Ways To Supercharge Your eCommerce Website Speed For A Faster Shopping Experience

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It has happened to all of us. You might be searching for a toy or an object and you have shortlisted three to five different websites. You have to go to work and you do not have time to waste as it is a gift and you want the item to reach you as quickly as possible. Like most shoppers, you might have opened all these websites on multiple tabs. The first website that loads is going to get your business, irrespective of whether it was the best or not. Now, for the customer, this does make sense as he is busy and he wants to buy fast. However, imagine what it is doing to the website owners. The first website that loaded caught the customer. In other words, the faster fish caught the worm. The remaining websites might have had better products, cheaper rates, faster delivery, but it was all for naught.

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Is That Really True?

The reality is that online shopping is increasing with leaps and bounds but customers are usually in a hurry. They want information and products available on their screens instantly and they are not likely to wait around for your website to load. According to Crazyegg.com, a one-second delay in your website loading could result in 11% fewer page views, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction and a 7% decrease in conversions. This fact was backed up by Amazon who stated that there was a 1% increase in customers for every 100 milliseconds of improved site speed. Walmart too backed up these statistics by stating that there was a 2% increase in conversions for every one second of speed increase.

Wondering Whether You Are One of These Slow Pokes?

Well, you could be one of those sites. To determine this, the first thing you need to determine is how fast your website actually is. Websites usually weigh in at about 130 KB. This may increase or decrease depending on the type of website, products, images, content, etc. but 130 KB is an average amount. You can then use a page speed website like Web Page Test or Page Speed to determine just how fast your website loads. Google, too, has introduced a page speed option called as Page Speed Online available as a web-based tool. These tools will provide a quick idea of just how fast your website is and where the website slows down. All these tools will also provide simple and easy fixes to improve your page speed. Apart from these fixes, here are a few immediate high-priority but simple fixes, the website owner can do by themselves.

  1. Optimize Website Visuals – Most shopping websites do need heavy audiovisual content on their websites to provide an optimum shopping experience. This does slow down the website. In order to speed up the website, there is no need to remove content but file size can be reduced (with Photoshop or Fireworks) to ensure fast loading time and quick displays.
  2. Let The Network Carry The Load – A simple way to speed up your website is by using a CDN or a content delivery network like Amazon Cloudfront. These networks determine the user’s location and then store the pages on a local server to ensure faster access.
  3. Prioritize Above the Fold Content – You should use only one CSS stylesheet but consider splitting it into two parts. The part above the fold should load faster and this will keep readers engaged as the rest loads.
  4. Reduce Website Plug-ins – Too many plug-ins on the site will slow it down, cause crashes, security issues and technical problems. You can speed up the website by deactivating or deleting any plug-ins that are not used for more than two weeks.

Most of these tips are easy to implement but a few can be quite technical. However, do take the time to go over all these technical fixes to ensure that you have done everything possible says Kissmetrics.

What You Should Know

The statistics are simple states Mywifequitherjob. Customers are in a hurry and 47% of all customers want webpages to load in a 1-2 seconds or less. Almost 40% of customer will abandon pages that take more than three seconds to load and 52% of customers will stay loyal to a website that loads fast and processes sales fast. Website hosting sites like Shopify have already implemented measures that will speed up your website loading and display and customers have been quick to take advantage of this. Implementing measures to speed up your website will immediately result in improved traffic and better sales. All it takes is a little tweaking of your website with a few simple measures and you are good to go.

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