Slow-loading web pages can have a big impact on a site’s internet traffic and user experience. With so much competition, ensuring a website loads quickly is fundamental to website design.
A Google study found that there was a 32% increase in web page bounce rate likelihood when page load time was prolonged from 1 to 3 seconds. Ensuring that their web pages load quickly is vitally important for businesses, as a good user experience has a huge impact on a website’s success. There are many reasons for a webpage to load slowly, including unoptimized images, too many third-party widgets or plug-ins, and unscaled web servers.
Another key reason is ineffective data storage and retrieval, especially if they hold large amounts of information. The most common database management systems for websites are relational databases and NoSQL databases. However, more and more web developers are using a new type of database to help improve web page speed: the vector database.
What is a Vector Database?
A vector database differs from traditional and NoSQL databases because it stores data on a vector, allowing it to perform a similarity search. The vectors are a sequence of numbers that can represent any type of data, from text and image to audio and video, and can be broken down into components. These vectors are then stored as data points in a high-dimensional space, and data points with similar attributes or characteristics will naturally gravitate toward each other to form clusters.
This unique storage allows vector databases to perform similarity searches where instead of looking for precise matches between identical vectors, the vector database identifies vectors that reside close to the given query. For example, if a user profile for a webpage is stored as a vector, then all their details, such as their name, login details, and past browsing, will be contained within a vector. The web page will be able to search for individual data points related to that vector or find information and produce results from multiple vectors.
How a Vector Database Can Improve Page Speed
➢ Data Search and Retrieval Speed
A key advantage of using a vector database over a more traditional database to improve web page speed is its search and retrieval speed. Proponents of vector databases believe that they work as much as 100 times faster than previous traditional database techniques. A vector database is able to instantly perform a search across large data volumes to quickly retrieve relevant data. This is achieved through approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) algorithms that speed up the search time for large datasets. This allows the vector database to return results in milliseconds even if the dataset has billions of different data points. This will rapidly increase web page speed as it will reduce the time required to process queries and find results.
➢ High-Dimensional Data Handling
Most databases are particularly suited to a certain type of data, which can slow down web pages if the website database isn’t optimized for the data needed. Using a vector database, the web page can store and retrieve any type of data, which will ensure a fast and accurate user experience. Vector databases are also designed to handle large data stacks and seamlessly scale as the data increases.
➢ Similarity Searches For Web Page Applications
Web pages often use a vector database to perform product recommendations. A similarity search allows vector databases to quickly find appropriate results based on the meaning of the query rather than just keyword-matching, which is how most databases operate. This allows the product recommendation application to work instantly, improving the web page’s load time speed. Vector databases are also used to help power large language models (LLMs) such as chatbots, a common feature on most business web pages, and ensure that the web page can provide instantaneous results.
As web pages are able to hold and store more information, the need to use a database that makes the web page faster will become increasingly important to businesses. This is why vector databases are becoming much more popular among web developers and businesses with a large online presence.
