A CDN is a Content Delivery Network – a global network of servers that work together to supply ultra-fast delivery of Internet content – such as webpages, JavaScript files, stylesheets, images, and videos. The popularity of CDN services continues to grow, and today most of the web traffic is served through CDNs, including traffic from major sites like Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon.
When people try to access content via the Internet, a CDN makes sure they get it delivered from servers nearest to them, so it arrives faster.
For example, Jane and Chris both watch your latest viral video on your website. For this scenario, let us say your current hosting provider is based in France. Jane’s video is delivered from a datacentre in London because that is where she lives. Chris’s video is delivered from a datacentre in San Francisco because that is where he lives. By distributing content closer to website visitors by using a nearby CDN server, regardless of location, visitors experience faster page loading times.
Although the benefits of using a CDN vary depending on the size and needs of a website, the primary benefits for most users can be broken down into 4 advantages:
The Benefits of a CDN
1 – CDN Improves Website Performance
With a CDN, web pages load faster. This is because a CDN puts your content closer to your users, your website visitors, your customers, and your potential customers. As visitors are more inclined to click away from a slow-loading site, a CDN can reduce bounce rates and increase the amount of time people spend on a website.
With improved performance comes improved user experience. Research shows that 57% of online consumers will leave a website if that site takes more than 3 seconds to load. Amazon has even said for every 100-millisecond improvement in speed, their sales increase by 1%. CDN improves the User Experience, which means fewer website visitors leave, more visitors stay, and more of them come back.
2 – CDN Improves SEO Rankings
By improving load speeds and performance, a CDN helps to rank your website higher in Google and other search engines.
Google is increasingly putting the user experience first. Everybody wants their website to appear at the top of search results, and the speed at which your pages load is an important factor in that.
3 – CDN Makes Your Website More Reliable
With a CDN, your website is much less likely to fail because of spikes in traffic, or an outage.
If you are not using a CDN, every visitor loads content from your web server. If you get a sudden spike in website traffic – for example, because you are in the news, or launch a wildly successful new product or promotion – it can easily overload that server. When you use a CDN, your visitors can access your content from every server in the network. Ideally that is the closest server, but if the closest server fails or is unreachable, they will be routed to the next closest, and so on. CDN means you can handle more traffic. It adds redundancy to your website and improves reliability.
4 – CDN Reduces Web Hosting Costs
A CDN reduces the load on your web server and helps reduces hosting bandwidth costs. You will also need less hosted infrastructure, because your CDN will handle your content assets, not your web host.
How Much Is a CDN?
We recommend Cloudflare. Cloudflare is a popular content delivery service that combines novice-friendly ease of use with expert-level features and functionality. Setup is simple, with no need to edit your code. Just update your DNS nameservers to use Cloudflare and the service kicks in automatically, caching content and serving it to visitors from their nearest location.
Cloudflare’s free plan allows you to see what the service can do, without making any commitments. It is very usable, with unlimited bandwidth and no annoying restrictions to try and force you to upgrade. Upgrading to the Pro plan costs a reasonable £16 a month, and adds the image optimization rules, extra configurability, and improved support.
Conclusion
For more information on how CDNs can help you, please contact us. We are a multidisciplinary digital marketing agency based in Wrexham offering website design, development, marketing, hosting and much more. Our team can help you find the perfect solution to all your online needs.
