Fastly Case Studies Driving Digital Transformation in Travel Industry: A Case Study of LoveHolidays and Fastly

	Driving Digital Transformation in Travel Industry: A Case Study of LoveHolidays and Fastly Fastly

Driving Digital Transformation in Travel Industry: A Case Study of LoveHolidays and Fastly

Fastly

Technology Category	Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Industries	Consumer Goods Education
Applicable Functions	Product Research & Development Quality Assurance
Use Cases	Experimentation Automation Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services Testing & Certification
Challenge	LoveHolidays, one of the largest and fastest-growing travel brands in the UK, faced a significant challenge in maintaining its website performance to meet the high demand. With over a million users each month and an average of 4,000 requests every second in 2019, the company needed to ensure a seamless user experience to maintain and increase its conversion rates. The company's previous architecture was composed of various legacy systems, which added an unnecessary level of instability and lack of scalability. Furthermore, the company needed to optimize its hotel images, a critical factor in engaging potential customers and boosting conversions. Slow-loading images not only deterred potential customers but also negatively impacted the site's SEO performance. Read More
About Customer	LoveHolidays is one of the largest and fastest-growing travel brands in the UK. The company operates as an online travel agent, offering customers a bespoke way of searching for holidays based on their preferences, such as budget, board basis, and average daily temperature. In 2019, its website saw over a million users each month and an average of 4,000 requests every second. The company is known for its innovative approach to providing travel solutions and has been at the forefront of using technology to enhance its services and customer experience. Read More
Solution	In 2020, LoveHolidays implemented Fastly's edge cloud to drive their digital transformation. This solution seamlessly handled device detection, image optimization, edge caching, TLS and GeoIP detection, and enabled real-time streaming of logs to BigQuery. This significantly simplified the company's infrastructure and improved performance, reliability, and cost savings. The company also used Fastly to optimize its hotel images, removing the overhead associated with having to resize images on the fly. Fastly's integration with Terraform provided complete code visibility and allowed the LoveHolidays team to monitor changes and deploy them with confidence. Furthermore, LoveHolidays utilized Fastly's Compute@Edge serverless compute environment to conduct A/B testing at scale, allowing the team to customize and personalize the customer experience without impacting SEO rankings. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

Applicable Industries

Consumer Goods

Education

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development

Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Experimentation Automation

Real-Time Location System (RTLS)

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

Testing & Certification

Challenge

LoveHolidays, one of the largest and fastest-growing travel brands in the UK, faced a significant challenge in maintaining its website performance to meet the high demand. With over a million users each month and an average of 4,000 requests every second in 2019, the company needed to ensure a seamless user experience to maintain and increase its conversion rates. The company's previous architecture was composed of various legacy systems, which added an unnecessary level of instability and lack of scalability. Furthermore, the company needed to optimize its hotel images, a critical factor in engaging potential customers and boosting conversions. Slow-loading images not only deterred potential customers but also negatively impacted the site's SEO performance.

About Customer

LoveHolidays is one of the largest and fastest-growing travel brands in the UK. The company operates as an online travel agent, offering customers a bespoke way of searching for holidays based on their preferences, such as budget, board basis, and average daily temperature. In 2019, its website saw over a million users each month and an average of 4,000 requests every second. The company is known for its innovative approach to providing travel solutions and has been at the forefront of using technology to enhance its services and customer experience.

Solution

In 2020, LoveHolidays implemented Fastly's edge cloud to drive their digital transformation. This solution seamlessly handled device detection, image optimization, edge caching, TLS and GeoIP detection, and enabled real-time streaming of logs to BigQuery. This significantly simplified the company's infrastructure and improved performance, reliability, and cost savings. The company also used Fastly to optimize its hotel images, removing the overhead associated with having to resize images on the fly. Fastly's integration with Terraform provided complete code visibility and allowed the LoveHolidays team to monitor changes and deploy them with confidence. Furthermore, LoveHolidays utilized Fastly's Compute@Edge serverless compute environment to conduct A/B testing at scale, allowing the team to customize and personalize the customer experience without impacting SEO rankings.

Impact #1	The implementation of Fastly's edge cloud network has significantly improved LoveHolidays' operational efficiency and performance. The solution has simplified the company's infrastructure, reducing the instability and lack of scalability associated with the previous legacy systems. The integration with Terraform has simplified workflows, enabling the team to monitor changes and deploy them with confidence in seconds. The ability to conduct A/B testing at scale has allowed the company to customize and personalize the customer experience, driving improvements in the site's conversion rates. Furthermore, the image optimization tool has enhanced the site's SEO performance, ensuring that LoveHolidays continues to be indexed by Google as a fast site.

Impact #1

The implementation of Fastly's edge cloud network has significantly improved LoveHolidays' operational efficiency and performance. The solution has simplified the company's infrastructure, reducing the instability and lack of scalability associated with the previous legacy systems. The integration with Terraform has simplified workflows, enabling the team to monitor changes and deploy them with confidence in seconds. The ability to conduct A/B testing at scale has allowed the company to customize and personalize the customer experience, driving improvements in the site's conversion rates. Furthermore, the image optimization tool has enhanced the site's SEO performance, ensuring that LoveHolidays continues to be indexed by Google as a fast site.

Benefit #1	An immediate 51% boost in First Contentful Paint, which subsequently improved by a further 10% after continuous improvements.
Benefit #2	A conversion rate improvement from their landing pages of 11% in approximately six weeks.
Benefit #3	Reduced time-to-first-byte by 80%, from 100 milliseconds to 20 milliseconds.

Benefit #1

An immediate 51% boost in First Contentful Paint, which subsequently improved by a further 10% after continuous improvements.

Benefit #2

A conversion rate improvement from their landing pages of 11% in approximately six weeks.

Benefit #3

Reduced time-to-first-byte by 80%, from 100 milliseconds to 20 milliseconds.

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Overview

Driving Digital Transformation in Travel Industry: A Case Study of LoveHolidays and Fastly

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit