There are many reasons why website owners should consider using a content delivery network in conjunction with their website. They are becoming more popular for business owners and digital agencies alike but are still largely underutilised in the industry.
What is a Content Delivery Network?
A content delivery network, or CDN, is a group of servers that are interconnected which quickly transfer assets needed for loading webpage content (such as JavaScript files, images, CSS and videos).
In short, it helps websites load faster.
When a user visits a website, the data which needs to be loaded on the site has to come from a server where it’s hosted, and then has to travel across the internet back to the users’ computer. If the user is located far away from that server, it generally takes longer to load large files (such as bigger images or videos).
Ensuring local web hosting near where your primary audience is located helps with this, but a CDN goes a step further by storing the website content on servers geographically closer to the end user, and thus makes a webpage load even faster for them.
A quick history of CDNs
Content Delivery Networks were first built in the late 1990s, and these are actually still responsive for up to a quarter of global internet traffic. The first generation of CDNs simply focused on static and dynamic content delivery which, back then, were the only 2 types of web content.
With the rising of streaming video and audio content, the second generation of CDNs came about, which also were necessary in delivering content to mobile devices.
The third generation of CDNs are continuing to evolve. Most web services today are centralised in the cloud, so the priorities are on managing bandwidth consumption, and ensuring quality of user experience.
What are the benefits of using a CDN?
There are several benefits of using a CDN, but your specific circumstances will determine just how much benefit you get.
Faster website load times
Providing content to users via a CDN server closer to their location means your website will load faster. This helps reduce bounce rate which is also a contributing factor in SEO.
Lowering your bandwidth costs
Every time someone views a website, it downloads the content, such as text, images, videos, etc. All of these utilise bandwidth. Website hosting provides monthly limits on bandwidth, so if you’re website has lots of high quality images and/or videos, and high levels of traffic, your web hosting can become quite expensive to accommodate your needs. CDNs reduce the amount of data that needs to be received from the primary hosting server, reducing bandwidth usage and thus your ongoing hosting costs.
Enhancing the security of your site
When properly configured, a CDN can help improve the security of your website by improving your security certificates via SSL offloading, DDoS mitigation, and preventing threats using other critical optimisations.
Increasing content availability and redundancy
Content Delivery Network can handle higher levels of traffic than most origin web servers, due to their distributed nature. Therefore, using a CDN reduces hardware failures or issues due to large amounts of traffic, keeping your website up and running and functioning as it should, more of the time. Website Maintenance is crucial, such as keeping plugins and other software up to date as well as implementing security patches, but a CDN can also play a major role in keeping your site working optimally.
If your website is an important tool for your business, you should be considering a CDN. In conjunction with high quality local web hosting, it will ensure your site performs better for your audience and maximise the chance of lead generation.
