6 Key Reasons Why Businesses Should Use a CDN

Although it has been around for over a decade, the use of Content Delivery Networks, or CDNs in short, is still unfamiliar for many business key people across the globe. Despite a number of critical advantages it brings to the table, businesses still frequently ask the question “Why use a CDN?”. Today, the services of a CDN are essential for organizations to be able to provide the best possible customer experiences that will increase revenue and customer satisfaction. 

A CDN works by caching content through multiple points of presence (PoPs) which are placed in different locations across the globe, eliminating the distance between origin servers and end users. The way a CDN works makes it easier for businesses — especially game publishers, e-commerce marketplaces, and video streaming providers (Youtube, Netflix, Disney+, etc) — to provide better possible customer experience and increase customer satisfaction. There are a number of reasons why businesses should consider using CDN services.

CDNs improve content delivery and website performance

Through multiple PoPs and content caching, CDNs place content closer to users, and it ensures faster content load times and reduced latency. For businesses, this can mean increased traffic, larger subscription number, more page views, improved customer engagement, and lower bounce rate.

CDNs improve SEO rankings

Increasing the speed of a website using a CDN will improve the website’s Google search ranking. To determine where a website should appear in the search results, Google needs to do what is called crawling. As a CDN increases the speed and frequency at which the website is crawled, Google will be able to rank the web pages more quickly.

CDNs ensure reliability in the case of traffic spikes

Traffic spikes may happen due to various reasons: a new product launch, a successful campaign, a limited time promotion, or a viral video. During moments like these, relying solely on the origin server is rather unwise as the server may overload and cause an inaccessible website. A CDN’s load balancing feature allows visitors to access content from every server in the network. Even when the closest server fails, they will be routed to the next closest, preventing any overloading.

CDNs allow for better conversion rates and sales

People today get bored easily. Research shows that 57% of online consumers will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. This means that speedier load time leads to a better user experience, and a better user experience leads to more conversions. CDNs help businesses create a better experience for their website visitors which means fewer visitors leave, more visitors stay, and more of them come back and make purchases.

CDNs lower company costs

In most cases, a CDN can handle over 60% of a website's bandwidth, which in return reduces the load on the origin server. A CDN does this through content caching, or storing copies of content closer to the users, enabling fewer data transfers from the origin server and reducing a company’s bandwidth consumption and costs. 

CDNs improve security and DDoS protection

Using CDN services, at least 60% of the traffic will be served through the services provider. Well-established CDN services providers employ thorough analytics, tools, encryptions, and protocols to mitigate risk and cyber attacks, including DDoS attacks, firewall issues and other types of attacks.

Those advantages make CDN services a reasonable choice for businesses that rely heavily on content delivery such as marketplaces, video streaming providers, and game publishers. However, to ensure the best results, it’s important to choose a provider with a proven track record.

There are 3 essential elements of an effective CDN. First, a CDN services provider should have a large network. A provider with more servers with excellent geographic distribution can ensure a faster and more reliable content delivery as well as less buffering, greater redundancy, and more scalability. Second, a provider needs to have robust customer support. A provider that offers responsive and knowledgeable 24/7 customer support is more preferable in the case of technical errors or performance issues, especially during important broadcasts. Finally, a CDN provider should offer affordable and transparent pricing. There two different pricing systems which are typically used by most CDN providers: through custom negotiated contracts and based on usage. To ensure excellent performance, it is important for businesses to choose a CDN services provider which can provide them with these three elements.