It’s time to demand HTTP/2 for your site.
In May 2015 the first major revision of the HTTP spec in 14 years was finalized as RFC 7540 (IETF, 2015). This post is intended to help…
In May 2015 the first major revision of the HTTP spec in 14 years was finalized as RFC 7540 (IETF, 2015). This post is intended to help merchants understand the implications of this revision and how it affects their bottom line.
TL, DR (Too long, didn’t read).
You should upgrade to HTTP/2
Sooner is better
Some users don’t support it, but they will. Investing in HTTP/1.1 optimized design is short-sighted, and will have to be undone in future regardless.
HTTP (or Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is the protocol governing how your customers browsers interact with your e-commerce store. HTTP/2 makes several architectural changes in this connection such as:
Making page loads faster
Making it possible your development team to optimize your website for good development and good performance.
HTTP/2 started life SPDY, a protocol developed by Google following a series of experiments designed to make the web faster. Following the release of SPDY it was implemented in both servers and browsers and rapidly became a defacto standard. However, rather than allow the unofficial SPDY spec to determine the conversation around and future of the web, the IETF started work on creating a new HTTP spec, including many more parties in the conversation. The result is HTTP/2, a more thoughtfully constructed, polished protocol than either SPDY or HTTP/1.1.
What are the advantages?
HTTP/2 allows us to make several changes to the way we architect our web applications, such as:
Reduce the amount of data transmitted to our users (especially important for mobile).
Make more efficient use of the network connection.
Allow browsers to prioritize certain assets, decreasing page render time.
Allow better quality and more innovative application development.
Why should you care?
HTTP/2 has been implemented by Google and Akamai and will shortly be implemented by CloudFlare and MaxCDN. These companies constitute a major chunk of internet traffic and have vast experience optimizing for and developing tools around increased performance. In order to take part in the next generation of web development HTTP/2 will be a requirement.
Implementing it sooner will reduce the amount of useless time (and cash) spent optimizing for HTTP/1.1.
If you’re curious, you can check out exactly who is using HTTP/2 (or QUIC, or SPDY) using the Chrome net-internals tool in the Chrome browser
chrome://net-internals/#http2
What are the risks?
It’s new, but battle tested. While HTTP/2 is a new technology it is based on the SPDY protocol, implemented in popular web servers (Apache, NGINX et al.) and widely deployed. However, the implementations in both Apache and NGINX are still young and developers may face challenges with browser compatibility.
Support is growing, but not 100%. Currently, ~69% of all users support HTTP/2. Most notably, users who use the core browser for Android (not Chrome), iOS users who haven’t yet upgraded to iOS9, and Windows users who haven’t upgraded to Windows 10 all cannot access a website over HTTP/2. However, most servers (including Apache and NGINX) serve the website over both HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2. This means that, while your users won’t experiences the benefits of HTTP/2, they will still be able to access the site as they do now.
The following browsers / devices support HTTP/2:
Chrome (Android, Windows 10, Windows 8, Linux)
Safari (iOS 9, Safari 10.11+)
Edge (Windows 10)
IE 11 (Windows 10)
Opera (Windows, Linux)
Firefox (Windows, Linux)
This invites the question: Should we optimise for HTTP/2? My option is yes. Most browsers are “Evergreen” (or self-updating), and the most recent versions of all browsers (except IE) all implement HTTP/2. While users who are still using older browsers only compatible with HTTP/1.1 will be served a slower version of your website, a rapidly growing majority of users will be using HTTP/2 and not optimizing for these users strikes me as a little short sighted.
It costs money. As with any new technology, there’s a cost to upgrade. It’s a much smaller cost than most development processes, and should be as simple as upgrading the server your website is being served off. It may take time for your development team to understand the HTTP/2 architecture well enough to take full advantage but the sooner you start this process the cheaper it will be in the long run.
