Do you know how fast your ecommerce site is?
Site speed is one of the most important metrics ecommerce stores need to worry about. After all, if customers can’t load your site, they can’t shop at it, either.
In this post, you’ll learn how to improve your site’s speed.
Why is website speed important for ecommerce sites?
You know enough about consumers to know that they expect your site to load quickly when they try to visit it and perform well while they browse it, but do you know exactly how much site speed affects ecommerce sites?
According to a statistic discovered by Unbounce and reported by Blogging Wizard, 82% of consumers say that slow page speeds have a direct impact on their purchasing decisions.
Specifically, 45.4% are less likely to make a purchase at a website that loads slowly while 36.8% are less likely to return to it.
22.5% take no action when page speeds are slow on ecommerce websites while 11.9% are likely to tell a friend.
Additionally, according to a study conducted by Portent, a site that loads in one second has a conversion rate that’s three times higher than a site that loads in five seconds and five times higher than a site that loads in 10 seconds.
Plus, page speed is a critical ranking factor for Google and other search engines, making ecommerce site speed important for search engine optimization (SEO).
If you want your site to rank for product-based keywords and keywords you target with content, you’re going to have to improve its speed.
By making ecommerce site speed an integral part of your ecommerce SEO strategy, you can rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) for product-based keywords related to your niche.
23 ecommerce site speed SEO tips
1. Learn key metrics that indicate poor site performance
There are several metrics you can learn about that allow you to monitor your site’s performance.
The most important is page load speed, also known as page load time.
This metric represents how fast your site loads. It’s usually given in milliseconds (ms) or seconds (s).
You can also monitor the following metrics in Google Analytics and other analytics tools:
- Bounce rate – The amount of visitors who leave your site without interacting with it or visiting another page. If this is higher than 50%, it may indicate performance issues.
- Average session duration – The amount of time visitors spend on your site per session on average. If this is very low, such as only a few seconds, it may indicate performance issues.
2. Monitor site performance
Use Google PageSpeed Insights to reveal your site’s scores for Core Web Vitals. These are a set of metrics Google created to let you know how quickly different elements on your page load.
The tool even provides two separate sets of metrics: one for the mobile version of your site and one for desktop.
Pingdom, GTmetrix and WebPageTest all allow you to view how fast your site is from different locations around the world. GTmetrix and WebPageTest even reveal your Core Web Vitals metrics.
WebPageTest is the most extensive tool out of the bunch as it allows you to test from different types of desktop and mobile devices, browsers, and internet services (cable, 3G, 4G, etc.).
To give you an idea of why these features are important, I tested the homepage of ecommerce site Stitch Fix from a desktop in Virginia and discovered it had a load speed of 7.35s.
However, when I tested that same page from the same location but on a 4G mobile device, I discovered it had a load speed of 12.21s.
As you can see, although the site is much faster on desktop, the tool gives you a much better idea of how well it performs for mobile users, who make up 61.63% of internet users around the world.
3. Use a trusted ecommerce platform or CMS
You can design your own ecommerce site from the ground up, but there are plenty of ecommerce platforms and content management systems (CMSs) out there that make building an ecommerce site much easier.
They’ve even optimized their platforms and code for speed.
Shopify and Sellfy are great if you want an all-in-one ecommerce platform that offers a full-fledged ecommerce site and hosting.
Use WooCommerce, Magento (Adobe Commerce) or PrestaShop if you want a little more flexibility.
4. Get better hosting
If you built your site yourself or are using a CMS, consider switching to a better hosting provider.
Cloud hosting is the most suitable option for the majority of ecommerce sites.
It’s fast, doesn’t require you to share resources with other websites and has the ability to scale.
This means if your website suddenly gets hit with a lot of traffic, your server will be able to draw on more resources to sustain itself.
We’re particularly big fans of Cloudways. It differs from other cloud hosts slightly as it offers a managed service & dashboard but allows you to choose which cloud provider to use. For example, DigitalOcean, etc. What we like most is the ability to scale server resources with a few clicks.
Dedicated servers are also suitable for large ecommerce sites.
5. Implement lazy loading for images
Lazy loading is a performance trick that prevents images on a web page from being loaded until the user scrolls to it.
Images are among the heaviest elements to load on a web page.
Preventing them from loading until they need to be viewed does a lot to improve performance.
Implementing lazy loading is different depending on how you built your site.
If you built it yourself, you’ll have to implement lazy loading code on your own.
Shopify themes often have this feature built in.
WordPress has lazy loading by default, but you can also install a website performance optimization plugin like NitroPack.
6. Use smaller product images
If you shoot your product images on a professional DSLR camera, they’re probably quite large by default.
This is often unnecessary for the web.
Use photo editing software like PhotoShop, Lightroom or GIMP to resize your images.
Your theme or ecommerce platform may have suggestions on how large product images should be.
