The world we live in is fast-paced and constantly on the move. Our ever-evolving electronic world has trained people and increased their desire for getting things immediately. They want what they want when they want it. Patience left long ago with the land-line.
If your eCommerce site doesn’t load quickly, you will lose conversions and thus revenue.
People like fast sites. Google likes fast sites. If your site is notoriously slow to load, it’s time to get off the fence and do something about it.
In this article we’re going to touch on essential eCommerce industry stats for page speed. Because fast sites do better than slower ones, we’ll talk about stats relevant to you. Then, we’ll dive a little deeper and give you some tips on improving page speeds.
How Fast is Fast Enough?
According to Strangeloop, the typical eCommerce site takes nearly five seconds to load usable content for the site visitor. They tested load times of the top 2,000 retail sites, and they noted the average site takes up to 10 seconds to load.
The question we get asked a lot is, “How fast should my site be?” That sounds like a simple mathematical answer, and to some degree it is. Jakob Nielsen says people can handle up to a 10 second wait for the page to load. Today’s millennial generation demands a much faster page load.
It stands to reason that going forward, pages are going to have to load faster than 10 seconds to ensure success.
Consider these statistics:
- 47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.
- 40% of visitors will abandon a website page that takes 3 seconds or more to load.
- People expect a site to load in two seconds or less.
- 79% of web shoppers who have to wait too long say they won’t come back to purchase again.
- In 2006, Amazon reported that a 100-millisecond increase in page speed translated to a 1% increase in its revenue.
So, bottom line, your site needs to load in two seconds or less for the best chance of success. If your load times push 10 seconds, you may lose a few customers. Going above 10 seconds is an absolute no-no.
Page Speed Affects eCommerce Conversion Rates
According to Radware, a one second delay in page time equals a 7% loss in conversions, 11% fewer page views and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.
Webperformance Today found that for every one second of improvement, Walmart.com experienced a 2% jump in conversions.
Consider Auto Anything, an eCommerce store selling auto parts and accessories. They cut their page load time in half resulting in a 9% increase in concession rate, an 11% increase in average ticket size and about a 13% increase in sales.
Take the Time to Test Your Website
It’s a good idea to put your site though a speed test. It’ll help you discover the weak links and fix them.
Many tools exist on the web to test the speed of your website’s pages. We like Pingdom. With this free service, you can test the load time of individual pages. The service also analyzes your results to help you learn about your bottlenecks.
Another great tool is from Google. Try their PageSpeed Insights. This tool measures the performance of your page for both mobile and desktop devices. It fetches the url twice – one for mobile, one for desktop.
Google is continually updating this test, so you can count on it being up-to-date.
Tips for Increasing eCommerce Page Speed
Now that you know the loading time for your pages, what can you do to shorten it? Whether your site runs really slow, or you just want to knock a second off, these tips can help any website.
Tip #1: Make sure your web host’s servers run well and can handle your busiest times. For example, you’re running a flash sale. Can your host handle the added traffic quickly and efficiently? If not, find another web host.
Tip #2: Optimize your images. Make sure that the images are the exact size that you’ll be using. Always specify the correct dimensions. Don’t make the servers download and resize an image. Use the save for web options in your image editor to reduce file sizes.
You can also checkout Tiny PNG and Tiny JPG. These free services reduce the files size of your images while maintaining quality. They keep you from wasting storage and bandwidth.
Tip #3: Use GZIP Compression. Ask your web host if they use this compression. It can greatly speed up your eCommerce site by reducing files size without ruining image quality or the site itself.
Tip #4: Choose a good web host. Your hosting company and package have a huge impact on the speed of your eCommerce site. A good web host is worth the money.
Tip #5: Leverage browser caching. When a user clicks on your site, their web browser has to load a lot of things including your images, content and CSS file. Browser caching allows it to remember resources it has already loaded.
So, when someone visits the next product page on your site, the browser remembers things like your logo, CSS and JavaScript so it doesn’t have to spend time loading them again.
Tip #6: Minify CSS and JavaScript Files. This basically puts all of your JavaScript into one file and all your CSS into one CSS file making your site run more efficiently.
To Conclude
With the onset of smartphones and tablets, people are taking the Internet with them. Having a fast eCommerce site has never been as important as it is today.
Your site visitors expect a lightning fast experience, whether they are on a phone, tablet or desktop. If they don’t get it, they’ll move on to your competitor to find a site that meets their needs.
Nobody is going to wait around for your site to load. You can’t go wrong with increasing your site’s speed. In the end, you’ll end up with happier customers, less bounces, and hopefully increased revenue.
Don’t make online shopping painful. After all, they’re shopping online for the convenience. Get working on these page speed suggestions today and watch your sales soar.
Would you like some assistance implementing these ideas? We’re here to help. What’s more, we guarantee your results. Contact us today. We’d love to talk with you about increasing your page speed for better outcomes.
Image: Louish Pixel