How to start the conversation
Contrary to the title, there are things that you need to ensure are implemented before you consider HTTP/2. Firstly, HTTP/2 requires SSL — If your website does not have SSL everywhere, implement that as soon as possible (if only for the PageRank bump) [#]_. Secondly, although HTTP/2 is pretty cool, if you’re not having “how fast is my site” conversations with your development team you’d be better off staring there. The “PageSpeed Insights” (https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/) tool is a good place to get some insight.
It’s best to start the conversation with “What effect does site speed have on my customers?”. If you’re achieving a “time to glass” of 1s over HTTPS on 4G connections then, congratulations! You probably don’t need to do anything. If you don’t, it’s a worthy goal to strive for.
If you’re not sure how fast your site is, the Google PageSpeed Insights tool can be super helpful to determine whether your website is following the “best practices” of the day:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
If you’re otherwise pretty sure that your speed ducks are in a row, place a ticket, schedule a phone call or otherwise start the conversation with “What is HTTP/2, and should we implement it”. I suggest you read a little beyond this article (the HTTP/2 FAQ in the references is a good place to start) before you start this conversation as the technology is new and you might catch your developers a little off guard.
Let me know what your experiences with H/2. Something awful backfired? I’d love to know about it — It’ll make me a better developer (clearly there’s something I didn’t know about).
Thanks
Thanks to Martin Howden for his invaluable feedback and Jackie Mavridis for her patient review.
Please be aware this post may change in the future.
This post is as true as it can be at the time. However, sometimes things are wrong, badly phrased or will otherwise be arbitrarily changed. If you see something, say something — Leave a comment and it’ll be clarified further (and you’ll be added to the “Thanks” section)
References
Shuler, R. (2015). How Does the Internet Work?. Web.stanford.edu. Retrieved 27 September 2015, from http://web.stanford.edu/class/msande91si/www-spr04/readings/week1/InternetWhitepaper.htm#http
Ietf.org,. (2015). Retrieved 27 September 2015, from https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt
IETF (2015). RFC 7540 — Hypertext Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2). Retrieved 27 September 2015, from https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7540Blog.httpwatch.com,. (2015). A Simple Performance Comparison of HTTPS, SPDY and HTTP/2 | HttpWatch BlogHttpWatch Blog. Retrieved 27 September 2015, from https://blog.httpwatch.com/2015/01/16/a-simple-performance-comparison-of-https-spdy-and-http2/
Google Docs,. (2015). HTTP/2 is here, let’s optimize! — Velocity SC 2015. Retrieved 27 September 2015, from https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r7QXGYOLCh4fcUq0jDdDwKJWNqWK1o4xMtYpKZCJYjM/present?slide=id.p19
Http2.github.io,. (2015). HTTP/2 Frequently Asked Questions. Retrieved 27 September 2015, from https://http2.github.io/faq/#whats-the-relationship-with-spdy
Dev.chromium.org,. (2015). SPDY: An experimental protocol for a faster web — The Chromium Projects. Retrieved 27 September 2015, from http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-whitepaper
Hello HTTP/2, G. (2015). Hello HTTP/2, Goodbye SPDY. Chromium Blog. Retrieved 27 September 2015, from http://blog.chromium.org/2015/02/hello-http2-goodbye-spdy-http-is_9.html
GitHub,. (2015). icing/mod_h2. Retrieved 27 September 2015, from https://github.com/icing/mod_h2
NGINX,. (2015). NGINX Open Source 1.9.5 Released with HTTP/2 Support. Retrieved 27 September 2015, from https://www.nginx.com/blog/nginx-1-9-5
Caniuse.com,. (2015). Can I use… Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc. Retrieved 27 September 2015, from http://caniuse.com/#feat=http2
Benfield, C. (2015). HTTP/2 Picks Up Steam: iOS 9. Lukasa’s Echochamber. Retrieved 28 September 2015, from https://lukasa.co.uk/2015/06/HTTP2_Picks_Up_Steam_iOS9/
signal, H. (2015). HTTPS as a ranking signal. Official Google Webmaster Central Blog. Retrieved 27 September 2015, from http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html