Project description
AI-based software to boost e-commerce website performance and loading times
To tackle today’s challenges in creating fast websites, a new communication protocol called HTTP/2 was released as a revision to the ubiquitous HTTP network protocol. The new protocol has the potential to substantially increase website speed, but its features are not straightforward to apply. The EU-funded AI for a faster web project will develop a software product that exploits the features so that online businesses can provide websites that load much faster. Web traffic data is sent to a cloud infrastructure for analysis, delivering information on how to manage the traffic to enhance website speed. The project will assess the software’s technical feasibility and commercial viability.
Objective
Website speed is the key to success for e-commerce websites. A fast website creates a better user experience, improves Google ranking, and most importantly, it increases conversion. Slow websites cost millions of dollars a year in lost sales, and therefore this is a pressing problem on a growing market that call for efficient solutions.
As web usage and online commerce has exploded, we have moved from simple static websites to fully interactive and complex websites, introducing new challenges for creating fast websites. For example, loading a website is more re- source intensive, websites are loaded using smartphones in wireless networks, and website visitors are spread globally. To address these new challenges of the web, a new communication protocol, HTTP/2, was released in 2015. The new protocol does not require any changes to existing websites, and by default it provides a more efficient loading of resources, creates more mobile-friendly sites, and improves Google rank. The new protocol also introduces new features that software can take advantage of to substantially increase website speed.
However, most of the HTTP/2 features are not straightforward to apply and need to be actively configured, and no standards or guidelines exist to inform developers on optimal usage. This leave the problem for the developers to do manual tuning, which is both cumbersome and might demand changes every time the website is updated. Since the features can lead to substantial speed improvements, the challenge of adopting them has introduced a major business opportunity:
- To offer a product that can utilize the features of HTTP/2 to help online businesses create faster websites automatically
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftware
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementcommercee-commerce
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationsmobile phones
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
90334 UMEA
Sweden
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.