A Second in the Life of a Web Request

Welcome back!

When an end user out in the real world points their browser to your website, the next 1-3 seconds are crucial.

According to research, 40% of consumers abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load—79% are unlikely to return if they are dissatisfied with performance. That’s a lot of business, and revenue, on the line. Often, websites may appear slow to some users due to external factors beyond your control, such as the user having a poor connection to the Internet. Still, there are a number of best practices that you should be aware of to help provide your users with the best user experience they can achieve.

We deliver our ADC as a service to our customers. As such, we sit in the data path, between your website and the Internet, reducing load, improving security, optimizing content and resolving any issues before they cause a disruption in the user experience. All of the tools provided by our service have a part to play in improving the user experience for our customers. We do a lot to make sure that each end user request to your online store is delivered quickly and correctly for the best end user experience possible.

Want to know what happens under the hood to serve up a web request? Take a minute to watch the below video, where I walk through the life a web request starting from the browser that makes the request, all the way to the application server that serves it up. I try to provide you with a basic understanding of all of the services that come together to deliver a web request without diving too deep.

Managing the request is step one. Next time, we’ll look at our automated content optimization techniques as we dive further into the technologies and processes Webscale employs to make your website always fast, no matter what.