Web performance, ‘a crucial challenge for CMPs in 2024’
For this article on web performance, we met Sébastien Houzé, CTO of Axeptio. Axeptio is a CMP SaaS solution that enables brands and publishers to offer their website’s visitors the best consent option experience via its fun and informative cookie banners. Axeptio offers an experience that facilitates the different types of opt-in consent, providing real choices to internet users in compliance with European and international laws and regulations.
Optimize Matter is a certified Axeptio partner and expert, true to its commitment to offering customers the best platforms on the market.
Optimize Matter: Is webperf a major issue for CMPs in 2024?
Sébastien Houzé: Web performance has absolutely become a crucial issue for CMPs in 2024. To put it into context, we mustn’t forget that, over and above the legal compliance issues for website publishers, the CMP sets the tone for first impressions because users interact with it in the very beginning.
Users demand fast, fluid online experiences. Latency can have a negative impact on a user’s perception of a website, impacting the customer journey and therefore the buying experience of visitors to a site (particularly an e-commerce site). This latency is responsible for poor results in terms of acquiring new leads and customers. The strength of Axeptio’s CMP, compared to other solutions on the market, is precisely that it does not increase the loading time of our customers’ websites.
We also differentiate quite well between the needs of our customers by offering two distinct CMPs. The first CMP, known as ‘for Brands’, is designed for our customers who essentially need compliance, analytical monitoring, and conversion for their acquisition campaigns. For our content publisher customers, we have a second CMP, known as ‘for Publishers’, that addresses monetisation issues. In addition, with the increasing focus of search engines on Core Web Vitals, good web performance is essential not only for user experience but also for SEO. At Axeptio, we are convinced that the performance of our consent management platform must be exemplary so as not to become a slowing factor for our customers.
Optimize matter: How have you integrated webperf in 2024?
Sébastien Houzé: In 2024, we adopted a holistic approach to integrate web performance into all aspects of our product development. We worked closely with the Google teams to optimise our CMP according to the latest recommendations and indicators, in particular the INP (Interaction to Next Paint). We have also put in place regular performance audits, automated testing and ongoing optimisation to ensure that our platform remains high-performing and responsive.
Optimize matter: What measurement systems do you use?
Sébastien Houzé: We use a combination of measurement systems to assess the performance of our platform. The main tools include Google Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights. These allow us to monitor key metrics, including Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS) as well as the new INP indicator. At scale, Google also produces reports via Looker Studio to compare these indicators between the main CMP players on the market, both on Desktop and Mobile. This multi-tool approach gives us a comprehensive and detailed view of our CMP’s performance.
Optimize matter: What are the major optimisations?
Sébastien Houzé: Among the major optimisations, we have focused on reducing the weight of our CMP script (from 214Kib to 93Kib for our CMP for Brands, 83Kib for our CMP for publishers, which puts us at the top of market solutions). We are also working on optimising the management of external resources, and improving server response times (distribution via a Content Delivery Network or CDN guaranteeing the lowest possible latency rates for retrieving our SDK from anywhere in the world). We have also worked on optimising user interactions by reducing the time taken for the first significant interaction, which is directly linked to the INP indicator. These optimisations have made our solution lighter and faster, offering a better user experience.
Optimize matter: Are you currently working on new optimisations?
Sébastien Houzé: Yes, we’re constantly looking for new optimisations. We are currently exploring advanced techniques linked to the initialisation stages of our CMP to further improve loading times. We’re also taking a close look at technologies that are gradually being adopted by new versions of web browsers, such as Speculative Loading, for example.
Optimize matter: Do you have any beta testers?
Sébastien Houzé: Yes, we have a beta testing program with some of our most innovative customers. These customers help us test our new features and optimisations before they are rolled out across the board. Their feedback is invaluable in ensuring that our enhancements really do meet the needs of the market and deliver significant added value to our users. In fact, we have customers in common and we’d be delighted to count them towards our beta testers.
Optimize matter: Which partners do you work with?
Sébastien Houzé: We work with a number of strategic partners to continually improve our CMP. In addition to our partnership with Google, our clients include many SEO agencies and performance experts. We also work with an ecosystem of experts listed on our website. These collaborations enable us to stay at the cutting edge of best practice and the latest innovations in web performance.
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