Cloudflare

Improve your store's speed while protecting it from bots, cyberattacks and other unwanted traffic that can further impact server performance

Cloudflare is a content delivery network or CDN (Content Delivery Network), which means that the content to be delivered to a device is stored on a number of different servers for the content to be delivered to the device as quickly as possible by retrieving it from the server that is closest to the device geographically or otherwise has the best conditions in terms of speed.

Since the content in question is stored on several different servers, a positive side effect of a CDN is that there is redundancy if one server is unavailable for any reason. This applies not only to content such as images and videos, but also to entire websites - for example, an e-commerce site.

Speed and performance

All e-commerce stores at Vendre are located on servers in Sweden that Vendre controls. Smaller stores usually share a server with several other stores, which means that increased visitor traffic, multiple simultaneous imports or product updates can affect the perceived speed of another e-commerce located on the same server.

With Cloudflare configured, the visitor can experience that the store loads faster despite a high e-commerce load because the store can be loaded from a different server than the origin server - that is, the server where the store is actually stored. Which server a visitor lands on is automatically controlled from the Cloudflare side. The most appropriate server at the time will deliver the content to the visitor based on several factors such as the visitor's geographical location and the load of the available servers.

Even for a store that has its own server, improved speed and server performance may be desirable. During major campaigns such as Black Friday, a CDN can improve the customer experience by allowing the visitor to get the store loaded from the most appropriate server, which at the time is not necessarily the original server at Vendre but a server closer to the customer.

Visitors abroad

Since all the servers on which Vendre's stores are located are in Sweden, visitors from abroad may find that loading times are long and that the store as a whole is slow. If no CDN is used, all information in the store is retrieved from the origin server in Sweden and for a visitor the loading times will be longer proportionally to the distance to Sweden and the origin server.

With a CDN, the store's content is stored on multiple servers around the world, which means that a visitor in the US can get the store's content from a server in the US and a visitor in Greenland from the nearest server in Iceland.

Note! In some cases, a visitor may receive the store's content from the origin server even though there is a server closer to the customer. Cloudflare determines on a case-by-case basis which server is the most appropriate to send the content from depending on several factors.

Unwanted traffic

Cloudflare acts as a filter between the visitor and your store's server to capture the visitor's distance and conditions, thereby choosing the most appropriate server to deliver the content from. Since the visitor reaches Cloudflare's servers before the current store's server, this allows you to stop unwanted traffic even before it reaches the store.

Cloudflare analyzes all incoming traffic to determine if the visitor is legitimate or could somehow be unwanted; a bot, a spider, or part of an ongoing denial of service (DDoS) attack against the site. Bots and spiders can be blocked to varying degrees by Cloudflare to ensure that the store's performance is not affected by them and that the content cannot be read by less sophisticated spiders.

Queuing function with waiting room

For major events such as a product release that is expected to generate a lot of traffic, Cloudflare can, depending on the agreement, allow visitors who exceed the allowed number of active visitors to wait in a "waiting room" and with a queue system let them into the store in turn when there is space available for them.

A queuing function ensures that visitors can reach the store and not risk never reaching the store due to congestion where it can be difficult to "hit the right spot" in the page load. Visitors are let into the store in turn and can complete their order without worrying about the connection being broken before the purchase is complete.

Read more at Cloudflare

Recommended settings

Vendre recommends the following settings for the majority of customers. You can make other settings yourself, but be careful as they can negatively affect the visitor's experience. Below settings can be found under

• Speed > Optimization
  • Image Optimization
    • Polish
      • Lossy is recommended but Lossless can also be used. WebP should be enabled.
    • Mirage
  • Content Optimization
    • Speed Brain
    • Early Hints
  • Protocol Optimization
    • HTTP/2
    • HTTP/2 to Origin
    • HTTP/3 (with QUIC)
    • 0-RTT Connection Resumption
• Security > Bots
  • Default Bot Protection Settings

Note! Vendre's recommendations are generally based on Cloudflare's Pro package and some settings are not included in the free version.

Frequently asked questions