Here’s a performance stat: a recent study found that 40% of shoppers won’t wait more than 3 seconds for an ecommerce website to load before abandoning it. That’s probably a shorter period of time than it took you to read that sentence.
This statistic should be a wake-up call for ecommerce businesses. It highlights the importance of website speed and performance in retaining customers and driving sales. A slow-loading website not only frustrates shoppers, but it also affects your bottom line. In addition to losing potential customers, a slow website can also negatively impact your search engine rankings.
The light at the end of the tunnel
So, what can ecommerce businesses do to improve website speed and performance? Here are a few tips:
- Optimize images: Large, unoptimized images can significantly slow down your website. Compress images and use appropriate file types to reduce file size without sacrificing quality.
- Minimize the use of third-party scripts: Stop throwing every cool new analytics thing on your site! Scripts from external sources, such as social media widgets or analytics tools, can slow down your website really fast. Only use the necessary scripts, and consider async or defer loading to improve performance.
- Design for speed: Often times, elaborate designs require code or imagery that can really take a hit on your site’s speed. When speed matters, shoot for simplicity. If your page is struggling, check to see if there are unnecessary animations, videos, or other heavy items that can possible be trimmed or optimized.
- Use a website performance monitoring tool: Tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix can give you valuable insights on your website’s performance and how to improve it.
If your site is meant to make money, this performance stat proves it’s absolutely essential to pay attention the speed and performance of your website. Usually, it’s actually pretty easy. If you are having trouble, a good developer (ahem) should be able to lend a hand.
Wondering how fast your site is? Google Lighthouse is a great place to start
