|
| Latest
Web News |
Tax laws lag in virtual world
It's a digital 3D reconstruction of the world, it has
its own economy and currency, it's not tethered to any
legal jurisdiction, and some are prepared to consecrate
its electronic terrain with memorials to deceased relatives
and friends.
Addressing
the new net
The internet is not far away from running out of puff.
Nick Miller investigates the alternatives to give it new
life.
Digital
education campaign switched on
The Government has begun a new $20 million initiative
to help convince Australians to upgrade to digital television,
before analogue transmissions are switched off during
2010-2012.
Sydney
unis hold fire on Vista
Two of Sydney's largest universities have signalled they
will hold back on wide-scale adoption of Microsoft's Windows
Vista until the next-generation operating system matures.
New
professional body to represent IT execs
Two of Sydney's largest universities have signalled they
will hold back on wide-scale adoption of Microsoft's Windows
Vista until the next-generation operating system matures.
|
| Recent
WebProNews Articles |
Newspaper Sites Need More Video
To help with the transition from purely print-based operations to the online world, it has been suggested that newspapers need to have more than static text and images on their websites to keep the attention of their visitors.
Early Birds Should Sleep In Next Year
I might have mentioned the advantage of spending Black Friday online (or waiting for Cyber Monday) to certain crack-of-dawn-rising family members if not for the tryptophan coma my mother caused, and for the fact that it was 3 a.m. This Internet shopping thing, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, is catching on, even if this rise-and-shop ritual is still strongly in play.
Black Friday Cashes In Online
Although most people think of long lines of shoppers outside stores awaiting 5 a.m. openings and deeply discounted merchandise, the lines were just as impressive on the Internet.
Google Helps News Publishers With Sitemaps
An expressed desire for better indexing from Google News has prompted Google to release a Sitemaps product specifically for those news publishers.
Google Has Long Road To Hoe To Pass Yahoo
As GOOG climbs above $500 per share, as predicted to happen about this time last year before the great January plunge, questions as to just how high Google can get, in terms of stock, search share, and visits, get more intense. Last week, a Citigroup analyst predicted Google would overtake Yahoo in visits by the end of 2007. Hitwise disagrees.
ComScore: Google Leads Again In Search
The numbers reported for US search engine market share remained mostly unchanged from September to October 2006, with Americans doing 6.8 billion searches during the month.
Google's Click To Call Ripe For Abuse
Google
is testing a new service called Click-to-Call.
It allows users to be connected to businesses they are
searching for on the results page. When you click on a
business you then enter your phone number.
|
|
11.28.06
Effects
Of HTTP Acceleration / Compression
 By
Frederick Townes
There are plenty of reasons visitors convert and even
more reasons they don't. The site's layout, color choices,
word choices and call to action, button/anchor text, layout,
nomenclature and similar factors all have an impact on
a site's conversion rate. These are factors that you can
manage and control.
You can make changes, tweak and refine your site to limit
visitor attrition, but if your web host isn't helping,
all the tweaking in the world won't give you the nice
bump in conversions that you're looking for. If your host
doesn't partner with you for success, you'll never fully
position your site for optimized conversion rates.
The Impatience Index
The easier and more convenient your site is to access,
the more it will be accessed by visitors. However, in
this Digital Age, we've become impatient. Any perception
on the part of web users that time is being wasted will
hurt your bottom line. Call it The Impatience Index. There's
a direct correlation between download times and visitor
attrition.
The numbers speak for themselves. 84% of visitors will
sit through a 10-second download. The number drops to
54% with a 20-second download, and the stick-around rate
really tanks with a 30-second download. Only 5% of visitors
are willing to wait that long. You lose 79% of potential
visitors between 10 seconds and 30 seconds. Obviously,
the faster your site downloads, the more visitors you'll
have and the more visitors you have, the lower your site's
attrition rate.
HTTP Acceleration
Most web hosts don't want you to know about HTTP acceleration
or compression, as it's also known, because it would impact
their bottom lines.
