Want to drive more sales?
If you own an e-commerce store, then you want to increase sales.
More traffic. More conversions. More revenue.
It’s as simple as that.
But…
If your site is slow, then you’re going to fail at that goal.
Slow site speed is the biggest reason why e-commerce stores are losing customers (and conversion rates) in the modern era.
Thankfully, speed optimization is a relatively easy fix.
Let’s go through…
- Why Site Speed Matters for E-commerce Success
- Core Speed Metrics You Need to Track
- 5x Speed Optimization Techniques
- How to Test and Monitor Your Store’s Performance
Why Site Speed Matters for E-commerce Success
Speed matters.
But let’s be honest…
Site speed has been a priority for years now.
In fact, if you’ve already gone and done a speed audit before reading this article, then you know all too well that speed is one of the main metrics you should be testing.
As we’re writing this, Google is now considering speed in their rankings as one of their core metrics, Core Web Vitals.
And why shouldn’t they?
If a page takes more than 4 seconds to load, then search engines won’t consider it a positive experience for the end-user. According to recent data, a site that loads in 1 second has a conversion rate 5x higher than one that loads in 10 seconds.
The longer a store takes to load, the more likely your visitors are to leave (bounce).
It’s the same logic as keeping your floors clean and tidy; if they’re messy and in disarray, no one will want to stay around.
The Core Speed Metrics You Need to Track
There are three main speed metrics that you need to know when it comes to your store.
Google calls these the Core Web Vitals. They are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How long it takes for your main content to load. You want it to be less than 2.5 seconds.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): How responsive your site is when a user clicks or taps. You want it to be less than 200 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): How much your page shifts around while loading. The lower, the better.
These are the top three metrics you must track in order to have a healthy and happy store speed.
Modern webshop frameworks have low CLS scores by default since they’re optimized from the get-go. Studies show that improving load speed by just 0.1 seconds can increase retail conversions by 8.4%.
You can speed up your store using Hyvä for Magento to improve performance and load pages faster.
5x Proven Speed Optimization Techniques
If you’re the type of store owner who wants to speed up their site using proven speed optimization techniques, then you’ll want to be sure to take a look at the 5 most common ones below.
These are all tactics you can and should implement in your e-commerce store. As soon as possible.
Optimize Your Images
Did you know that images make up over 55% of most page sizes?
Images are the most common problem with store speed.
We all love adding those big high-resolution banner photos, of course, we do.
But these monster files take forever to load on mobile devices and cost you dearly in terms of site speed.
The solution?
Optimize all your images before uploading.
Use modern file formats like WebP instead of PNG or JPEG, implement lazy loading, and make sure your photos are the correct display size. It can shave seconds off your page load time.
Minimize JavaScript and CSS
Every script you use weighs your store down.
Plugins, trackers, widgets, animations…They all add code to your store.
The key?
Trim the fat. Combine and minify your files. Defer non-critical JavaScript and CSS to load after your main content.
Framework code that is ultra-lean is best. That’s why optimizing your code is most effective when you move to these types of high-performance themes and platforms.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A CDN stores a copy of your site on many different servers worldwide.
When someone visits your store, they’re served from the closest CDN server. That makes load times much faster, especially for overseas visitors.
Most e-commerce platforms have built-in CDN support. It’s as simple as toggling it on. Look into it if you don’t have it already. CDNs can reduce load times by 30% or more.
Upgrade Your Hosting
Shared hosting is budget hosting. And budget hosting is slow hosting.
If you’re on a basic shared server, you won’t be able to scale when demand spikes, like during Black Friday sales.
Consider upgrading to a VPS, dedicated hosting, or cloud hosting for better speed and scalability.
Better hosting isn’t always the most expensive one. But it should be optimized for e-commerce traffic.
Enable Browser Caching
Browser caching makes your store load faster on repeat visits.
When customers return to your store, their browser doesn’t have to re-download everything from scratch.
Your regular pages should use cache headers to store files locally on their devices.
You can set up this in your hosting control panel. Most providers make it easy to configure caching rules.
How to Test and Monitor Your Store’s Performance
Speed optimization is an ongoing process. It’s not a one-off task that you complete and then forget about.
As you add new products, features, plugins, and marketing integrations, your site speed can degrade over time.
The best way to ensure that your e-commerce store is as fast as it can possibly be is to:
- Test speed regularly using Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and WebPageTest.
- Run speed tests from various locations and devices.
- Set up monitoring alerts to catch issues early.
You can’t fix problems that you don’t know about.
Don’t skip these steps.
Testing and monitoring your site speed are crucial if you want to keep your store as snappy and speedy as it can possibly be.
Wrapping Things Up
It’s the rare e-commerce store owner who prioritizes site speed over any other perceived need in the e-commerce digital space.
The reality is, you need to worry about the bare essentials first. Speed is one of those bare essentials.
If your website isn’t built in a way that is lightning-fast and nearly-instant, then you will struggle to improve your conversion rates and ultimately improve your bottom line.
As we mentioned in the introduction, our proven speed optimization techniques article here, it’s not difficult.
There are no dark arts when it comes to speed optimization. But it does take a strategy and a willingness to implement the right fixes at the right time.
The right framework from the get-go is a great start for your webshop.
And from there, it’s all about tweaking, testing, and monitoring so that you always know where your store’s performance stands at any given moment in time.
