Improving latency for Content Cards as banners

If you’re experiencing latency with your Content Cards implementation for critical use cases, such as homepage banners, review this page for strategies and tips to help resolve and speed up your rendering.

Use scheduled entry instead of action-based entry

Action-based cards in both campaigns and Canvases require background processing. Braze must first receive notice of the triggering action (such as a purchase occurring or a session starting) before creating a card for a user. As a result, there will be a delay before these cards become available.

Action-based cards will introduce added complexity to your application where you may find yourself continuously polling and refreshing to wait for the card to be available. Instead, configure your card to be Scheduled Entry, which will act as an availability window for the card to always be available to the targeted audience.

If you schedule your cards in advance, they’ll be ready, waiting for the user to open your app and request cards.

Use “At First Impression” send logic

Together with scheduled sends, the At First Impression option will avoid latency because of the speed in which a card is created and stored in Braze. The At Campaign Launch creates all cards for all segmented users in advance, which can take time to complete. The At First Impression option will generate a card for a user the first time it is requested, like when a user first opens your app.

This means that together with scheduled entry, cards will be available immediately, as soon as you need them, either at session start or for a time-based eligibility window.

Remember that Canvas entry is a prerequisite for receiving cards

When using Canvas, remember that a user must first enter the Canvas based on your configured entry criteria, and then must flow through your Content Card message step. Only then will the card be available for your app or website. Remember, there is built in latency for the card to be created once the user passes through the step and may delay when the card is available.

Don’t refresh cards excessively

Content Cards are automatically refreshed by the SDK at each new session start. You can also manually request a Content Card refresh at any time during an active session.

Calling the requestContentCardsRefresh method and refreshing too frequently may lead to rate limiting. If your app becomes temporarily rate-limited, you might not be able to refresh cards when you need to or at a critical time in the user’s engagement with your app.

To prevent this from happening, call this refresh method only at important times in the user lifecycle, like after a user makes a purchase or after a user upgrades their subscription tier.

Avoid including Connected Content

Connected Content enriches Content Cards with first-party or third-party API data. However, when included in a Content Card message, it will block the availability of the card until the Connected Content network request can be completed. In some cases, this will cause SDKs to retry a few seconds later in an effort not to delay your app’s rendering logic, which may wait for the SDK to complete its refresh task.

If you must use Connected Content, schedule these cards in advance and use the At Campaign Launch option so that cards are pre-created before a user’s upcoming session. Note that these cards won’t be available immediately as Braze writes all cards for all eligible users.