Google-fast search on your website
The benchmark for search latency to be perceived as instant is generally about ~50 milliseconds [1] – and our internal target in partnership with Algolia.com helps us achieve search latency generally never more than ~30 milliseconds but mostly averaging 1 to ~20 milliseconds.
This is made possible with the use of the best possible technology stack from Algolia.com – who explain a lot of this very well on their own website and demos – and our own use of (geek-terminology warning) the latest ReactJS Javascript programming tools, refined for a standards-based, and therefore intuitive interface design.
The great thing about this setup, is it is also designed from the beginning to be geo-replicated – both for data-security redundancy, and for giving the same almost lightening-fast experience to visitors from any country – including those with slower internet connections due to our optimisation and minimisation of the code and data being transferred.
Making every web page as fast as possible
Once we had achieved this for search and filtering latency – we see this as the benchmark for what we can do with page loading speed for every single page using these same principles.
This particular area is an ongoing development for us, as we pursue the ultimate in both optimisation and quality in every part of the website code we develop, because speed just feels good to everyone.
A large amount of what we do you may notice is completely unique – and you would be right – because we also found that there were no other affordable and standard alternatives to the benchmark aims we have – so we have had to invent a lot of what you will see.
If we are right in this claim for our unique capabilities, then we hope to continue to share more on what we do and how we do it to help the world evolve with us – and if you have seen anything else publically available doing what we do any faster – please do send us links so we can compare, learn, meet or exceed every benchmark for loading times and speed optimisation for all countries, connections and mobile devices.
We just will not get off the treadmill until we are the fastest at everything we do! [2]
Faster machine and human translation
Another unique feature in the way we build our platform is the way we do translation differently to most other platforms – and we really did analyse almost all of them – but none felt time-efficient enough to us for creating and maintaining multilingual interfaces and content.
So we don’t have multiple websites and copies of all database records and content – we have one master website and database, with content written in most of our team’s native or primary language of communication and coding, British English – then we created a saved translation layer on top of that for the ultimate speed in serving and updating.
We first use 7 different AI cloud machine-translation service providers (Google, Bing, Yandex, Apertium, Baidu, Alibaba and WordPress) to find and use the best possible machine-translation, faster than a translator could hope to type – and then we give our many translators the ability to refine the results, for complete human proof-read and edited localised translations – which all helps give the native feel in the results that a person reading in their own language would expect to see.
This effectively makes us the 8th, and parent translation service AI – as improvements for any one website in our network is improved for all of them – with a full audit-tail of who changed what, just in case discussion is needed to agree on the ideal verison in the event of a differences of need or opinion.
The real test being that people shouldn’t need to be aware of any other languages available, when their own language is served under a local domain for all their needs.
Currently we can now do this for 117 languages and dialects – and, although approximately 40 of them make up the majority of the online economic world, we still aim to support all languages, including those much lesser offered like Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Jerriais (Jersey French), etc – in respect of the underserved populations of those communities, and their heritage.
We hope in doing this, that everyone will feel recognised, included and respected for their own uniqueness when they find our websites – and hopefully join our team of translation partners in continually improving all site for their fellow speakers.
The fastest benchmarks for any ecommerce platform
I say “The pursuit of website speed is almost over” simply because we never really stop optimising as we evolve features and add requested functionality to our Brandlight platform.
Although, for the many other platforms, we hope that we provide an interesting benchmark and ideas for their own endeavours, so that many more choices than the one that we offer can then help improve all websites for everyone, regardless of the platform they chose before our platform was launched and made available to our select brand clients and partners.
Feedback is the fastest method for continual improvement
So, we invite your valued support through feedback in comments, questions, suggestions, pointers to examples and ideas – and hope that you will support our all-inclusive aspirations in every area, to serve the *whole* world with a high-quality, efficient and considerate platform, will then come back to us in good karma for building a healthy, collaborative community that shares and promotes these aims too.
Footnotes & References
- How Algolia Reduces Latency For 21B Searches Per Month – by Josh Dzielak, Developer Advocate at Algolia.[↑]
- Will Smith’s Treadmill[↑]
