Case study . Media & Entertainment
The FFF improves page load times with TwicPics
About the FFF
Created on April 7, 1919, the Fédération Française de Football (FFF) — France's national soccer federation — has been around for over 100 years.
The FFF organizes, manages and regulates high-level amateur soccer. It also oversees the funding and training of young male and female athletes, as well as the training of coaches throughout France.
One of the FFF's core values is to ensure access to sport for everyone through local soccer clubs.
The federation currently has 1.9 million credentialed alumni and 1.59 million players, as well as 400,000 volunteers and 15,000 amateur teams. Some 30,000 games are played in France each weekend.
The FFF website is the repository for all information relating to soccer in France and, since the creation of FFF TV last year, fans have been able to keep up with the news through video content.
The challenge
Improve page load times
The FFF website works with myriad collaborators, such as editors and journalists, who do not necessarily have the expertise to post and optimize their images online.
Some of these images are photos taken directly from the AFP, which sends them in high definition without file compression, so they are ill-suited to digital uses.
As a result, it was hard for the federation to achieve optimal display times for its website pages, especially for users browsing on their mobile phones.
In addition to the problem of non-adapted images, there are also the various content management systems used by each federation site, disparate image formats, (homepage banners, thumbnails in newsfeeds, etc.) and the diversity of the many devices on the market (cell phones, PCs, tablets and more). Accounting for all these parameters makes image management even more problematic.
For The FFF, which sees page load time as a critical indicator, it was a priority to optimize its media content despite the difficulties.
Indeed, on the federation website, display time determines the monetization of banners on ticketing and merchandise pages, as well as its contests and partner operations.
To prevent data-heavy images from weighing on its revenue growth, The FFF was in need of a solution that could optimize its media and therefore improve its website performance.
The TwicPics solution
Facilitate image management, from creation to online posting
In search of a smart image solution, The FFF homed in on TwicPics.
By tracking the appropriate HTML and CSS implementations, TwicPics Native takes care of everything, which allows The FFF to simplify image management and save a considerable amount of time.
Indeed, thanks to TwicPics, images are automatically optimized in real time and on the fly: first, based on the data indications in the CSS code (image aspect ratio, display size, etc.), but also based on the context of the user accessing the image (WebP compatibility, DPR, bandwidth, etc.). Furthermore, the TwicPics focus feature makes it possible to identify the point of interest in the images without any human intervention by The FFF staff.
The advantage of automatic detection is especially important: all the images on The FFF website, from banners to news thumbnails, are now perfectly suited to all devices and they no longer affect page load times. Users on mobile devices can now enjoy an optimal experience.
TwicPics makes it easy for journalists to publish images, while also simplifying the work of developers, who no longer have to integrate multiple image variations, which were previously defined according to the plethora of user devices and contexts.
It all amounts to significant time savings for The FFF personnel, who can focus on other tasks, with full confidence in their website performance and the user experience.
The results
66% boost in page load time
The responsiveness and availability of the TwicPics team allowed for a great working relationship with our developers to optimize the visuals on our site!
With 3 to 4 million page views per month on its website, The FFF is now serving up 350 million images.
By integrating the TwicPics solution in its website, The FFF was able to quickly reduce the size of image files. As a result, the average page load time dropped from 9 to 3.5 seconds, almost a threefold decrease.
The bounce rate also followed the same trend and is now at 32% — a stellar rate for a media site.
According to Davy Leon, Head of Digital at The FFF, the TwicPics staff were available and responsive in training The FFF teams to integrate the solution and steer the project to success. Employees at the two companies were able to work together to implement image optimization across the entire FFF website.
The teamwork and the results were convincing enough to prompt The FFF to commit to further collaboration with the TwicPics team on several additional projects in the coming years.
