Vancouver-based Strangeloop is bringing its Web content optimization solutions to the table in order to speed up e-commerce activities at Wine.com.
With 13,000+ products and millions of customers, Wine.com is a major online retailer, and the site has recently launched mobile applications as well.
In order to scale up its front-end and accelerate website shopping experience, Wine.com is working with Strangeloop to provide enhanced access to its full range of products, including location-based searches, account management and order tracking.
Already this year, the company has shipped more than two million bottles of wine, a 35% increase over the previous year. The website is also home to a growing online social community of more than 32,000 members who provide customer reviews and ratings, as well as creating and sharing personal wine lists.
Wine.com says tackling site speed for desktop users is just the first phase in its performance strategy; accelerating the mobile site is also a top priority.
"We spent a long time developing our mobile site, because we wanted to make sure it could deliver a first-class experience to our customers. Making that experience even faster is our next order of business," said Geoffrey Smalling, CTO of Wine.com.
"When we researched front-end optimization vendors, Strangeloop was by far the leading contender.""Their Site Optimizer is the only product that can handle enterprise scale via appliance or cloud, and they are the only company with experience in accelerating global sites and an aggressive plan for further product development to keep sites like Wine.com at the front edge of acceleration. And on a day-to-day basis, Strangeloop's customer service has been superb throughout the entire implementation process. Strangeloop has even developed optimizations based on our unique, regulated business."
Strangeloop offers a patented solution for Web content optimization (WCO). WCO technology takes HTML that has been optimized for readability, supportability and maintainability and, while retaining these benefits, transforms it to HTML that is optimized for fast page rendering, the company describes. This involves implementing numerous best practices such as rewriting object names, re-ordering when and how objects are rendered, re-ordering when scripts are executed, and optimizing content based on the requesting browser.
The Strangeloop Site Optimizer and Mobile Site Optimizer - available as a cloud-based service, a hardware appliance, and a virtual appliance - is said to transform Web content optimization from a lengthy and complex coding process into an automated function performed in real time by an intelligent appliance.
"Wine.com demonstrates exactly why our product works so well for huge e-commerce sites," said Jonathan Bixby, CEO of Strangeloop Networks. "Our Site Optimizer doesn't just make individual pages faster. It takes a big-picture approach and analyzes all of a site's traffic - looking at millions and millions of visitor paths - and uses this information to make sophisticated, on-the-fly decisions about optimizing a customer's entire journey through the site. But optimization doesn't end with one visit. E-commerce sites succeed or fail on their ability to attract return customers, but most websites don't take advantage of this behaviour. Site Optimizer takes what it learns about each visitor to serve pages even faster the next time that person comes to your site. Techniques like these are what separate advanced performance solutions from the rest of the field."
Companies like eBay/PayPal, Visa, and Petco have implemented Strangeloop solutions to speed up their websites and enterprise applications. As a result, they've achieved dramatic gains in key metrics, increasing sales by up to 22% and growing organic search traffic by up to 10%.
Strangeloop is based in Vancouver, B.C.
Wine.com is majority owned by Baker Capital.