Connecting More People With a Speedy Server - All Join On

Social networking site All Join On needed a fast, scalable solution from which to grow successfully. On its previous shared solution the website was operating slowly and users were leaving in their droves.

Joining UKFast ensured www.alljoinon.com received:

• A dedicated solution with room to grow without overwhelming the technology
• A website speed of 690KB/second - fantastic for attracting and retaining customers

The All Join On concept

The founder and owner of All Join On signed off from work with a back injury, bored of daytime TV and craving people to talk to.

Tapping into her entrepreneurial spirit, she came up with an idea which would link everyone at home during the day; whether they were a stay at home mum, on sick leave, maternity, shiftworkers or had been made redundant. And so All Join On was born.

Choosing UKFast

"When we set up the site we were with a different hosting provider on a shared platform," recalls Andrea Newton of All Join On.

"We quickly outgrew the solution and started having some severe problems with speed. The site was just getting slower and slower and people were leaving after several failed attempts to access it. The user experience was just awful.

"I was getting some bad feedback and kept posting up apologies. It was terrible that as we were gaining momentum the site speed, or lack of it, was causing the business to almost self destruct."

"When I signed up to UKFast the effect was fantastic. The speed of the site was incredible."

UKFast understands that people don't like to wait. Google research shows that just a half second delay in page load speed can cause as much as a 20 per cent drop in traffic.

This is because web users are becoming ever-more demanding and if a page is not up to speed, they will simply go elsewhere.

All Join On had experienced this before signing up to UKFast, so when looking for their new provider they understood the importance of speed to their customers.

"We had 4,000 clients when we joined the network. Now we have 60,000 visitors a month."

"When I signed up to UKFast the effect was fantastic. The speed of the site was incredible and it showed in the amount of people signing up.

"In just two weeks our traffic doubled and in the first month it was up by 300 per cent. It hasn't slowed down since."

The secret of UKFast's speed

Our secret to speed is in our network. The UKFast network is tailored to ensure speed for our customers. It has been independently rated as the fastest in the UK by Webperf.

UKFast aggregates bandwidth from four major providers and our data centres are located at the hub of the internet. In essence, this ensures information travels across our network onto the internet as fast as possible because we are at its centre.

When you consider that the UKFast network deals with 100,000 packets per second on a busy day, you'll understand the strength of infrastructure underlying UKFast client solutions.

"The speed of the site now we're with UKFast has improved dramatically and in consequence so has our customer numbers," says Andrea.

"We had 4,000 clients when we joined the network and just three months later the tally was 15,000. Now, just over a year later, we have a very impressive 60,000 visitors a month regularly using www.alljoinon.com."

The future for All Join On

The All Join On website now operates at a super-fast 690 KB per second. Its ever-growing customer base is happy with the site's quick response and the business continues to flourish. But what is the next step?

Andrea says: "When I joined UKFast I knew that should my business grow it couldn't overwhelm the solution like it did on my old shared solution. UKFast reassured me that when the time comes to upgrade, it will be seamless and without the slowdowns I had experienced previously."

Customer service

"The great thing about the UKFast service is that I don't have to worry about the hosting. I've been a customer for over twelve months and I just don't have to think about it anymore. I can concentrate my full attentions on the running of the business."

"Before signing up I'd researched thoroughly other hosting providers and met UKFast at Internet World. I was impressed with MD Lawrence Jones' story. With the fact that he'd built UKFast on his own experiences with hosting, just like I'd built my business from a personal experience struck a chord.

"He was an entrepreneur like me and he approached hosting with the customer's needs in mind because he'd been there too. Personal experience breeds a passion for the job. I'm glad to say that I have no regrets about the decision I made all those months ago. UKFast has exceeded my expectations."