How Bloomberg increased page views by boosting site download time

Bloomberg has increased its page views by 15 percent by boosting its site download time, reports Ross Benes of Digiday.

Benes writes, “The move helped its articles load faster because Javelin utilizes a newer and more efficient internet protocol, and it allows web developers to more easily isolate problem areas and make more frequent alterations.

“More than six months of data show that page-load time is down 40 to 50 percent on average across devices. (The company wouldn’t provide parameters, saying that load times are based on various factors and every company measures speed differently.) The speed boost contributed to an increase in viewability from 80 percent to 84 percent, pageviews per session increased from 3.6 to 4.2 and impressions per session are up 10 percent, said Dan Hallac, head of digital web product at Bloomberg. Bloomberg’s mobile load time still ‘needs work,’ according to Google’s speed test tool, but that’s an improvement from the ‘poor’ rating it received in October.

“A big reason why Javelin led to a speed improvement is because it moved Bloomberg onto HTTP/2 protocol. Because HTTP/2 transfers data as binary code rather than as text (like original HTTP protocol does), it compresses information for ad servers. This speeds up page loads, which makes the new protocol particularly enticing for mobile usage. Bloomberg’s digital media properties had 32 million unique visitors in May, with two-thirds of this traffic coming from mobile, according to comScore.”

Read more here.