Speed up Australian websites using local Umbraco Cloud Hosting
In August 2023, Umbraco announced their expansion to regional hosting in Australia, creating faster Umbraco Cloud performance for sites in the region and opportunities for Umbraco Cloud clients to excel on the platform.
Fast forward to December 2023 and the Zeroseven team is excited to share that the R&J Batteries Europe-hosted website (https://www.rjbatt.com.au/ & https://www.rjbatt.co.nz/) has been successfully migrated to the new Australian data centre. We are incredibly privileged to have one of our trusted clients, R&J Batteries, officially be the first commercial customer on the Umbraco Cloud Australian data centre. R&J Batteries customers have seen huge improvements in UX and site performance in both desktop and mobile performance.
R&J Batteries
R&J Batteries are the fastest growing battery company in Australia. Established in 1995, they have a footprint across Australia and New Zealand of more than 10,000 experienced stockists and distributors, with over 29 company-owned stores.
Their Battery Finder tool, developed by Zeroseven, matches automotive, commercial, motorcycle, marine, deep cycle, solar and industrial batteries to customers’ requirements. Through R&J Batteries’ partnership with PARts DB, accurate and up to date product information for vehicle fitments is provided from the PartsDB API services in Australia. Unfortunately, as Umbraco Cloud managed hosting was previously only available in the United States and Europe, this meant that network traffic was having to cross the globe several times to provide real-time results to the website users in Australia and New Zealand, resulting in slow page load times.
Now that Umbraco have extended their Umbraco Cloud service to Australia, the R&J Batteries website was a perfect candidate to be the first to take advantage of the anticipated performance improvements this can provide. Through a successful collaboration with Luminary and Umbraco, the migration project was delivered 12 December 2023, when R&J Batteries website went live on Umbraco Cloud Australia.
With the new region hosting located on the same side of the world as it’s users and PARts DB, the site has seen a significant improvement in performance for end-users, especially when using the Battery Finder tool.
R&J Batteries can now have the reliability of the Umbraco Cloud platform with the performance of being locally hosted.
AU Umbraco Cloud
It only recently became possible to create and host Umbraco Cloud projects in Australia. Benefits of local hosting include improved speed and faster websites, ease in meeting data privacy requirements, overall better user experience, and no additional costs. This is an exciting time for Australian and New Zealand companies who are looking for new opportunities in the region.
Zeroseven send our congratulations to R&J Batteries on this achievement, especially as an early adopter, and wish to thank Luminary and Umbraco Support for their assistance and enthusiasm in undertaking this project.