if starbucks used instart logic, they would have a faster responsive website
TRANSCRIPT
IF STARBUCKS USED INSTART
LOGIC, THEY WOULD HAVE A
FASTER RESPONSIVE WEBSITE
BY PETER BLUM
This is another in an ongoing series of blog posts where we take a look at the benefits
of using the Instart Logic service with popular web properties. In this installment we take
a look at the world’s largest coffee chain — Starbucks.
Starbucks has built a great-looking responsive website with lots of enticing images to
get you thinking about heading down the street to pick up a caramel mocha with a
double shot and extra whip. And being responsive, it adapts the presentation of web
pages depending on the capabilities of the device. So I thought it would be an
interesting site to look at through our system.
For this test I picked out the Coffees by Roast page and found that by using the Instart
Logic service, we could give them a big boost in page load performance. Using a fast
3G connection to show a common mobile connection, we see a performance increase
by 3 full seconds (the length of time it takes to order a cinnamon dolce frappuccino).
Keep reading for the details of the test and to learn a little more about how the Instart
Logic service is able to deliver this level of performance.
The HTML for the site is delivered directly from
origin web servers in Seattle, and the various
images are hosted on Akamai. Like many sites,
Starbucks has a lot of third-party JavaScript
coming from a bunch of different places.
WHAT STARBUCKS.COM
USES TODAY FOR WEB
DELIVERY
MEASUREMENT 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 service and then without our
service.
We used our Image Streaming technology for this test along with our Global Network Accelerator. I did some work with our
Image Resize service as well to see what we could do to help with Starbucks’ particular responsive website approach.
Image Streaming allows our service to paint the images on the page in two passes. The first pass in this case will send
around 50% of the image data up front and then our intelligent JavaScript client, Nanovisor.js, will request the remaining
data after the onload event to do a second paint, bringing the images to full fidelity.
The Global Network Accelerator uses network acceleration and data compression to increase the speed of dynamic HTML
delivery and to compress elements such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript during the delivery process to reduce total data
transfer.
When we delivered the Starbucks.com site through our service, we replaced the use of a legacy CDN like Akamai and
enhanced the elements that Starbucks currently delivers from its own web servers. One of the great things about our
service is that it does not require any changes to the website or web application. New customers need only a few minutes
to switch some DNS entries and they can start using Instart Logic’s service.
INSTART LOGIC FEATURES USED
The major factor in the principal test page is the amount of data transfer required before Document
Complete. They do have a fair amount of third-party JavaScript, but it was less of a factor here. We are
doing a number of things here to reduce the upfront data transfer. The first is fairly basic — compressing all
the text assets as they pass through our systems. In this case Starbucks is sending a number of items
uncompressed, probably to reduce load on their backend servers.
You can at a glance see here in the performance waterfalls the longer blue bars, which represent network
transfer time. The bars are shorter for these text assets since Instart Logic will compress them. This is
something Starbucks’ IT team could do on their own.
RESULTS DISCUSSION
Time and bytes to Document Complete
Existing Waterfall
Waterfall with Instart Logic
The second thing we are doing — which is not something Starbucks or traditional web delivery systems like Akamai
can do — is using our Image Streaming technology. This allows us to take a bigger image and fragment it into two
smaller parts. We send the first layer to paint the webpage quickly for the user, and then the client-side component of
our service requests and then displays the second overlay very soon after the first display of the page (which is
represented by the Document Complete metric).
If you look at the table below, you can see the difference in the Document Complete times and the number of bytes
transferred at that point. The key takeaway here is that, to get to precisely the same result in terms of the page
delivered to the browser, Instart Logic sends 40 percent less data and cuts the time by one-third.
Instart Logic Starbucks/Akamai
Document Complete 6.48 seconds Document Complete 9.42 seconds
Bytes Downloaded 802 KB Bytes Downloaded 1,384 KB
This is a side by side video on a laptop showing that the difference is
apparent even with a faster network connection:
TAKE A LOOK AT VIDEO PROOF
In addition to the Image Streaming technology, our service also has a new on-demand image resizing capability that can
help responsive websites deliver the right image to the right device. The Starbucks site, like most responsive websites,
sends large images meant for desktops to mobile devices. Our service can identify that the endpoint is an iPhone or other
mobile device, and then appropriately size the images for each target device.
SENDING THE RIGHT IMAGES TO THE RIGHT DEVICE
We extended the experiment to look at
further reducing the image transfer to an
iPhone.
You can see from this main image that we
can right-size the image and dramatically
reduce the overall data transfer.
When you do this across all the images and add in the Image Streaming and
compression benefits cited above, the byte reduction brings the Bytes Downloaded
to about half that of the original image size:
Instart Logic Starbucks/Akamai
Bytes Downloaded 738 KB Bytes Downloaded 1,459 KB
(Note that the bytes downloaded for the page differs from the one in the earlier
table. The difference is in the fact that the site is responsive and so sends down
different content for the iPhone.)
We can see that for the Starbucks site, the Instart Logic service can
deliver major improvements in performance and, as a result, the end
user experience. Since they have a responsive website, Starbucks
can use our image resizing capabilities to deliver the right image to the
right device, further increasing performance.
CONCLUSION
Full webpagetest.org reports
For those who 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 Starbucks/Akamai