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Early Hints: Faster First Impressions

In the competitive landscape of web applications, every millisecond between request and render is an opportunity to captivate or cull potential customers.
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Summary

Harper’s Early Hints solution improves web performance by leveraging HTTP 103 responses to preload high-priority assets like CSS, images, and JavaScript before the full server response is ready. This reduces time-to-interaction and enhances Core Web Vitals, boosting SEO and conversion rates. Backed by Harper’s unified architecture, it delivers low-latency performance at scale without requiring code changes.

In the competitive landscape of web applications, every millisecond between request and render is an opportunity to captivate or cull potential customers.

Harper’s Early Hints solution shortens the wait by prompting web clients to proactively download high-priority resources using a partial 103 HTTP response before the full 200 response is returned. That means by the time your application is ready to render a hero image, key css, or mission-critical JavaScript, the browser already has it.

The result? Faster time-to-interaction, improved CWVs (Core Web Vitals) like LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), and better outcomes across the board—from SEO to conversions.

Why Performance Still Wins

For many, web performance has matured from a front-end afterthought to a board-level priority. Whether you're building an e-commerce site, a travel booking platform, or a global news site, speed is a key growth lever.

Even minor delays in response time can cause significant degradation in CWVs, bounce rates, and conversions. And as applications become more dynamic and data-driven, the gap between request initiation and response generation has widened.

That’s the window Early Hints is designed to target: the idle latency that exists between the initial request and your server’s full response. With Harper, you convert that downtime into a head start.

The Harper Early Hints Solution

Harper approaches Early Hints as a native extension of its fused architecture, where compute, storage, and caching functions are delivered in the same runtime, ensuring extreme performance at scale. Distributed to multiple regions, Harper minimizes both server and network latency, ensuring hints arrive before HTML content. 

Key Benefits:

  • Accelerated Page Loads
    Preload critical assets (fonts, CSS, images) before HTML content, decreasing load times by a few hundred milliseconds—improving Core Web Vitals, SEO, and conversion rates.

  • Built for Scale
    Harper responds to Early Hint requests with P95 server-side latency under 2 ms, even across hundreds of millions of records, with end-to-end delivery typically complete in 30–50 ms.

  • Composable Edge Execution
    Add capabilities like redirect management or above-the-fold asset delivery without requiring additional systems, allowing you to maximize the value of your investment.

Get Started

Early Hints enhance page performance without modifying a single line of application logic. Whether you're optimizing for Core Web Vitals to drive SEO or delivering lightning-fast experiences to boost conversions, Harper makes low-latency easy.

Contact our team at sales@harperdb.io to activate Early Hints today.

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