How to Flip a Switch for

55% Web Performance Gains

Zander Bekker

Industrial Engineer

IT & Innovation Safair Operations

Christian Paulus

Head of Product Marketing

Speakers

Agenda

• FlySafair case study

• Argo Smart Routing

• Questions & Answers

The most On-Time Airline in the world

SINCE OCT 2014

Industry Pressures of Low Cost Carriers

• Majority of customers base

purchasing decision on price

• Price impacts customer loyalty

Direct selling through a

website to lower cost as a

key distributing channel

CustomersAirline website

User Experience

FlySafair Website Approach

SpeedUptime and Connection

Reliability

EXECUTEImplement changes

PLANHow can the current

process be improved?

IDENTIFYOpportunities in the

process workflow

REVIEWHow changes working

for the team?

FlySafair Website Approach: Phases

New Relic - Most time consuming transactions

HIGH LEVEL

Dareboost: High level landing page

performance

MEDIUM LEVEL

Google Analytics: Individual page

load times, geo-location

performance, goal conversion

LOW LEVEL

New Relic: Low level specific

service and transactions time

Phase: Identify

PLAN

Weekly sprint planning:

• Review metrics and compare

• Execute 5 whys and root cause analysis

• Come up with hypotheses for improvement

• Discuss with team possible implementation methods

EXECUTE

Business rule: Always include one speed improvement item in each development sprint

REVIEW

Metrics reviewed following week, before and after analytics

Phases: Plan, Execute, and Review

Highlight Item: Scrapers Throttling

Server Side Success: Over the Years

7,000

1,367

2015 2016

137

2017

Mill

ise

co

nd

s

• At one point diminishing returns by

improving code and hardware only

• Bottleneck determines overall speed

AWS Upgrade: CPU usage

went from 100% to 11.5%

Average Web Response Time

Connectivity is the Bottleneck

Undersee Cables

Connectivity from South Africa

via Europe to US

Holistic View required for Future Gains

AWS Server in NA

Radixx Reservation

Servers in NA

3rd party services.

Payments gateways,

marketing platforms

90% of web users

in South Africa

Cloudflare Argo Smart Routing

Cloudflare “New Feature” e-mail

• Added Argo Smart Routing to further improve performance

• Low cost add-on

• Easy set up: no development, configuration or implementation

effort—just flip a switch

• No risk: if it does not work as expected drop it the next month

• Easy reporting of performance gains in analytics dashboard

Customer Challenges

OriginCongested

Network PathUnreliable

Connection

Poor User ExperienceSlow loading times and connection

timeouts increase the likelihood of a

poor user experience that can result

in reduced revenue or damaged

brand reputation

Slow Loading TimesStatic routes can’t avoid congested

network paths or unreliable connection

Internet node / hop

Cloudflare Argo Smart Routing

OriginCongested

Network PathUnreliable

Connection

Faster Loading TimesCloudflare routes over 10% of all HTTP Internet

traffic providing Argo with real world intelligence on

the fastest network paths.

Optimal Path SelectionMinimize latency imposed by

TCP connection-setup

Congestion AvoidanceRouting decisions using real-world

network conditions

Cloudflare’s private network 10Tbps throughput, with 117+ PoPs in 50+ countries

Internet node / hop

Cloudflare data center

Argo Impact on Web Latency

New Relic

Argo Impact on Reliability

Less 500 errors

Less lost connections

Argo Impact on User Experience

Browser Apdex T:

Your application’s End User

Apdex T-value is set to 15

seconds. That means end user

requests responding in less

than 15 seconds to the end

user are satisfying (s),

responding between 15

seconds and 60 seconds are

tolerating (t), and responding in

more than 60 seconds are

frustrating (f).

How did Cloudflare help?

• Improved user experience around the world:

As if Web server hosted closer to user

• Improved customer conversion observed

• Improved web transactions and User Apdex scores

• Reduced reports of lost connections

DDOS PROTECTION

DNS

IP FIREWALL

RATE LIMITING

Cloudflare was originally

selected for providing security:

Experiences/Lessons Learned

• Systematic approach required

• Holistic system thinking

• Experiment quickly. Don’t be afraid to fail and try new things

Questions & Answers

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