Understanding edge architecture in Adobe Experience Manager Sites
Best-in-class site experiences require two key components: engaging content and excellent site performance. Multiple studies have shown that high-performing, fast-loading sites not only deliver a better customer experience, but also drive measurable business impact — including improved engagement and conversion.
Let’s dive into how Adobe Experience Manager Sites with Edge Delivery Services uses innovative edge architecture, enabling your site to achieve lightning-fast page-load times.
Why edge architecture is important
Unlike traditional architectures which rely on centralized data centers, Experience Manager Sites uses a cloud-native, serverless edge architecture. This architecture includes multiple authoring tools and content publishing services at the outermost edges of the network, closest to where the experience is consumed. The result is reduced latency and increased page load speeds, delivering a smoother user experience and ultimately improving key site performance metrics — like Google Lighthouse scores and Core Web Vitals.
Optimizing these key performance metrics improves:
- Search engine optimization (SEO) and traffic: Improving Core Web Vitals helps your site rank higher in search results since Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor that Google uses. With higher search rankings, you can attract more traffic and opportunities to convert customers.
- Bounce rate: Boosting site performance and page load speeds provide a better user experience, reducing bounce rates.
- Engagement and conversion: By connecting with your customers faster, they are more likely to stay, engage, and convert.
Understanding Experience Manager Sites architecture
There are three key layers in the edge architecture that work together to optimize site performance:
- Delivery service: Use your existing infrastructure, including CDNs, DNS, and certificates, to deliver the experience created in Experience Manager Sites to modern web browsers, native mobile applications, or other backend applications.
- Publishing service: Pull content from your preferred authoring tools to preview and adjust content before publication and delivery.
- Content and code: Provide the flexibility to use existing developer tools, such as GitHub, easy authoring tools like WYSIWYG editing, and the option to use familiar tools like Microsoft Word and Google Docs, all directly in Experience Manager Sites.
Experience Manager Sites’ edge architecture, in combination with phased rendering and persistent caching, ensures optimal site performance to deliver fast-loading experiences that increase traffic, reduce bounce rates, and boost conversion. And real-user monitoring (RUM) keeps your site performing at its best by capturing real-time user insights — while maintaining privacy — to proactively optimize the site experience.
To dive deeper into our architecture for Edge Delivery Services in Experience Manager Sites, check out our technical documentation.