Press releases

Nordstrom achieves sub-second image load times for its 6.5 million monthly online visitors

SAN FRANCISCO — April 18, 2017 — Fastly today announced general availability of the Fastly Image Optimizer, one of three services launched today on Fastly’s edge cloud platform. The platform empowers the world’s most popular online brands to manage and deliver secure, fast and personalized digital experiences as close to end users as possible. The Fastly Image Optimizer is a real-time image manipulation solution that dramatically speeds up image delivery by serving pixel-perfect, bandwidth-efficient and device-specific images from the edge.

Nearly 40 percent of visitors will leave a website if images won’t load properly or take too long to load, meaning that a second delay can result in a lost customer or reader. Fastly’s Image Optimizer is ideal for e-commerce, publishing and other content-driven brands whose customers expect reliable, real-time online experiences. Fastly’s edge cloud platform automatically detects key details including device, browser and geolocation, and the Image Optimizer dynamically creates image variations on demand. This also allows businesses to deploy custom image optimization rules instantly and tap into real-time analytics to see the impact on customer experiences.

Nordstromrack.com | HauteLook is one of the Image Optimizer’s earliest users. With 6.5 million monthly web visitors and an online inventory of 70,000 products and over 1.5 million images per year, they rely on fast and customizable image optimization to deliver a high quality, personalized customer experience. They overloaded their previous provider, and a manual workflow process made it challenging to continuously deploy and test images without degrading customer experience. With Fastly, Nordstromrack.com | HauteLook has achieved sub-second image load times for improved customer experiences.

“As an ecommerce site, we rely on high-quality images. Customers won’t buy anything unless they can see it — they need to know a product looks good before they click the ‘buy’ button. So, the better the quality, the better chance of conversion, “ said Herman Radtke, VP of Engineering at Nordstromrack.com | HauteLook. “With Fastly, we can serve any sort of image quickly and tailor it to the customer’s device so it looks great, giving us the best odds of turning that customer into a buyer.”

"Today’s leading online brands face the daunting task of keeping pace with their customers’ changing expectations," said Chuck Neerdaels, SVP of Engineering at Fastly. "Our Image Optimizer is the latest addition to Fastly’s edge cloud platform, which equips online brands with the scalability, control, and advanced capabilities they need to create exceptional customer experiences.”

Additional Benefits of the Fastly Image Optimizer include:

• Real-time Customization: With real-time logs and analytics, businesses gain instant visibility into how users are interacting with images on a website or mobile app. Businesses can then fine-tune customized configurations instantly to make adjustments to image transformation rules.


• Mobile-Readiness: With 45k different mobile device profiles today, there are an infinite number of optimization demands across screen sizes and types. The Fastly Image Optimizer ensures businesses are prepared to optimize for rapidly changing image requirements.


• Scalability: Unlike legacy CDN solutions, the Fastly Image Optimizer can be deployed instantly and scaled on demand because it dynamically generates all device-specific image variations at the edge, closest to users.


• Reduced Infrastructure Cost: By caching more static image content at the edge than other competitive offerings, the Fastly Image Optimizer reduces origin load, storage and egress costs. Companies can store one source file instead of thousands of versions.

To learn more about Fastly’s Image Optimizer, visit: https://www.fastly.com/image-optimization