Articles on: Integrations

Website Speed: Why it's Vital for E-Commerce Success

You’ve invested time, energy, and resources into building your e-commerce business. You’ve handpicked your products, perfected your branding, and worked tirelessly on your marketing strategy. But while focusing on these vital aspects, there's one crucial element that may have escaped your attention: site speed.

For any e-commerce retailer, the worst nightmare is undoubtedly a sluggish website, especially in a world where time is of the essence, and potential customers have multiple choices at their fingertips. However, you can leave these worries in the rearview mirror by significantly advancing your e-commerce success through improved site speed. This article will show you everything about page speed and practical tips for improving the performance of your sites.

We want to share the following with you:

What is page/site speed?
Why is page/site speed critical?
Best practices for speed optimization

Let’s dive right in!

What is page/site speed?



There are two key metrics used to measure speed:

Page speed, which measures the time it takes the content on a URL to load.

Site speed, which represents how your site is performing overall. It’s scored by services like Google PageSpeed Insights, which looks at various load times on your site in aggregate.

Google recommends a page load speed of two seconds for an e-commerce site. But in general, the faster, the better. Even milliseconds can make a difference in user retention and satisfaction.

Why is Page Speed/Site Speed critical?



When it comes to online shopping, speed dictates success. A delay of even a few seconds can severely impact your conversion rates, user experience, and SEO performance. Site speed can make or break your e-commerce business, influencing a shopper's decision to stay, browse, buy, or leave and never return.



If all this seems too abstract to you, let’s take a look at the negative consequences of slow site speed in numbers:

Lower conversion rate: A study by Crazyegg found that a 1-second delay in page load time can lead to a 7% decrease in conversion rate. If your website takes 2 seconds to load, you could lose 7% of potential sales.
Increased bounce rate: A Google study found that a 0.1-second delay in page load time can lead to a 7% increase in bounce rate. If your website takes 2 seconds to load, you could lose 7% of potential customers.
Reduced SEO ranking: Google considers website speed when ranking websites in search results. This means that if your website is slow, it will be less likely to appear high in search results, which can lead to fewer visitors and sales.

This signifies one indispensable truth: faster speed means better performance and reduced dropout rates.

Best Practices for Speed Optimization



We'll skip the intricacies of various techniques and their implementation for now. Instead, here’s a list of optimizations you can implement right from the start:

Choose the right web host.
Minimize HTTP requests by reducing the number of elements on your page.
Use asynchronous loading for CSS and JavaScript files.
Compress images and optimize file sizes without losing quality.
Leverage browser caching to store resources locally on users’ devices.
Implement a content delivery network (CDN) to distribute the load.
Optimize CSS and JavaScript by minifying files and removing unnecessary code.

After all we’ve been talking about, you probably realized that site speed optimization is a comprehensive task that requires specific skills and expertise. We’ve also come to that realization, and that’s why we introduced Swift Experts service.



With Swift Experts, you do not need to handle anything manually. Depending on the current situation and your store structure, they take care of your site’s speed optimization by applying a diverse array of techniques (some of them were mentioned in the article). Additionally, they’ll do a free monthly speed checkup to keep your website on the right track.

Including all the above services, they offer a complete package optimization at $150 per optimization - arguably the most competitive rate in the market. Below is the comparison chart between ours and other speed services for your reference:



This service is designed to equip you with the cost-effectiveness that intensively investigates your site and manually optimizes every heavy element. Swift Experts are senior Shopify developers who have 5+ years of experience in developing apps and optimizing Shopify sites, so they extremely understand the Shopify system and the way it works daily. They're so confident in our ability to boost your store’s performance that we offer a unique guarantee: if they don’t increase your Google PageSpeed Insights score by at least 10 points, you’ll receive a 100% refund as stated in our policy here: https://help.onecommerce.io/en/article/refund-policy-for-swift-expert-service-1433ikl/

Many of our customers have seen remarkable improvements, and their testimonials speak volumes about the efficacy of this service.



For more detailed insights or to discuss your specific needs, you can book a free consultation to talk to experts or connect with our Customer Support team at support@onecommerce.io. They will respond promptly within 24 hours, Monday through Friday. Try Swift Experts now and see how fast and easy it is to optimize your website’s speed.

You can do everything listed here manually or hire Swift Experts. Just note that web performance optimizations can be tricky and require a lot of time and effort.

Act now to optimize your website's performance. The faster you start, the quicker you'll see customer satisfaction, retention, and overall sales results. Don’t let your business lag behind—speed up your site today and unlock your full market potential.

Updated on: 17/05/2024

Was this article helpful?

Share your feedback

Cancel

Thank you!