Do acceleration products really work for every request, 24x7?

[astigley]

(07-14-2010 10:23 AM)JoshuaBixby Wrote:  I’m president of Strangeloop. Hopefully I can answer your questions about our products and service.

(07-10-2010 12:05 AM)astigley Wrote:  Autoanything, a site who used Strangeloop's acceleration product was really touted as a huge success at the conference this year. Yet when I test that site, I see mixed results. There were several tests run a few weeks back during the conference, and several completed afterwards. I see these have been removed from public viewing now?

To address the issue of inconsistent results, there are a few reasons why you might get these:

1. We are A/B testing the site all the time so that we can quantify performance improvements on an ongoing basis. This means you have a 50% chance of seeing an unaccelerated page.
2. In some of the A/B tests, we turn off some of the product features to measure and compare the impact of different feature combinations.
3. Site Optimizer is always learning, and to learn it might send pages back that are not treated.
4. Optimal Yslow/Page Speed scores are not always the best for overall conversion (especially when it comes to roundtrip reduction).

To respond to your other question: I'm not sure what you mean when you say that AutoAnything tests have been removed. Where did you see the tests originally?

Thanks Joshua, I've admit I've made a mistake on the Autoanything tests being removed. I failed to check show tests from all users, my apologies. A/B testing makes sense, but eventually I'd expect to see all traffic optimised. A faster web for all . Thanks for replying.

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OK, so we've weighed up our two options, Strangeloop and Aptimize. Both offering similar benefits of web page optimisation but with very different approaches. It really depends on the nature of your environment and how quickly you can implement changes to get this stuff up and running.

We're in touch with representatives in Europe for both companies (I'm based in Holland) and have been given quotes for trial and implementations (can't share those details sorry). Either way we will be doing a trial with at least one of the products. I'll let you know how we get on.

Time will tell!