CCBill Acts on Worldwide Performance Study
Company taking steps with content delivery network to lessen form-download times.
By: Sherri L. Shaulis
Posted: 02/11/2008
TEMPE, Ariz.
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CCBill has released the results of a
worldwide performance study conducted after years of clients' complaints about
intermittent connectivity, and announced plans to act on the results.
The problems, the company
said, sometimes led to reduced sales and resulted in some clients canceling
their memberships.
"When our policy-review
department would then test those sites from our main offices, as well as view
them from other locations around the globe, we would discover major performance
differences from certain locations during certain peak times," Mark Greenspan,
CCBill's vice president of risk management, said in a news release.
The study, which shows when
those times and where those locations are and maps them out against areas with
relatively easy access to the Internet and the ability to pay for products
online, found that qualified customers were unable to join sites up to 35
percent of the time because of connectivity issues.
"As a result of this
information, some months ago, we installed all of our sign-up forms onto a content
delivery network (a global network of servers that enable content to be loaded
from the closest or fastest "node" to the user), which resulted in an overall
23 percent increase in form-load times, most notably in Western Europe,"
Greenspan said.
Now, he said, CCBill is ready
to encourage use of content delivery networks across its client base in an
effort to help customers maximize their sites' performance and avoid wasting opportunities
for sales and member retention.
"Every major (mainstream) U.S.
website uses content delivery in some form or other, and as the pricing for
content delivery is generally the same as regular bandwidth pricing and it
requires no additional hardware, there is really no downside to using these
systems," Greenspan said.
Content delivery network
providers that have the technology to support protected member content, as well
as Flash and Windows Media streaming technology, are Cavecreek, which is
offering a free two-week trial; Natnet; Mojohost; and Limelight, which does not
accept adult content.
