iDGARAGES is an online service for comparing and booking garages. For this website, which experiences a sharp spike in traffic during the summer, the aim was to improve both the user experience and its organic search rankings.
A fast website for both users and search engine bots
iDGARAGES wanted to reduce its Speed Index by 45 per cent to improve both user experience (UX) and SEO. Why? Firstly, because page loading speed is users’ top priority when it comes to user experience (UX), particularly on mobile devices; and secondly, because a fast website makes it easier for search engine crawlers to index a greater number of pages. As 80 per cent of iDGARAGES’ traffic comes from Google, SEO was therefore a major priority. And given that loading times are one of the criteria taken into account for ranking, it’s in their best interests to do everything they can to climb as high as possible in the SERPs! Furthermore, the platform operates using numerous APIs linked to a Drupal front end, and delivers predominantly dynamic content: depending on geographical location, vehicle model, and so on. But how, then, can we optimise the site despite such a high degree of content personalisation? How can you cater for the growing use of mobile devices and maintain performance regardless of the
device? How can you handle traffic spikes when traffic can almost double at certain times? And finally, how can you sustainably improve your loading times without having dedicated in-house resources?
Measuring the impact of web performance optimisations
iDGARAGES turned to Fasterize to make browsing smoother, particularly on mobile – especially as 70 per cent of users discover the platform via this device. During the testing phase, iDGARAGES appreciated both the support provided by the dedicated Customer Success Engineer and the high degree of autonomy offered by Fasterize: each optimisation can be enabled and disabled individually to observe the effects on loading times. Once the correct settings had been defined and validated, the roll-out took just four weeks, with results visible immediately – as evidenced by the alert triggered by Netvigie, which iDGARAGES uses to monitor its platform’s availability (teaser: you’ll find out more by reading the case study ;)). Here are
a few figures by way of example: the Speed Index and Start Render times fell by 37 per cent and 43 per cent respectively on mobile.
To find out more about the impact of web performance optimisations,
Fasterize’s support, and the UX and SEO improvements:
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