FUTURE TECHNOLOGY
Mobile traffic now accounts for over
38% of traffic on the Akamai platform,
and according to Google research, the
mobile device is the preferred consumer
device to research products and services.
Responsive web design is a key building
block to providing a more seamless
experience for users across an array
of devices. However, basic responsive
design is subject to over downloading on
mobile devices especially when it comes to
images, which increases page load times
and leads to dissatisfied customers.
Let us examine how this can complicate
image management compared to what
many online retailers have done in the past
with a desktop only implementation. For
instance, a retailer may need to resize a
single product image into a product view,
and thumbnail image, leaving you with
different variants. To properly optimise for
mobile and tablet, it is necessary for online
retailers to create the correct image sizes
for various devices so that a mobile user
is not forced to download a full-size image
only to have it displayed on the device at
postage stamp sized.
Newer browsers also enable more
efficient image formats such as WebP
for Chrome and JPEG 2000 for the
Safari browser. Creating and storing all
the proper sizes and variants can put a
strain on resources for both storage and
maintenance as the number of images
created for a single product easily jumps
to 100+ or more.
There is relief in sight via cloud-based
image management solutions that are
assisting online retailers in improving
the customer experience with faster
download while alleviating storage issues.
A cloud-based solution can also optimise
the human element in the creation and
management of images. In a traditional
workflow, images are uploaded to an FTP
site, where the creative team applies art
and watermarks and uploads them to
a CMS where another team creates the
types of images, and most likely another
team works on the images before storing
each image into the CMS.
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without having to create and store all
the various combinations. It allows you
to automatically serve WebP images to
someone on a Chrome browser or JPEG
2000 images to someone on the Safari
browser, without any server driven
changes. The website simply calls for a
single image URL and it will deliver the
best image, automatically tuned to the
right human-perceptible image quality
and adjusted to device size.
In conclusion, here are some tips and
features that online retailers should be
looking for when researching for an image
management solution:
Jason Miller is Chief Strategist of
Commerce at Akamai
According to Google
research, the mobile
device is the preferred
consumer device to
research products and
services
With a cloud-based solution, a full suite
of image management functionalities can
be integrated directly into your digital
asset management workflow. Through
configuration policies, you can upload
a single pristine image to cloud storage
and automatically create all the size and
quality image variants that you need. This
allows you to address all the variables
you need to serve desktop and different
mobile device families.
For instance, you may create the
same dimension image for a Retina
device but at a higher quality than for
an older Android device. This also gives
you the ability to take advantage of
newer, high-performance image formats
• It should be a cloud-based solution as
it reduces the infrastructure necessary
to store all the image variants, reduces
operational overhead and improves
backup and recovery time.
• Performance is a key ingredient so
make sure your solution can get images
distributed as close to your consumers
as possible while reducing the download
time and network latency.
• An automated solution that can adjust
perceptible image quality and optimize
image size by compressing images in a
way that is imperceptible to the human
eye yet saves considerable image bytes.
• Look to the future as new devices and
image formats will be released, it is
imperative that an image solution is
able to easily add new image sizes or
formats by simply updating a policy.
From the perspective of online retailers,
images are vital to compete with not
only other online retailers, but also
to overcome the disadvantage that
consumers cannot physically touch and
feel products like they could in-store. In
order to address this shortcoming, online
retailers need to provide consumers
with rich and engaging imagery with the
help of an effective cloud-based image
management solution.
Issue 02
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS