85 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
85 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
**Drop 1 – Latency ≠ Luxury: the revenue math of shaving 100 ms**
|
||
|
||
<sup>*Part of the “Edge Renaissance” LinkedIn newsletter series.*</sup>
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
### ☕ Executive espresso (60‑second read)
|
||
|
||
* **100 ms matters.** Akamai’s retail study found that adding one‑tenth of a second chops **7 %** off conversions; Amazon engineers report the same pattern—every extra 100 ms dings revenue by \~1 %. ([The AI Journal][1])
|
||
* **Speed converts.** A joint Google/Deloitte analysis shows that trimming a mere **0.1 s** from load time lifts **e‑commerce conversions 8.4 %** and average order value 9.2 %. ([NitroPack][2])
|
||
* **Slowness repels.** As mobile pages slip from 1 s to 3 s, bounce probability jumps **32 %**. ([Google Business][3])
|
||
|
||
> **Bottom line:** latency isn’t a nice‑to‑have metric; it’s an unbudgeted tax on every transaction.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## 1 Latency: the silent P\&L line‑item
|
||
|
||
Latency feels intangible because it never shows up on an invoice—yet its impact lands squarely on revenue:
|
||
|
||
| Delay added | Typical cause | Business impact |
|
||
| ---------------- | ------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------- |
|
||
| **+20 ‑ 40 ms** | Cloud region 300 mi away | Customer sees spinners on PDP |
|
||
| **+30 ‑ 80 ms** | Third‑party CDN hop | Checkout JS waits for edge function |
|
||
| **+60 ‑ 120 ms** | Origin call back to datacentre | Cart update “hangs,” user re‑clicks |
|
||
| **+100 ms** | All of the above | ‑7 % conversions (Akamai), ‑1 % sales (Amazon) |
|
||
|
||
Legacy retailers often pay for all three delays at once—yet wonder why Amazon’s pages feel instant.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## 2 Where the milliseconds hide
|
||
|
||
1. **Physical distance** – each 1 000 km ≈ 10‑12 ms RTT; cloud zones aren’t where your stores are.
|
||
2. **Handshake overhead** – TLS 1.3 still needs one round‑trip before the first byte.
|
||
3. **Chatty architectures** – microservices that call microservices multiply hops.
|
||
4. **Edge gaps** – static assets on a CDN, but APIs still trek to a far‑off origin.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## 3 Why the store closet is the antidote
|
||
|
||
Putting compute **and** content in the store cuts every loop:
|
||
|
||
* **1‑digit‑ms POS & API calls** – KVM/LXC workloads run beside the tills.
|
||
* **Sub‑30 ms TTFB web assets** – Varnish/Nginx cache on the same three‑node cluster.
|
||
* **No middle‑man egress fees** – traffic hits the consumer using the store’s existing uplink.
|
||
|
||
Result: the customer’s phone talks to a server literally across the aisle instead of across the country.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## 4 Quick math for the CFO
|
||
|
||
Assume a site doing \$500 M online revenue, 2.5 % baseline conversion:
|
||
|
||
* **Cut latency by 100 ms → +7 % conversions** → +\$35 M top‑line uplift.
|
||
* Cap‑ex for 500 store clusters @ \$6 k each = \$3 M (straight‑line over 4 yrs = \$0.75 M/yr).
|
||
* **ROI ≈ 46×** in year 1 before even counting egress savings.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## 5 Action plan for Week 1
|
||
|
||
1. **Measure real‑world TTFB** –
|
||
|
||
```bash
|
||
curl -w "%{time_starttransfer}\n" -o /dev/null -s https://mystore.com
|
||
```
|
||
2. **Map the hops** – tracepath from a store Wi‑Fi to your cloud origin; every hop is \~0.5‑1 ms.
|
||
3. **Set a 100 ms SLA** from device to first byte; anything slower becomes a candidate for edge‑deployment.
|
||
4. **Pilot a “store‑in‑a‑box” cluster** serving just images & the `/inventory` API—validate the speed lift before moving heavier workloads.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
### Coming up next ➡️ *“Store‑in‑a‑Box: Hardware & Proxmox in Plain English.”*
|
||
|
||
We’ll open the closet, list the exact BOM, and show how three shoebox‑sized nodes replace a city‑block of racks—without breaking the budget.
|
||
|
||
*Stay subscribed—your milliseconds depend on it.*
|
||
|
||
[1]: https://aijourn.com/every-millisecond-matters-the-latency-tax-nobody-budgets-for/ "Every Millisecond Matters: The Latency Tax Nobody Budgets For | The AI Journal"
|
||
[2]: https://nitropack.io/blog/post/how-page-speed-affects-conversion "How Page Speed Affects Your Conversion Rates"
|
||
[3]: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/page-load-time-statistics/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Page load time statistics - Think with Google"
|