A different approach to optimizing Azure web application performance is to leverage serverless computing options such as Azure Functions. By breaking down the application into smaller, function-based components, it allows for more efficient resource utilization and scalability. Additionally, using Azure Application Gateway with Web Application Firewall (WAF) helps protect the web application from common security threats while also providing caching capabilities to improve performance. Implementing Azure Front Door can further enhance performance by automatically routing requests to the nearest Azure datacenter and providing global load balancing.

One effective strategy for optimizing the performance of an Azure web application is to leverage Azure CDN (Content Delivery Network) to cache static content closer to the end users, reducing latency and improving overall page load times. Additionally, using Azure Application Insights can help identify and resolve performance bottlenecks by providing detailed telemetry and diagnostics. Another strategy is to scale the application horizontally by utilizing Azure traffic manager and load balancers to distribute the load across multiple instances, ensuring high availability and improved response times.

In addition to the mentioned strategies, it is crucial to optimize and compress images, use browser caching, and enable gzip compression to reduce the size of data being transferred between the server and the client. It is also worth considering implementing Azure Redis Cache to cache frequently accessed data and reduce database requests. Choosing the right Azure region for hosting the application can also have a significant impact on performance, as proximity to the target audience can minimize network latency.