Okay, let’s think about this:
You have got an idea to have a website for your business.
You have spent days crafting an appealing design and weeks preparing it for generating massive revenue.
But suddenly you observed a problem: A web page of your new and beautiful website is not as fast as you thought of!
Unimpressive and slow website pages not only frustrate the visitors but also encourage them to find your alternative. If your web page is slower than the blink of an eye, just over half of your potential visitors will leave your website. This greatly affects your overall conversions and profit. In the world of the web, the current speed of the website will be a factor to measure the success, which means SPEED sells!
Do you know?
Even a delay of second in page load may result in:
- Pageviews decreased by 11%
- Customer satisfaction breaks down to 16%
- Conversions reduced by 7%
On the other hand, it is found that almost 47% of eCommerce consumers are expecting page load time of lesser than two seconds. Amazon discovered that even a second of delay in page load time costs them a loss of $1.6 billion sales every year.
As you can see, the page loads heavily affect consumer behavior. If you manage to speed up or improve the page load time of your website, it can bring a huge advantage for you over your competitors. Moreover, you won’t rank on the first page of the search engines! Therefore, it is crucial to focus on page speed to help your website converts.
So, how do you make sure the page-load of your site is up to the mark?
- Work on scaling down images
Of course, images are the backbone to make your website attractive. But very rare website owners know that images are one of the most common bandwidth consumers. Therefore, optimizing the images is the very first in a direction to improve the page loads of your website. All you have to do is to change the dimensions of the image and you are done! It will greatly decrease the file size.
- Cutdown CSS load time
The CSS of your website loads even before visitors view your website. The more time it takes to download the CSS, the longer they have to wait. By optimizing the CSS of your website, you can make sure the web page load faster and give your viewers quick access to the page they intended.
Therefore, it is important to figure out how many CSS files being used and remove unwanted CSS from the backend. Also, it is advisable to reduce the CSS file size by removing additional space in the sheet. In case you are using an eCommerce platform, you can leverage free online tools or services to improve eCommerce site performance.
- Optimize scripts
Today, the majority of the organizations put JavaScript before the contents, which cause them to load even before your website content. This will put your visitors on hold to view the content of your page until JavaScript loads successfully. Ideally, JavaScript files should load after the rest of the page of your website load, and thus, it is required to put all the external JavaScript files at the bottom of the web page. Moreover, you can leverage from defer or async attributes to decrease the page loads.
- Make sure adding asynchronous pages
Usually, the browser loads pages in a synchronous manner. This means, it will load the page from the beginning to end, right from loading headers, stylesheet, texts, images, and so on, which consumers a lot of time. Therefore, it is recommended to use asynchronous pages to overcome the chain of loading elements in a sequence and instead, load the scripts simultaneously to improve the current speed of the website.
- Cut-off unwanted redirects
Do you know how many redirects are available on the website? In case, you have recently performed website migration, the chances are higher your site may have multiple redirects. Such redirects affect the page load time. Instead of having multiple redirects, it is always beneficial to cut-down unwanted redirects, which will greatly improve eCommerce site performance.
- Don’t forget to enable compression
If your website is having a size of CSS, JavaScript, or HTML higher than 150 bytes, it is time for you to enable compression. With the help of Gzip, you can easily reduce the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. However, it is advisable not to use Gzip on image files.
- Get rid of render-blocking JavaScript
In the backend, when any browser is loading your website page, it must build a DOM tree by parsing HTML to load the page. In between, if a browser discovers any script, it will stop and will have to execute the script before it continues with the parsing. This, in the end, affects the page load time, and thus, it is recommended by Google to reduce the usage of blocking JavaScript.
- Think about browser caching
Right from stylesheets, images, JavaScript files, and more, a browser cache lot of information about your website to avoid reloading the entire page of a website for the consecutive hits. This could be another factor affecting the page load times. Hence, it is important to set the expiry time for a cache. This can be a great way to improve the current speed of the website.
- Content distribution network can be of great help
In case you are using a content management system like WordPress and wish for WordPress speed improvement, the Content Distribution Network can be a great way to help users with faster access to your website page.
- External hosting platforms for larger files
Apart from hosting your website on the content distribution network, you can also leverage from the external hosting platforms to access some of the largest files of your website, specifically when you have videos available on the website.
Final Verdict…
Sometimes, it is hard to identify what is affecting the page load time of your website. The problem could be anything, right from the code written or large elements. However, following the guidelines discussed here can be a great way to initiate your journey to improve eCommerce site performance. Just remember, a little attention to your website can be a pathway for sustainable growth!
Want to know how to improve the current speed of the website? Or looking for expert guidance on WordPress speed improvement? Get in touch with us to know more!
Read more: https://www.ecoyork.com/how-to-speed-up-your-web-page-load-time-and-convert-more-in-2020/
