Is your e-commerce website slow and sluggish? You need to act now before you lose huge opportunities and sales. Customers are growing impatient more than ever. You need an e-commerce website speed optimization to keep up with this demand.
In this article, we will share with you 6 proven tips and strategies to improve your e-commerce store loading speed. Start covering these areas to bring a smoother online shopping experience to your customers.
Why Is Fast Loading Website Important for E-commerce?
They say slow progress is still progress. But in e-commerce, slow progress makes you lose customers.
Your e-commerce website loading time is critical to an e-commerce store’s success. Every second counts!
Amazon, a giant e-commerce company, learned this lesson more than 10 years ago. In their 2006 study, the company found that in every 100-millisecond delay of the page, they lose about 1% of their sales.
Nowadays, online shoppers demand fast and efficient processes. If your e-commerce website is slow, you will be left behind — literally by your customers.
Research found that 40% of internet users will leave a site if it takes more than three seconds to load.
This is also the case for shoppers who use mobile devices. According to Deloitte, a whopping 70% of consumers admit that slow-loading website impacts their willingness to buy from retailers online.
The website loading time is also important for e-commerce SEO. Website speed is confirmed to be one of the ranking factors of Google. The world’s largest search engine admits that it prioritizes faster sites as they improve user experience and reduce operating costs.
But, what exactly is the acceptable loading speed for e-commerce?
According to Google, e-commerce websites should achieve a page load time between 0-2 seconds. Three seconds is also acceptable. But beyond that may cause your customers to leave your website already.
6 Proven Strategies to Improve E-commerce Store Loading Speed
Do you have a slow-loading e-commerce website? Follow these tips and best practices to boost your e-commerce website speed.
1. First, Analyze Your E-commerce Site Performance
Before anything else, analyze your website performance. This is the foundation of improving your e-commerce website speed.
To measure how fast your e-commerce site loads, you may need to use third-party tools. Our favorite is the GTmetrics and Page Speed Insights from Google.
These free tools not only check your average load time. They also give technical insights to improve webpage loading time. To give you an example, see the Lotus Tools Philippines’ page speed insights below.
Google Page Insights uses different metrics to analyze website speed performance. Though the e-commerce site received a high-performance score, the tool gave more diagnostics to further boost the e-commerce website speed.
Take time to test your website using different tools. This allows you to easily identify the issues that are slowing down your website.
2. Compress Your Product images
Your product images play a major role in the success of your e-commerce store. Without it, your customers will have no idea of how your product looks. However, your images are also one of the biggest contributors to slow loading times.
While it is tempting, you need to avoid uploading high-resolution images for your e-commerce store. These large-sized images can slow down your website. Our suggestion is to compress it using a third-party tool. We don’t have recommendations, but you can easily find one when you search on Google.
3. Enable Browser Caching
Browser caching is a straightforward but effective strategy to speed up your e-commerce store loading time. When caching is enabled, it temporarily stores content on the visitor’s computer. This way, when the user visits again, they don’t need to download your file content, reducing your e-commerce website loading time.
The majority of hosting providers do this by default. However, if you’re going to do it manually, you need to open your website’s file manager within your hosting user area. You need to add a small piece of code to your website’s .htaccess file to enable caching.
4. Minify Your Code
Minifying your code is another great way to improve the loading speed of your e-commerce website. This is a process that involves removing unnecessary characters and combining redundant codes.
Some unnecessary elements that may slow down your website speed include comments, whitespace, and semicolons. Removing these elements allows you to make your CSS and JavaScript files slightly smaller. Good thing, you can use a minification tool to do this automatically.
5. Using CDN
If your e-commerce store has a worldwide reach, then recommend investing in a content delivery network. A CDN dramatically improves your e-commerce site loading speed, by storing your content on multiple servers in different geographical locations. Now, when a customer visits your website, the closest server responds to the request instead of your master server.
While some hosting providers offer CDN services, you can also use the services of an independent CDN provider. Keep in mind that using CDN isn’t only for
e-commerce website performance improvement. Some providers can help your website against cyberattacks and save bandwidth costs.
6. Reduce HTTP Requests
Reducing your HTTP Requests may help you improve your page loading time. But how can you do it?
One of the best ways to do this is to reduce your store’s elements. These include images, plugins, scripts, and CSS files. This is because every element and feature on your page increases the HTTP Requests from the server. By limiting your assets, you can considerably improve your site’s loading time.
Speed Up Your E-commerce Success
Nowadays, having a fast-loading e-commerce store is no longer just an option. Your customers expect fast and seamless transactions. If you don’t keep up with this demand, you may lose a lot of opportunities.
Many e-commerce website speed optimization practices can be done by yourself. Should you seek expert support, Be Global E-commerce stands ready. Our adept developers can craft a swift and dependable e-commerce store to suit your requirements. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today, and let’s explore ways to enhance your E-commerce success.
