Engineers at AutoAnything.com, No. 204 in Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide, didn’t think the web site was particularly slow, but wondered if they could make it faster. The auto parts e-retailer maintains a deep inventory of 4.2 million SKUs and displays its home page with several dozen navigation categories and promotional prompts that could take 9.5 seconds to load for some visitors.

“The site was getting slightly bloated. As you get bigger pages, you lose focus and control on what the user experience is like,” says Parag Patel, chief technology officer at AutoAnything.

When the web acceleration firm Strangeloop approached AutoAnything and suggested it could improve the customer experience by speeding page loading times, Patel was open to listening. AutoAnything tested the service in January and February, but was adamant up front that any impact be measureable in terms of financial performance.