Yottaa delivers blazing fast, AI-secured e-commerce experiences at the edge

Key Results

• Achieved a 40% improvement in time to first byte (TTFB) and a 36% improvement in start render speeds.

• Boosted overall page load performance by 20%, driving an 8.8% improvement in total conversions and a 15% increase in mobile conversions.

• Maintained a zero false positive rating with Next-Gen WAF, enabling immediate enforcement of blocking mode.

• Mitigated short-burst DDoS attacks automatically in real time to protect brand uptime.

• Transformed HTML on the fly to push hot fixes and optimize the client experience using a custom Rust-based Compute service.

The challenge

Yottaa is a website performance company dedicated to helping e-commerce customers create the fastest and most secure website experiences possible. Overseeing more than 1,500 digital storefronts, Yottaa’s expert team supports lean e-commerce teams that don’t always have the bandwidth to keep up with the complexities of edge delivery. 

Ben Trafton, VP Client Services at Yottaa, explained, “When we think about edge delivery, when we think about weaving together content from lots of sources, and then when you layer the aspect of securing it on top of that, everything gets really complicated.”

This complexity affects the bottom line, particularly on mobile devices where user attention spans are short. “For a lot of our customers, we see 60-70% of their traffic from mobile,” Trafton notes. “When you can quickly get the page loaded, get the product loaded ... that builds the confidence that ultimately drives conversion rates.” 

With a client base that includes high-end luxury fashion brands as well as fast-growing internet startups, Yottaa needed an infrastructure partner that could eliminate performance drag, scale security effortlessly, and allow customers to focus on product innovation and go-to-market strategies rather than manual maintenance.

The solution

Fastly serves as the core delivery and compute engine underneath all of Yottaa's managed service offerings. By replacing discrete site configurations with unified Fastly services, Yottaa scales operations efficiently and utilizes Fastly APIs to deploy new sites within minutes.

 “It allows us to actually scale much better,” Trafton said. “We can make one change across multiple different sites at the same time.” 

• Transform HTML at the edge: Yottaa built a custom Rust compute service to parse and modify HTML on the fly as it flows through the Fastly edge. This capability allows them to optimize tags, clean code, or deploy emergency hot fixes instantly without requiring a full development release cycle.

• Optimize dynamic images: Yottaa leverages Fastly's out-of-the-box image optimization to dynamically transcode and resize images into formats like WebP and AVIF. Using simple query parameters, they optimize media pulled from disparate sources like S3 buckets, eliminating the need for third-party image vendors.

Security: Robust protection against DDoS, WAF threats, and AI bots

Security is paramount for major e-commerce brands because their applications attract malicious actors seeking to disrupt operations or gain access to sensitive data. Yottaa deploys Fastly's complete suite of security solutions to defend against increasingly sophisticated challenges.

• Automatically mitigate volumetric attacks: The nature of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) traffic has drastically evolved; instead of prolonged bombardments, Yottaa found attackers executing short bursts of malicious traffic lasting only 30 to 60 seconds. Because these micro-attacks conclude before a human can manually respond, traditional manual mitigation fails. Fastly DDoS Protection has been their automatic solution, establishing intelligent traffic baselines and neutralizing short-burst attacks in seconds.This automated DDoS protection eliminates the need for manual intervention, effectively smooths out uptime metrics, and ensures continuous, reliable service for Yottaa's high-profile customers.

"When it comes to malicious traffic - traditionally known as DDoS traffic for our customers' e-commerce sites- we've been able to use Fastly DDoS protection to essentially smooth that out and automatically mitigate that bad traffic so that the sites can continuously run and service their customers." said Ben Trafton

• Accurately block malicious requests: Yottaa relies on Fastly's Next-Gen WAF to identify malicious traffic through out-of-the-box and custom e-commerce signals, seamlessly detecting and mitigating threats like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and malicious bots. Because the Next-Gen WAF’s SmartParse detection engine is so accurate, Yottaa was able to skip the traditional multi-week "learn mode" and immediately move to full blocking mode with absolute confidence.

• Manage AI bots and protect high-value content: The explosion of AI traffic on Yottaa’s customer sites presents a dual challenge: AI crawlers aggressively scraping proprietary data to feed Large Language Models (LLMs), and AI fetchers executing transactions on behalf of humans. Fastly’s AI Bot Management provides out-of-the-box visibility into these distinct verified bot activities and allows Yottaa’s team to gain control over this type of traffic. To protect their customers' intellectual property even further, Yottaa utilizes Fastly’s ContentGuard deployment to inspect requests before they even hit their cache, effectively detecting the bots before they can ingest proprietary images and confidential content without consent.

"With all this increase in traffic from AI bots, the question is, can we handle it? Honestly, I’m not worried about it because we have Fastly." noted Ben Trafton

Key takeaway

Instead of managing fragmented infrastructure, Yottaa now relies on a unified edge platform backed by a highly engaged support system.

“One of the things for me is I'm not worried about things going bump in the night,” Trafon noted. “There's an uptime, a reliability, and a confidence in the platform, which is peace of mind for me and my team.”

This reliability is crucial during high-stakes events like the holiday shopping season—the "Super Bowl" for e-commerce—where Fastly’s live event resources and seamless Slack integrations provide Yottaa with immediate, expert escalation paths.

The path forward

As e-commerce continues to evolve and AI-driven bot traffic scales, Yottaa remains confident in their ability to secure and accelerate digital storefronts. Supported by Fastly’s continuous innovation, extensive global network, and powerful edge compute capabilities, Yottaa is fully equipped to experiment with advanced technologies—like dynamic early hints—to push the boundaries of website performance and automated security.