Retailers Drive Conversion Rates and Revenues with Dynamic Transaction Acceleration

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the leading provider of cloud optimization services, today announced that its retail-industry customers on average have experienced significantly improved conversion rates after leveraging Akamai's acceleration services.  Based on a comparison of conversion rates for Akamai customers and non-Akamai customers from Internet Retailer's Top 500(1) list, Akamai customers experienced a 33 percent higher rate, on average, than Internet retailers in the Top 500 list that are not Akamai customers.  In this year's Top 500 Vendor Guide, Akamai is also named as the leading service provider in the Content Delivery Network category.

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"Today's consumers demand a fast, engaging and secure online shopping environment when searching for a product online. We see a direct relationship between online revenues and site performance and, therefore, we have to ensure our site performs well and loads fast," said Michael Cooper, Vice President Online Operations, HomeDepot.com. "Akamai helps us achieve these goals. Leveraging Akamai's Dynamic Site Accelerator solution, we have experienced 30 percent improvement in conversion rates, enabling us to deliver an enhanced and reliable online shopping experience to our customers, and shoppers will want to keep coming back to our site."

Akamai's Advertising Decision Solutions' pixel-free predictive segments are designed to help retailers drive transactions on their sites.  Leveraging data from the Akamai's unique online shopping data cooperative and powered by Akamai's Dynamic Site Accelerator solution, the pixel-free implementation is a flexible tool designed to help retailers capture larger audiences and more site visits and identify and reach buyers who are in-market for what they sell and are ready to make a purchase in the very near future.  Leveraging Akamai's comprehensive suite of solutions, retailers can act on valuable audience intelligence right away, allowing them to have more in-depth insight and better access to meaningful consumer segments.  

"Critical to our online success is the ability to attract the most promising buyers to our site while ensuring that our customer's browse-to-buy experience is smooth, reliable and quick," said Leon Kuperman, President and Chief Technology Officer, Bidz.com.  "Akamai is accelerating the dynamic transactions on our site and improving our site performance.  Since implementing the Akamai's Dynamic Site Accelerator, we have experienced a three-fold improvement in page response time."

Akamai's Dynamic Site Accelerator services leverage Akamai's globally-distributed platform to deliver enhanced and consistent site performance for retailers.  Transactions that are SSL-based are delivered over Akamai's PCI-compliant SSL network, enabling retailers to increase the protection of their credit card transaction data without costly internal infrastructure investment.  The Akamai solutions not only permit retailers to accelerate the delivery of their dynamic transactions and interactive content, but have also helped drive conversions and reduced infrastructure costs by offloading traffic from customers' Web infrastructures.

"Akamai sees a direct correlation between improved site performance and increased revenues for our customers," said Pedro Santos, Chief Strategist for eCommerce, Akamai Technologies.  "A recent study(2) has shown that consumers expect pages to load in two seconds or less; thus, there is a need for retailers to look for solutions that help accelerate their performance and page response time.  By leveraging Akamai's Dynamic Site Accelerator and our complete suite of solutions, retailers enjoy consistently high and fast performance across their Web sites while enhancing the customer experience and being able to identify in-market shoppers for what they sell."

About Akamai

Akamai® provides market-leading, cloud-based services for optimizing Web and mobile content and applications, online HD video, and secure e-commerce. Combining highly-distributed, energy-efficient computing with intelligent software, Akamai's global platform is transforming the cloud into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, transact and collaborate. To learn how the world's leading enterprises are optimizing their business in the cloud, please visit www.akamai.com and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, any inaccuracies in data collected or reported by Akamai, changes in Akamai's customer base, changes in, or disruptions to, Akamai's services, and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.

(1) Internet Retailer Top 500 list: http://www.internetretailer.com/top500

(2) Forrester Consulting Study on "eCommerce Web Site Performance Today"

SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.