The Impact of HTTP/2 on the Service Efficiency of E-commerce Websites

Abstract

Web page download times are important for e-commerce as they affect several business metrics, such as brand perception and conversion. A responsive web service is also desirable for search engine optimization. The widely used HTTP/1.1 protocol does not operate optimally in existing web environments because it suffers from problems such as bloated headers and ineffective use of TCP connections. Therefore, some e-commerce operators have already introduced the latest version of HTTP, which is called HTTP/2. However, a large number of e-commerce operators are still considering if HTTP/2 can produce significant benefits over HTTP/1.1. The HTTP/2 performance has been explored through a number of general-type studies focusing on all types of web sites. Some studies even present that HTTP/2 not necessarily significantly reduce the download times of web pages. In this study, we focus solely on e-commerce sites because ecommerce has better than average access to the benefits of HTTP/2. In addition to the download times of web pages, we investigate HTTP/2’s impact on network traffic volumes and server service efficiency. We found that the current method of exploiting HTTP/2 is unable to reduce significantly page download times. The server service capability was also at the same level in both versions.