looked at Amazons Parent's
Resource Center page and found that Web
Application Streaming could give them a big boost
in page load performance, shaving almost a full
second off their page load time without any work
on their part. Using their research, that would
translate into a potential 9 bump in revenue.
Keep reading on for the details of the test and
to find out a little more about how Web
Application Streaming can deliver this level of
performance. WHAT AMAZON USES TODAY FOR WEB
DELIVERY As you would expect, they are using the
Amazon CloudFront CDN, but to our surprise they
also use the Akamai CDN for one of the main
domains hosting images, JavaScript, and CSS.
(Enter the Linux command dig z-ecx.images-amazon.c
om in a terminal and see for yourself). MEASUREM
ENT TOOLS WE USED We used one of our favorite
free web performance tools, Webpagetest. It uses
real instrumented browsers to load up web pages,
which in this case ran through our Web
Application Streaming service and directly to
Amazon.com.
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INSTART LOGIC WEB APPLICATION STREAMING FEATURES
USED We used both our Image Streaming and HTML
Streaming technologies in this test. HTML
Streaming allows our service to instantly send
non-unique HTML from servers closest to the end
users, allowing the web browser to start working
while the Amazon.com backend is still generating
the user specific HTML. Image Streaming allows
our service to paint the images on the page in
multiple passes. The first pass in this case will
send 60 of the image data up front and then
immediately request the remaining 40 after the
onload event to do a second paint, bringing the
images to full fidelity. When we delivered the
page through our service, we entirely replaced
the use of legacy CDNs like those from Akamai or
Amazon AWS with our Web Application Streaming
Network. It uses the worlds first client-cloud
web delivery system with application intelligence
to reduce website load times and dramatically
improve end user experience.
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RESULTS DISCUSSION TIME TO FIRST BYTE (TTFB) AND
DOMCONTENTLOADED IMPROVEMENTS The first thing
you will notice is that the time before the
browser gets the first data is reduced by over
4x, from close to 600 milliseconds to less than
150 milliseconds. Thats due to our HTML
Streaming technology. Having already seen this
page load for other users, we can immediately
send portions of the non-unique HTML up front
while asking the Amazon backend to generate the
user-specific HTML. This allows the browser to
start working right away, downloading components
for the page. By looking at the DomContentLoaded
metrics, you can also see that the browser is
able to parse the HTML much faster the time
drops from 1.4 seconds to 900 milliseconds. If
you are used to looking at web performance
waterfalls (see below) you can see here the first
part of the page going through the Instart Logic
service. Notice that the assets start downloading
before the HTML is fully delivered and that the
pink line indicating DomContentLoaded occurs much
sooner.
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Instart Logic Performance Waterfall
Amazon/Akamai Performance Waterfall
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DOCUMENT COMPLETE AND VISUALLY COMPLETE
IMPROVEMENTS The next thing to look at is the
improvements to document complete and visually
complete, which equate to when the page displays
for the end user. With Instart Logic we see an
almost 25 improvement to document complete and
an almost 1 full second improvement to visual
complete of the page. Instart Logic
Amazon/Akamai Document Complete 2.4 seconds
Document Complete 3.1 seconds Visually Complete
3.2 seconds Visually Complete 4.1 seconds This
improvement is a mixture of HTML Streaming and
Image Streaming working together. HTML Streaming
allows the browser to start working sooner and
Image Streaming allows a much faster time to
display, as it uses a dual paint approach vs.
waiting for all of the image bytes in a single
paint of the screen. In this case you can see
that by sending the image data in two passes, we
can render the page for the user much faster, but
still deliver a full fidelity experience. Below
is an example of what the first 60 of the image
quality looks like and also the full 100. With
both approaches you end up with 100 of the image
fidelity, but using Image Streaming allows the
page to be displayed to the end user after only a
portion of the data has been downloaded.
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Second Paint Pass adds the remaining 40 of
image data
First Paint Pass 60 of image data
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• CONCLUSION
• We can see that even for a website where web
  performance is already a key focus, Web
  Application Streaming from Instart Logic can
  deliver further increases in performance and a
  much improved end user experience. Amazon
  themselves have been great at sharing their own
  data which found that even a 100ms speed-up can
  increase revenue by 1. In this case we shaved 9x
  that time from an already heavily
  performance-optimized page, so that would amount
  to 9 more revenue if they start using our
  technology.
• FULL WEBPAGETEST.ORG REPORTS
• For those that love looking at waterfalls and are
  familiar with webpagetest, we have saved the
  reports at the links below.
• Page loaded via Instart Logic
• Page loaded via Amazon/Akamai Google