Zoey is a SaaS based e-commerce platform that enables retailers to build their own premium online stores, providing advanced power and capabilities to store owners. They manage millions of assets every month for clients and shoppers all over the world. We sat down with Uri Foox, Founder and President of Zoey, to discuss how they optimize content for fast delivery.

Zoey’s merchants tend to be experienced retailers scaling their online businesses, rather than new store owners. They’ve grown to understand the importance of fast load times, search engine optimization, and a seamless user experience, and they demand the best. Zoey strives to provide this experience for merchants, saving retailers thousands of dollars from having to build it themselves.

In order to provide the best e-commerce experience, Zoey accommodates a heavy dose of newly uploaded images and has to ensure these assets are delivered in a timely, and reliable fashion. Overall, all webpages are increasingly becoming more image oriented, but e-commerce sites are primarily oriented towards images which makes their importance business critical. Not only has the number of images per page been increasing over recent years, file sizes are also trending upwards. The combination of these two things mean a larger payload to deliver, which naturally weighs the website down. Performance is customer experience, so forcing potential customers to wait longer for the page and image loads increases the risk of abandonment or a poor user experience.

There are two key dimensions that Zoey optimizes on to be one of the fastest providers of asset delivery: (1) Delivering with high speed cross-continentally, and (2) Compressing large files as needed. This is especially important for international, mobile users, who are further away from the server, often have inconsistent network connections, and only need a small view of the image.

Zoey partnered with Filestack in 2016 for CDN (content delivery network) and compression technology. Filestack’s compression algorithm is essential for optimizing large files for mobile delivery. Zoey’s merchants upload files in all sizes from less than 100KB to over 15MB. Zoey then uses Filestack to compress and resize files to optimize for bandwidth and speed, ensuring that Zoey’s merchant’s customers receive smaller files that load quickly on all devices. Filestack’s API integration made this extremely easy to integrate with Zoey’s platform.

”We use Filestack’s compression algorithm to resize images so they load faster, and the customer doesn’t have to deal with it”

Using a CDN was also transformative for reducing page load time. Zoey’s international client and visitor base requires distributing assets around the globe. The CDN ensures that assets are always delivered to users from the nearest server, rather than the central datacenter. Filestack’s CDN has edge servers located globally to ensure that users are able to load content quickly, no matter where they are. Zoey was able to see notable differences in page load time after implementing Filestack’s CDN, particularly in locations furthest from Zoey’s datacenter.

Overall, Zoey saw a 27% reduction in load time since partnering with Filestack. The compression transformations, CDN and caching results of image transformations were huge drivers here, especially for assets delivered outside of the United States.

“We’ve seen a 27% reduction in load time since implementing Filestack.”

Zoey considered building their own file infrastructure, but quickly came to the conclusion that they would get more value using a platform service like Filestack. Focusing their development time on making the Zoey platform great and having a relentless focus on customer experience is how Zoey drives brand loyalty. Simply said, the cost and effort required to build and maintain their own file infrastructure would be inefficient compared to consuming a managed platform.

With the need to deliver assets anywhere in the world at top speeds, they hunted for partnerships. After a month of vetting companies, they decided on Filestack. As Foox says, “We chose Filestack based on the team. Filestack was incredibly responsive from all sales, development, and leadership perspectives. We got your Head of Engineering on the phone, and you were able to build out a custom feature for us in no time. We felt like a real partner.”

”We chose Filestack because of the team….We felt like a real partner.”

As an API-first company, Filestack prides itself on the functionality provided to users. Through Filestack’s technology, Zoey enables online retailers worldwide to manage exceptional e-commerce stores that provide the best user experience for their customers. Filestack is excited to watch Zoey continue its success through our exceptional partnership.