Did you know that page load time affects your search engine rankings? Or that 47% of customers will abandon a website if it loads too slowly?
Your ecommerce page load time is critical to the user experience. Slow websites have a direct correlation with poor search engine rankings. Google will rank your site lower in the search results if your page takes more than 3 seconds to load on your device. Additionally, estimates reveal that a typical user can leave a website within 10 seconds if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
Time is everything when you are looking to bring customers and potential customers to your site. By speeding up your website’s page load time using a variety of methods, you can boost your ranking and user experience. Each second can make the difference between success and failure.
June 2021 Google Update: Understand Your Core Web Vitals
When identifying speed problems and updating your website to fix them, there are a few things you should consider. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and improving Core Web Vitals are key to raising the quality of user experience by pinpointing factors that will enhance website performance and ranking using real-world data. In short, Core Web Vitals are standardized metrics from Google that help you understand how users experience your website so that you can identify areas of improvement.
Websites with higher Core Web Vital scores will rank higher on Google, and Core Web Vitals have indicated that page speed is a primary ranking factor because of how much it affects user experience. You can speed up your loading time by using load time testing tools, which will tell you how long it takes for elements on your page to load. Popular tools for measuring Core Web Vitals are Google PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console.
1. Use Speed-Optimized Ecommerce Widgets
Not all ecommerce widgets were designed with speed in mind. If your site is being flagged as slow loading, your ratings and reviews or user-generated content widgets might be to blame – unless you’ve chosen to partner with technology designed for speed.
Ratings and reviews are critical, but they shouldn’t slow your page down. With TurnTo’s SpeedFlex widget architecture, TurnTo widgets are lighter than the competition. Lighter widgets can help your website load faster, improve functionality and layout of the site, and enhance user experience.
SpeedFlex has a smaller JavaScript file size compared to competitors in order to optimize speed and accessibility and reduce load time. By using speed-optimized ecommerce widgets, you can enhance user experience, boost your ranking, and keep customers on your site.
2. Remove Unnecessary Files
If your website is slow to load, it could be because of files that are in the way — especially if you have a lot of JavaScript and other rules attached to each page. The easiest way to fix this is to remove all the files currently being downloaded (including those from your cache), then re-download the page. You might also want to factor in some delay time,such as getting the IP from your upstream provider, before you begin loading the page.
3. Reduce The Size Of Your Images
If you see page-loading problems, one trick that can help is to make sure that your images are small — even thumbnail-sized images (like those used in blog posts). Getting the visual design of your site running will instantly improve both readability and loading times for most users. Again, using the right ecommerce widgets to optimize for agility will go a long way in improving your site load time.
Pixlee is a UGC platform that allows you to swiftly deliver user-generated content – designed specifically for speed with the Pixlee Performance Architecture. With self-contained code in its visual galleries, asynchronous loading that staggers load time so it appears to be faster, and advanced compression algorithms to reduce image size; using Pixlee can improve page load speed without sacrificing image quality.
Reduce the size of your images by uploading high-quality versions if you’re using a third-party service to generate them for you. Google PageSpeed Insights standards are 200 pixels per second (pp produces a faster page).
4. Remove Unnecessary Code From Your Website
Optimize your website’s code by removing unused or redundant tags, classes and keywords. When done correctly, this can increase page load time by up to 60%. Using Google’s Mobile Optimization checker tool, you can test different elements of your site to see how they perform in mobile browsers.
Firstly, investigate if there’s a simple solution for the problem you’ve found. If so, you can remove the code to make the page load faster. If there’s not, then implementing a load time gripe can increase your rankings in Google search results — as well as increase the revenue you generate from your website.
Page load time is an essential factor in how customers interact with your site, how easily visitors convert into customers, and how easily your site ranks organically. These simple tips will uplevel your website from slow to best-in-class.
