There’s an uncomfortable truth in e-commerce: no matter how much you optimize your website, users perceive a delay at the exact moment they click and wait. That brief pause between clicking a link and the new page appearing is where conversions are lost, where people become impatient, and where a faster competitor snatches the sale.
At Transparent Edge, we’ve been exploring this issue from the edge of the web for some time now, and we’ve incorporated one of the most interesting tools to hit the web in recent years: Speculation Rules. They’re already available in our plugins for Magento, WordPress, and PrestaShop, and today we want to tell you what they are, why they matter, and, above all, how they change things for your customers.
What exactly are Speculation Rules?
The idea is simple and powerful: the browser prepares the next page before the user even clicks on it.
The Speculation Rules API is a modern standard that allows you to tell the browser which links are most likely to be visited next, so it can do its job ahead of time.
There are two modes:
- Prefetch: the browser downloads the HTML of the candidate page in advance. When the user clicks, much of the work is already done.
- Prerender: the browser goes even further and renders the entire page in the background. When you click, the transition is virtually instantaneous, as if the page were already there.
The difference with previous techniques like <link rel="prefetch"> is that Speculation Rules are much smarter and more configurable. They allow you to define rules based on click probability, exclude specific paths, and leave the final decision to the browser based on device and connection conditions.
The problem with doing it manually
Here’s the nuance that justifies our work. Speculation Rules are fantastic, but if configured incorrectly, they can get you into serious trouble:
- If you prerender a “add to cart” link, you may end up triggering actions that the user has not confirmed.
- If you pre-render the logout page, you might accidentally log them out.
- If you skip too many pages, you consume bandwidth and server resources unnecessarily.
In an e-commerce site, there are dozens of URLs that shouldn’t be left to chance. Setting them up correctly requires a thorough understanding of the platform and keeping those rules updated with every change to the store. It’s precisely the kind of tedious and error-prone task that shouldn’t fall on your shoulders.
What have we done?
We’ve integrated Speculation Rules directly into our plugins, with platform-specific configurations applied from the edge. In practice, this means three things for you:
No configuration is needed. Activate the plugin, and the rules are automatically generated and injected. You don’t have to touch any code or understand the API.
Smart exclusions are built in. Sensitive paths (cart, checkout, user account, logout, admin panels) are excluded by default. We prioritize what speeds up navigation, not what can break it.
Edge application. Because we inject the rules from our distribution network, we don’t add any extra weight or logic to your origin server. The work is done by the infrastructure you already have with us.
What does your website and your business gain?
For the visitor, navigation feels instantaneous. They’ll move seamlessly from the category page to the product page, or from the product page to the next product, eliminating that brief wait that, click after click, wears down patience.
This sense of fluidity has measurable consequences for the site where it’s implemented: faster navigation tends to translate into more page views per session, less abandonment, and better conversion rates. And since perceived performance metrics influence search engine ranking, it’s also a lever that works in your SEO’s favor.
The best part is that all this happens without you having to do anything different from what you already do, you can continue using your store as normal.
Speculation Rules are transparent improvements for the user; they won’t be seen as a feature, yet they’ll be noticeable with every click. We’ve taken care of the hard part: configuring them, mitigating risks, and applying them from the edge, so all you have to do is enjoy a faster website.
Diego Suárez is Chief Technology Officer at Transparent Edge.
If you’re ever looking for Diego, you’ll likely find him where there’s an operating system involved, not taking the easy path, but always diving into the most complex alternative. His constant edge-walking gives him the versatility and vision needed to shape the tech strategy at the core of Transparent Edge. Always straddling development and systems, he still finds time to stay in touch with users, because ultimately, they’re who every tech company works for.
FAQ
Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera) have native support for this since recent versions. Firefox and Safari do not yet implement the API. In unsupported browsers, the rules block is ignored without affecting page behavior: visitors using these browsers do not benefit from prerendering, but the experience is identical to what they already have.
Prerendered pages only register visits and trigger tracking tags when a user actually navigates to that URL, not when the browser prepares them in the background. Browsers that support the API expose document.prerendering so that third-party scripts can detect this state and defer execution until actual activation. Even so, if you’re using a custom analytics implementation, it’s advisable to verify this before enabling prerendering on pages with critical conversions.
Speculative requests pass through the Transparent Edge network just like any other request. If the URL has a cached response at the edge, prerendering serves it from there without reaching the origin. If the URL is not cached or has Cache-Control headers: no-store or private, the request goes to the origin server. That’s why our configuration excludes routes like the shopping cart or checkout by default, as these are usually private or have caching disabled. Prerendering them would generate unnecessary load on the origin without any real benefit for the visitor.
