So, what is a CDN? A CDN is an abbrieviation for “Content Delivery Network.”

A content delivery network is a series of servers designed to deliver your website content to your visitors as quickly as possible, regardless of where they are located. 

Using a CDN with a website is typically faster for everyone, but the biggest speed boost you will see is if you serve people who are very far away geographically from where your web server is.  So if your server is in Dallas, TX but you do a lot of business overseas, it may be a good idea to consider implementing a CDN on your website as it could dramatically increase the loading time of your site for many of your visitors. Think speed doesn’t matter? Consider this:

  • Kissmetrics found that 47% of consumers will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

  • A single second delay in a page response time can cause a 7% reduction in conversions.

Simply put, slow websites can be quite damaging to your business. However, with a CDN you don’t have to stress over a loss of speed. 

So how does a CDN work? When you opt to use a content delivery network on your site you are sharing your site content via a proxy server. As a result, your users-especially those who live well beyond your local area, can load content heavier content such as videos, images and Javascript quicker than if they were loading information directly from your local server.

Benefits of a Content Delivery Network

While for many companies, speed alone is a good reason to opt for a CDN, there are several other reasons you can benefit from this approach. Here are some additional reasons to opt for a CDN as part of your website.

Security

While any website is susceptible to bots, hackers, spammers and fake traffic, many CDNs include a wide area firewall (WAF) which will block attacks and keep them from affecting your server. In the event that malicious entities manage to take down a single server, the other servers will not be affected thus protecting your site and keeping it accessible to other users.

Save Money

If your goal is to reduce expenses while improving your site guests’ experience, then a CDN is a great way to do both. Thanks to CDNs like Stackpath and CloudFlare (the one’s used by Page Progressive) you can also minimize the cost of your web hosting. This is because the content delivery network’s design allows you to offload tasks and various resources thus lowering the amount of bandwidth you need. However, you typically have to pay for a CDN service.

Speed

As mentioned, a CDN ensures a user in another country gets the same website experience as one here in NC. But, just as important, for most websites having a content delivery network they find their websites see a 50% decrease in web page loading times thanks to a CDNs ability to reduce file sizes, optimize the infrastructure of the server so it responds to requests more quickly and reduces the amount of time needed for loading- no matter how far away it is from where content is stored to where it needs to be sent.

Dependability

Unfortunately, the internet is not foolproof. Servers crash, connections get disconnected, websites get bogged down-often unexpectedly- and any of these result in frustrated website guests. With a CDN, the amount of web traffic your site gets can be shared and dispersed so that no single server gets overloaded and stops working. With a CDN you will have a backup server that will reroute network congestion. In addition, a content delivery network offers redundancy so your website can stay up and running even in peak times.

The Bottom Line

By opting to have a CDN as part of your website, you are taking one more step towards pleasing and retaining your site guests and therefore your customers. Thanks to the consistent speed, security, and dependability of a website using a content delivery network you are taking a big step towards customer satisfaction.

Whether you are new to having a website, or have had one for years, it’s never too late to talk to the Page Progressive team about adding a CDN to your website. We will be happy to answer your questions and show you how a content delivery network can make a difference in how your website works. Contact us today.