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In e-commerce, web pages loading time is of extreme importance. Website speed is directly related to sales. Less than 3 seconds time to render content means double are the chances of conversions. However, having a large eCommerce website with 1000s of products that load in a striking low time is not easy. In this article, we will look into tricks of the trade and some less popular techniques as well that can maintain a huge traffic on your site and reduces bounces and drops via website speed hike.
Key Points
- High speed, high sales
- Loading time and search engine rankings
- Improving speed and performance in Magento
- Reducing the size of HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Optimizing image sizes
- Minimizing elements that may block frontend appearance load
- Static content – JavaScript, CSS files, and images
- Enabling server-side compression
- Server side
- Varnish
- Optimizing frontend in terms of design
- Summary
This text is targeted towards Magento site speed optimization but tips served herein will be useful for every website owner seeking to improvise site performance.
Suppose you want to buy something, and you opened first 5 websites that appeared on Google search. After navigating through first two websites on search result pages, you found them slow. Products are not displayed, instead, round circles are coming up which are indicating that images are under loading.
Now, think over below questions:
- How long will you wait? 5 seconds, 1 minute or more before returning to Google search results to try another search or website
- Will you come back to this slow website in future?
- Will you put forth the name of this website in front of your friends?
- What would happen in case you needed to access this slow website on the mobile phone?
Answers are straightforward. As an internet store owner, any web merchant obviously tries to remove pebbles that come in the way that cloud shopping experience of visitors. Few achieve 100% success while remaining fade up or running behind complexities and cannot endow high website performance.
Website loading time affects company reputation. If website rendering takes too much time, visitors will press the close button, will not come back and look for alternative websites that offer quick response time and superior user experience.
E-commerce speed optimization is a huge topic.
Load speed has been a premier factor for years now. As time passes, website speed requirements are becoming more stringent and stricter.
For the purpose, below data is collected in the year 2011.
Obviously, nowadays demand for high-speed web pages has increased much more than past.
People tendency and preference for website change in proportion to how much they had to wait while purchasing. Report on a similar topic is presented beneath, it is derived from a recent study by the Financial Times.
Website load speed is articulately number 1 problem addressed by internet surfers. More than 65% online shoppers are dissatisfied with it.
Some high-priority statistics:
- In more than 3 seconds delay, 40% of users close the site
- On an average, users are willing to wait maximum 2.078 seconds for a page to display
- The number of visitors increases (2%) if all content of a page is rendered between 1 and 2 seconds
- The figure of website visitors further rise to 4.6% if it loads in less than 1 second
High speed, High sales
Speed and Revenue go in parallel/same direction.
This is especially applicable and requires laser focus in case of e-commerce business.
High traffic websites – Amazon and Walmart have realized that even if website speed increases only by 100 milliseconds, revenue grows by 1%. And we can understand that for such huge companies, 1% makes a big sum.
46% people who buy from e-commerce websites tell about the unpleasant experience in their circle.
Therefore, if we take this fact seriously, i.e. as 1-second decrease in loading time yields 7% rise in income, and if your daily revenue is supposed USD 1,000, you earn an extra income up to $25,000 (1,000 x 0.07 x 365 ) per year.
Loading Time and Search Engine Rankings
John Mueller, a known SEO expert has examined this topic in depth. After analysis of collected data, he found that slower websites are pulled down in ranking. But if a website that has equally competitive features with a speed difference in milliseconds in comparison with fast websites, it will not be taken off.
So, primarily, 2 parameters go positive as we optimize website speed.
1. Google ranking
We went through this in above paragraph. I have one more recommendation here. When we endeavor for e-commerce site speed optimization, why not submit in other search engines as well, especially major ones like Bing, Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo etc.
All standard engines have adopted algorithm that allows ranking remunerations in a proportion of speed. This ensures maximum benefits from our initiative.
2. User experience, as we discussed above.
Speed and Performance Improvement on Magento Frontend,
For this purpose, Magento speed optimization extension although is a convenient way for the most horde of people, it may not deliver desired outcomes because each website is unique and needs tailored treatment to increase its speed.
Google has set forth certain requirements that every internet business owner should comply. These requirements comprise of few front code suggestions, technically referred to as “front end” part of the site.
For we – web business owners, implementing Google guidelines makes sense and it results in business visibility.
Google offers versatile page speed test tool that is 100% free altogether. It is wise to use it over many others as Google is going to give marks for your site.
Once you have checked and received findings, take a closer look at their suggestions. After all detected issues are resolved, your site’s page speed is enhanced.
Cache Static content,
JavaScript, CSS files, and images can be kept in cache so that it takes fewer round trips. Any reliable CDN network solution, like AWS, comes in handy for this purpose.
Frontend Design Optimization
This topic should not be overlooked although it doesn’t come directly under speed augmentation tips.
Of course, when front-end design is optimized, website layout is mobile and screen responsive. And responsive site theme ensures that it will display seamlessly and without cluttering even if the visitor is looking at it from any device, like desktop, laptop, mobile, iPad etc.
Given below is an example of a website that fulfills above conditions. I have shown multiple views and yet it maintains to present key areas while avoiding less important sections when the display area is scanty.
Image size considerations and compression
Reduced size of images needs fewer data to transfer over a network.
There are myriad of image compression tools available on the web but verify that one which you select does not deteriorate image quality.
Downsize all images and then see a report from Google PageSpeed Insights
You can check both –
- Desktop website speed test
- Mobile website speed test
It helps you taking elaborate actions – exactly where they are needed.
When your ecommerce website is created using Magento, you can download any authentic extension straightaway without having to do compression image-by-image manually.
What this tool basically does is, it gathers all the pictures resided in
- media
- skin &
- other frontend
folders and then optimize them with image manipulation methods located in server directories like jpegoptim, optipng etc.
Over the years, Magento performance optimization has become easy due to the availability of free plugins.
Minimizing elements that increase appearance load
When it is rich graphics website with heavy animation effects, number or size of CSS and JavaScript objects enlarge abnormally. They take extravagant time to load and thus, website response time goes higher.
Wait time to load every single file can be significantly reduced with Chrome Developer Tools.
Above screenshot depicts measures or sizes of all files that together create an appearance of the website. By enabling ‘file merge’ option from Magento admin panel, Magento will merge files to minimize their rendering time.
‘File-merge’ option in Magento is available under System/Configuration/Developer.
If your ecommerce website developers have coded JavaScript classes and objects in a robust way, there should occur no errors. Otherwise, if it throws runtime error, you may need to consult your web development agency.
- Nginx
- Apache
- ISS
It also describes in details what modules to install to accomplish the task.
Further, as you apply changes, the effect can be transparently seen in a browser. For instance, go to Chrome, right click and go to inspector mode.
On the network tab, following attributes indicate that changes have taken place.
Reducing the size of HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Unnecessary whitespace and characters removal in code lines aid in valuable speed improvement when all other techniques do not pay off.
This procedure is called minification of HTML CSS JS code but sometimes result in increased stress for developers in the understanding code after it is done.
Consult your Magento developer before doing so.
Varnish
Varnish 4 is a refined and by default caching solution inside Magento 2. It helps serving dynamic content faster.
As a web business owner, you ought to configure Varnish settings properly and it will act just like a secret weapon to boost website speed.
I hope text presented in this article has been useful to you for Magento speed optimization.
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