Page Load Speed and eCommerce website
Slow page speed can be responsible for consumers bouncing or abandoning your eCommerce website. A long page load time increases frictional resistance to shopping journeys, adversely impacts consumer engagement, conversion rates, and also affects brand reputation.
Page Load Speed
Page load speed is also known as page load time is the total time in which all the items of the page in your eCommerce website are fully loaded or can say all page’s content (script, files, images, and video) display correctly.
Page load speed is different from overall website speed. Website speed is page speed for multiple pages across your site. Longer load time disengages website visitors and prompts abandonment.
Optimum Page Load Speed
A load time or load speed of 2 seconds or quicker is considered good for eCommerce websites. A slower speed than 2 seconds can increase consumer bounce and abandon rate. Researches have suggested that approx. abandon rate for 48% for 3 seconds load time and subsequent addition of 16% reduction for every second a page load is delayed.
Page Load Speed and UX
Slower webpage load impacts user experience (UX) negatively, resulting in a poor shopping experience, poor overall satisfaction, and lower conversions. Poor UX also creates negative brand perception and brand equity. A negative brand perception means lower repeat purchases, the lower mouth of the world, lesser positive reviews and recommendations. Streamlined navigation and a faster website not only improve User Experience but also improve Brand Equity.
Page Load Speed and SEO
Page load speed is one of the important ranking factors used by Google in search engine results pages (SERP). The slower pages load reduces the number of pages Google can crawl which negatively impacts your website’s indexation and lower it in ranking in SERPs. The website then becomes less visible in organic searches.
A faster page load speed on multiple devices with outstanding UX can not only improve organic SERP ranking but also offer an omnichannel shopping experience and a 34% click rate.
How to Improve Page Load Speed
Expert Website Audit
It will be very much important to know the present page performance i.e page load speed. A website audit will find out factors responsible for poor page load speed and overall website performance. An expert consulting agency also offers solutions for improved website performance, UX, and SEO.
Optimize Hosting
Often eCommerce businesses choose to host options that fit their current business requirements and goals with acceptable page load speeds and overall website performance. But the performance starts creeping with the growth of business increase in website traffic increases, and with further addition of more skews and higher resolution media. A flexible and scalable dedicated, high-performance hosting service can be the solution for it.
Lowering Server Response Time
A domain name system popularly known as DNS is a server with a database of IP addresses and their associated hostnames. Whenever we type a URL in the browser, a DNS server translates that URL into the IP address that indicates its location. The time this takes up is known as DNS lookup time and depends on how fast is your provider. This also affects the Page load speed. Lesser DNS look-up time ensures higher page load speed and depends on the service provider.
File compression
Like a normal website in an eCommerce website the smaller content files load faster and improve page load speed. But smaller files are associated with poor quality and poor resolutions. File compression however can make larger files smaller can increase page load speed without compromise on quality i.e., large HD image and video files.
Asynchronous Script Code loading
Asynchronous loading of Script code like JavaScript and CSS can also optimize webpage load speed. Asynchronous loading is the simultaneous loading of a few individual elements whereas, in synchronous loading, it will be one at a time. In other words with an asynchronous script, the browser will continue to load other page elements besides the slower script whereas with asynchronous script browser will wait till the slow file has fully loaded before continuing to load the page. This will improve the page load speed.
Minimizing TTFB (Time to First Byte)
‘Time to first byte (TTFB) also significantly affects page load speed. It is the time a webpage starts loading or the time a browser waits till it receives the first byte of a webpage from the server. According to Google’s recommendation, the ideal time for TTFB should be 200ms.
TTFB depends on hosting solutions performance. A higher-performing hosting solution will ensure faster TTFB. Besides that, TTFB depends on caching and using a content delivery network (CDN) also.
Server caching
Server caching stores copies of your website’s files, minimizing the work required to serve up a page to a browser.
CDN
Geographically distant and overloaded servers cause latency and affect page load speeds resulting in poor customer shopping journeys and poor UX. In addition to your host server(s), you can also use a global CDN (Content Delivery Network) with the prime purpose of delivering faster and more reliable dynamic content. CDN is a global network of proxy servers that send content by the fastest route, regardless of data congestion. It then stores content in the nearest Cloudflare server and serves locally cached content on subsequent calls. Cloudflare is a popular CDN with file compression and caching.
Final thought
Achieving financial goals for eCommerce business much more depends on consistent outstanding shopping experiences for website visitors. A high-performing optimized eCommerce website requires an expert website audit by a specialist performance partner as an eCommerce consultancy to ensure scalability, resilience, and speed. The page load speed which decides the User Experience conversion rates, customer satisfaction, and strong brand equity also play a decisive role in organic search ranking.
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