Why?
There is a well documented correlation between page speed and user conversion. As part of the tech sprints, we have been looking at ways to speed cord up to deliver a better experience for both new and existing users.
As cord is image heavy, one of the biggest levers to improve page speed is by better optimising the images we show to users.
What?
With this upgrade we now serve images in a new format known as WebP which is on average 30% smaller than traditional JPEGs or GIFs. For some large GIFs, the improvement is extremely significant. Our team page's GIFs used to be about ~2MB - the WebP versions are only ~0.8MB.As a result, images will now load quicker site-wide, and cord should load 10-20% faster for users.Additionally, we also fixed/improved a few related issues:
- Improved controls for resizing - images are automatically resized based on the user's screen size and browser type
- Improved images in emails - images in emails are now optimised and served via our Content Distribution Network as well => emails will now load faster too!
- Fixed an occasional issue with images being wrongly rotated
- Moved all our images from a US datacenter to an Irish one - with this we no longer store user data in the US (and no longer need to explain our cross-Atlantic setup during procurement exercises)
- Improved image security and protection
How?
Kudos to Hasan (BE) and Vinu (FE) who worked on the BE and FE respectively. There were loads of different cases to account for and the team worked through them valiantly and meticulously. Thank you as well to Andres (FE) for the code reviews, and Anna (PO) and James (GM) for the product testing.
What next?
We’re wrapping up tech fortnight and moving onto solving the main usability issues and bugs that are affecting our users. Expect to see enhancements to how the calendar integration works (people & companies), and improvements to the hiding function (companies).