HTTP acceleration improves site performance by delivering
pages faster to the user's computer screen. It does this
by compressing certain types of files before those files
are delivered to a visitor's browser, where the content
is then decompressed. In effect, HTTP acceleration takes
the "air" out of site pages before visitors ever see them.
And there's a lot of "air" in even the simplest web sites.
HTTP acceleration will compact almost any type of file.
HTML files, load between 65-85% faster. Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS files) have a faster delivery rate by 80-95%.
With XML and JavaScript, HTTP acceleration makes rich
applications (Web 2.0 apps) based on AJAX, JavaScript
and XML for example, even more responsive and moves them
closer to the goal of creating a desktop application-like
experience.
For purposes of illustration, let's say a home page uses
100kbs. When deflated (compressed), that 100kb page becomes
a 10kb page, increasing the speed at which it is delivered
to the user by a factor of 10. This leads to significantly
faster content downloads, enhancing the visitor's site
experience.
So, why don't web hosts want you to know about HTTP acceleration?
Because web hosts make a lot of money on transmission
costs - bandwidth. A 10kb home page will cost less to
transmit, use less bandwidth and generate less revenue
for the web host than the 100kbs uncompressed version
of the same page.
HTTP web site compression software is a server-side application,
meaning it's loaded on to a host's server. If your web
host doesn't employ the software, there's no way your
site is fully optimized for conversion.
"Smart" companies, like Google and its web
accelerator, are trying to resolve this problem by
downloading and caching pages before you visit them, but
this still doesn't solve the problem. It actually creates
another one because they are abusing networks in order
to give users a better experience. The fact is, it's the
responsibility of site owners (and their hosts) to ensure
that they're correctly and optimally enhancing the users'
on-site experience.
It seems clear to me that when you head over to the shopping
mall, it's each store's obligation to ensure that there's
room for you and that you don't have to wait in line.
Following Google's approach to solving the problem you're
either waiting in the food court for entry to the store,
stuck shopping for last years products or not allowed
entry into certain stores ever. As always websiteoptimization.com
has a thorough review on the matter.
Who Needs HTTP Acceleration?
Chances are you do.
Let's start with e-commercial sites. The ability to deliver
data faster, and with complete transparency, will make
site visitors happier. And a happy visitor is more likely
to make a purchase than one who just sat through an interminable
download. The Impatience Index, again.
On-line businesses, which use the web primarily as a billboard
or calling card, will also benefit from acceleration software
by presenting an up-to-date, thoroughly professional image
to visitors.
Businesses that employ LANs and WANs need HTTP acceleration
to lower transmission costs. The fact is, any web presence
will benefit from this server-side compression technology
- if they can find it.
Will HTTP Acceleration Work With My Site's Software?
The technology doesn't function as a separate application.
A quality web host will not only employ this widely-used
server software, it will also employ compression software
for the benefit of their clients. These are the web hosts
that recognize that their long-term success rest squarely
on your site's long-term success. After all, it's a lot
easier to keep a happy client than it is to find a new
one and a happy client is one who stays in business.
Are There Other Advantages to HTTP Acceleration?
There are several.
SSL (secure socket layer) or encrypted files are usually
slow to make their way to a visitor's computer screen
because they have to encrypted and unencrypted before
the visitor can view them. These two steps slow down the
delivery process, often by over 90% compared to unencrypted
files. However, with HTTP acceleration, the process of
conducting SSL file transfers increases both a site's
capacity and speed to deliver more files faster because
less data has to be encrypted
SSL files are compressed prior to encryption that means
less data actually has to go through the encryption process,
boosting delivery rate by up to 1000%.
Continue reading this article
About
the Author:
Frederick Townes is the owner of W3 EDGE Web Design. W3
EDGE specializes in custom
web design solutions that are built to convert your
traffic into conversions. For more information you can
view their portfolio
or read more of Frederick’s web
design articles. |
|
