Speed It Up!
Back in 2010, Google announced that it would be incorporating site speed as one of over 200 signals that are used in determining search rankings. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. Speeding up websites is crucial, not just for owners but for users alike. In fact, hundreds of studies have been performed, proving that visitors spend less time on a site that performs slowly.
Being that the dial-up days are gone, most modern internet users expect a site to load in a split second, especially for e-commerce websites. Research shows that most website users expect a site to load in about three seconds or less.
Most recently, in 2013, monetary consequences are taking the forefront instead of just rankings. What has everyone talking is that a one-second delay load time would cost Amazon an estimated $1.6 billion annually (according to moneysupermarket.com). And even more amazing than that, 74% of users will leave a website if it doesn’t load in less than 5 seconds (luckily the top retailer sites respond in an average of 4.83 seconds).
We understand that financial gain and improved rankings are of great importance, so please find below tools and tricks to help your business do its best!
Tools
PageSpeed Service– from Google
YSlow– from Yahoo
Ways to Speed It Up
Secure hosting– A poor hosting environment will guarantee slow load times and lost conversions. Be sure to choose a hosting company that is flexible enough to handle large increases in traffic.
Optimize mobile sites-On a mobile commerce site, speed is even more crucial. The mobile site and mobile search should only include content and functionality that is absolutely necessary.
Install sufficient hardware– Monitor how your business is making use of machines, such as servers, switches, and load balancers, as well as bandwidth. Ensure you have plenty of spare capacity.
Format images correctly– Check for good page weight, especially for images – make sure images are formatted appropriately. Provide height and width tags for images so the browser can display the page while loading the images.
There are plenty other ways to improve your site’s load time on an e-commerce site. For more technical solutions, be sure to contact us…we could go on and on!