Website performance aligned to enhance user experience is at the core of the digital ecosystem, and server architecture — the foundational layout or model on which a server is created and deployed — plays a key role in it. The architecture defines how a server is designed, the different components of the server, and the services it provides.
Traditionally, a server architect (or Sr. DevOps Engineer) had no real connection with the customer during the design process. But with cloud-based platforms, s/he has one of the most critical roles in ensuring better website performance and user experience. That’s why service-oriented architecture or microservices is fast becoming the gold standard. Let’s take a closer look at the role of architecture, and why it’s becoming increasingly integral to improving website performance and user experience.
Role of Server Architecture in Improving Website Performance, User Experience
Given the intent to release products faster, architects today do not get sufficient time to design, plan, and optimize the server architecture. This can be damaging since first impressions of a product are critical and if the product has glitches or is slow to interact, it can negatively impact the user experience. Hence, it’s critical to have a good understanding of the product. And invest in building the server architecture to ensure the best performance with the limited resources available.
Here are some of the salient points to keep in mind while architecting and building server layouts for your online product.
Make the platform horizontally scalable
Horizontal scaling means that you can add nodes or machines to the platform instead of just increasing the server size (vertical scaling). This doesn’t necessarily imply having a component-based architecture for microservices, it can be accomplished through tier-based architecture (3-tier architecture, presentation, application, database Layers) as well. As long as you design the platform in a way to keep it horizontally scalable.
For example, you can add more instances of the database if you see that database is becoming a bottleneck and slowing the overall website performance. It also allows for robustness and fault tolerance in the platform, ensuring zero downtime from the customer’s perspective, making it one of the key metrics in user experience design.
Smaller deployment cycle or component-based deployments
Building a component-based architecture (business-centric components such as micro-services or object-centric components) and keeping these components isolated to ensure separate code deployments for each, can boost the scale and performance of the platform.
This allows scaling the components the customer is using extensively and reducing the ones not being used. For example, if you are building a social media platform, and out of the core components, Photo Upload and View is the most widely, in that case, you can run the below model running:
• Posts Component — Running 3 instances or nodes
• Friends Component — Running 2 instances
• Photos Component — Running 6 instances — Used extensively by customers
It’s easier to add more instances to photos, giving the customer the best performance while reducing your costs or instances of components not being used so much, in this case, Friends Component.
Hence you have more flexibility and deeper insight into which features your customers use extensively. This is what client-to-server architecture essentially boils down to. Of course, components-based architecture and platforms are complex and require significant investments but it’s an investment that can bring you significant returns by offering your customers the best user experience.
CI/CD + Automation Testing + Manual Testing
Horizontal scaling and smaller components allow continuous integration, delivery, and deployment to the product development cycle. That’s where running consistent website performance tests becomes imperative.
The advantages of CI/CD do not only fall into the technical aspect but also in an organization’s scope. The first few moments of a new customer trying out your product define the odds of success. Don’t waste first impressions as they are key to turning new customers into satisfied customers.
Keep your customers happy with the fast turnaround of new features and bug fixes. Utilizing a CI/CD approach also keeps your product up-to-date with the latest technology and serves as a system for efficient website performance checks. This, in turn, paves the way for attracting new customers who will select you over the competition through word-of-mouth and positive reviews.
Your customers are the main users of your product. As such, what they have to say should be taken into high consideration. Whether the comments are positive or negative, customer feedback and involvement lead to usability improvements and overall customer satisfaction.
Your customers want to know they are being heard. Adding new features and changes to your CI/CD pipeline based on the user experience and feedback will help you retain current users and gain new ones.
Caching considerations at different layers
For anyone looking to improve website performance, caching should be the Holy Grail. It allows for better load time and speedy user interactions with the product. A fast website or app makes users happy. To create a user-experience website in the true earnest, incorporate different caching layers so that you can scale as users increase your platform. Here are some approaches you can try:
• DNS Cache: For websites or apps, domain name resolution is the first step toward getting the first byte and starting rendering. Use the DNS Cache or DNS premium to make this process faster
• Client-side Caching (mobile and desktop): Fast retrieval of web content from the website using HTTP Cache Headers and Browser Cache
• Web content (web layer): Much of the request involves retrieving web content such as images, videos, and HTML pages. Caching these near the user’s location can provide a much faster response for a page load. A CDN provides a network of edge locations where static content can be cached
• Application (app layer): Improve application performance and data access with Key/Value data stores and local caches (Memcache or Redis)
• Database cache: Caching frequently using query results at the database level
Technical SEO considerations
SEO is crucial for enhancing both website performance and user experience because it makes your website more visible and higher SERP rankings boost your credibility among your target audience. That means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. Also, it is one of the best traffic sources of quality customers for your website.
As you take a user-centric approach to your server architecture and website performance, a lot of checkpoints for SEO best practices will automatically be taken care of. Here are a few that must be addressed separately:
- Sitemap
- Robots.txt
- Register yourself on Google webmaster to gain insights into how Google looks at your website
- Focus on page speed and page optimization for easy and faster access
Build for users not for bots
While doing SEO or striving to be likable to the bots, do not go overboard and end up hurting users just to make bots (crawlers) happy. Right from service-oriented architecture to user experience design, the idea is to always keep your eye on the ball — which is your intended user base. In the end, it’s the number of happy users that counts, so ensure that you keep that as your first principle while designing and architecting your server and platform.
