Your ecommerce website might be performing well and normal until a traffic surge hits it. Is your site ready to intake a huge amount of online traffic? The answer is NO in most circumstances. If we keep brand image aside, a massive traffic surge on your online store can adversely affect your site speed and performance. The more you delay your site optimization, the more customers you will lose to a faster competitor. It is better to improve ecommerce site speed and performance following a few techniques. We will discuss these techniques in detail, and you need to stick to this post!
Effective Ways to Improve Ecommerce Site Speed and Performance:
Google shipped an update in May 2021, which prioritizes sites with strong Core Web Vitals in search results. Core web vitals are all about site performance, and you must pay attention to these if you want a better ranking on SERPs. The stakes are much higher and serious for ecommerce websites, and that is why you should learn and adopt the following techniques for better site performance.
1. Opt for a faster platform:
Your online store should have a supporting infrastructure that will help load times. It would be best to opt for an updated and faster platform to help your shoppers quickly access what they want. Improvements in your platform will come when you discuss it with someone with expertise. Opting for Dubai ecommerce solutions will expose you to experts who can help you choose a faster and reliable ecommerce platform.
Having a faster infrastructure possible will ultimately improve your ecommeerce website speed. Data requests will be processed as quickly as the shoppers would want, enhancing your customer experience as well.
2. Use reliable hosting:
Your online store needs to be perfectly well at high traffic and transaction times. Are you sure it will be fine during a traffic surge? Yes, if you opt for a reliable web hosting. Joining hands with a reliable host will expose your site to increased memory and higher bandwidth. These perks will help you in scaling during seasonal promotions.
You don't want and can't afford your online ecommerce site to crash during biggest sales seasons. With that in mind, it is necessary for you to host your ecommerce to a provider who can provide all that you need to stay up and running.
3. Optimize for mobile performance:
The mobile-first approach has never been more critical before. Your shoppers will not always open your store on the desktop. What if they are outside and need one of your product? Certainly, they will try to reach your site on their mobile set, and if not optimized, you are doomed. The trend is growing, and you must pay attention to it.
Mobile commerce sales are projected to grow at an exponential rate. A common complaint about mobile purchases is the poor optimization or lower website loading speed. Why not throw this problem out of the window by optimizing your ecommerce site for mobile performance? It would certainly be helpful!
Learn more about responsive design - why do you need it?
4. Reduce thumbnail image sizes:
If you want to display a carousel feature for "most selling items" on your homepage, it will create speed issues. It is not wide to pull product images from product pages and put them on home pages since they are larger. Thumbnail images often contribute to slowing your website loading speed due to their sizes.
How to put the smallest possible thumbnail image on the homepage while keeping the quality? It will require you to opt for website maintenance support where the experts will do what is necessary. Once your image sizes are reduced, you will face no issue regarding estore loading speed.
5. Reduce redirecting:
Redirecting indicates a page has been temporarily moved. It is not a recommended practice, especially if you are running an online store. 302 redirects can adversely affect your SEO score, and hence, you must avoid it.
Redirecting can trigger additional HTTP requests and cause data transfer delays. It would be best to use built-in redirect functions within your navigation panel. Moreover, you also need to avoid redirecting URLs to pages that are already redirects.
Interested read: how to use 301 redirects to boost organic traffic
6. Use compressed images:
Website images contribute a major part to your website's total weight. Using high-quality images will enhance your website aesthetics, but have you ever paid attention to its effect on website speed? Using high-quality images lowers your site speed, and you must compress them without losing quality.
Lossless compression can help you minimize your image size while keeping the quality intact. It would be best to say more with less, trim down image size while keeping quality.
Utilize these techniques with ecommerce specialists!
The techniques mentioned above are highly effective but only when you adopt them the right way. The best way to ensure their efficacy is to hire ecommerce specialists who will do the tougher part of the story.