If not, Amazon’s guidelines for sellers state that images must be at least 1,600px on the longest side for optimal zoom quality.
7. Optimize images
Image compression is another nifty web design trick that improves performance.
The larger the file sizes of images on a web page are, the longer they’ll take to load.
Image compression makes image file sizes smaller without impacting quality.
Optimize images before you export them in whatever photo editing software you use.
If you don’t use photo editing software, use TinyPNG or an image compression tool that compresses images as you upload them to your ecommerce site.
NitroPack offers image compression for WooCommerce, Magento, OpenCart and custom-built websites.
8. Choose the right file formats for your images
PNG and JPEG are two completely different file formats for images.
PNG is much heavier than JPEG but is most suitable for images that feature text overlays. Text overlays often become blurry on images that use the JPEG file format.
JPEG creates smaller file sizes and is most suitable for product images that do not feature text overlays.
Here’s a general rule to follow for images you create for the web:
- If you shot it with a professional camera and did not add overlays, use JPEG
- If you created it in a graphic design tool, use PNG
- If you added overlays to your original image, use PNG
The heavier an image is on a web page, the longer it’ll take to load. So, if you can get away with using JPEG for product images without losing picture quality, do so.
9. Use a CDN
A CDN, or content delivery network, is a web hosting technology that creates several copies of your website and distributes it across a network of servers.
This has two benefits:
- It eliminates your reliance on a single origin server
- It protects your site from DDoS attacks
All websites have an origin server. This is the server where your site is installed. It’s where all traffic your site receives is sent to if you don’t have a CDN.
If you do have a CDN, your traffic gets distributed to servers located all around the world.
This makes your site faster for international visitors, and it even makes it harder for hackers to bring your site down in a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
Your ecommerce platform or host should have a CDN you can integrate with your website.
If not, check out NitroPack. It offers a built-in CDN that’s powered by Cloudflare, one of the web’s most reliable CDN providers.
10. Minimize HTTP requests
The next few ecommerce site speed tips are a little complex.
We recommend installing a website optimization tool like NitroPack or WP Rocket to implement them.
Let’s discuss them, anyway.
When someone visits your website, their browser has to load the files that make up your website. Each file they attempt to load is called an HTTP request.
The more HTTP requests your page produces, the longer it’ll take to load. Therefore, you can improve your ecommerce site’s speed by minimizing the number of HTTP requests it produces.
Optimization tools like NitroPack and WP Rocket do this for you. Your ecommerce platform may even do it for you as well.
Follow these practices to do it on your own:
- Implement a CDN
- Remove unnecessary apps and plugins
- Enable lazy loading
- Remove unnecessary images and videos
- Minify CSS and JavaScript files
- Combine CSS and JavaScript files
11. Enable browser caching
Caching is a technology that creates copies of certain site files and stores them in your visitor’s browser so your site loads even faster the next time they visit.
Of course, cached files get deleted when your visitor clears their browser cache, so this speed boost doesn’t last forever.
However, there is an additional layer to browser caching known as prefetching, which uses smart technology to anticipate a visit. The browser then fetches data from your site and stores it in the cache for later.
There’s also preloading, which downloads certain CSS and JavaScript files the browser may need to load later.
Caching is sometimes offered by your web host or ecommerce platform.
You can also enable it with NitroPack and WP Rocket.
12. Optimize your database
As you add and delete products, pages, posts and users to your site, your database grows.
You can improve performance a bit by removing unused database tables.
WordPress has plenty of plugins that allow you to optimize your database with a click of a button.
Ecommerce platforms have this feature built in.
If you have a custom-built website, you’ll need to optimize your database manually.
13. Reduce server response time
Server response time is the time it takes for your visitor’s browser to receive a response after it sends an HTTP request.
It’s also known as time to first byte (TTFB).
Quality hosting, a CDN provider and caching can do a lot to reduce your server response time, but you can enhance it with the following practices:
- Reduce unnecessary scripts – This includes PHP scripts, which means uninstalling unnecessary WordPress plugins.
- Optimize files – Minifying CSS and JavaScript files, optimizing images, and implementing lazy loading all improve server response time.
- Bot management – Implement a web application firewall*, limit login attempts and enhance DDoS protection to block bots from accessing your web server.
- Increase server bandwidth – It’s more efficient to block bots from accessing your server, but you can also increase your bandwidth so your server can handle an influx of HTTP requests.
*Certain WordPress hosts offer this feature natively. If not, install a security plugin like Wordfence or iThemes Security.
14. Install a WordPress optimization plugin
Again, if you built your ecommerce site with WordPress, a simple way to improve slow site speed is by installing an optimization plugin.
NitroPack and WP Rocket are both fantastic options here. WP Rocket is more affordable but NitroPack includes a CDN.
There’s a free NitroPack plan you can use for testing purposes. If you join their beta testing program, you can increase limits on the free plan. Paid plans are quite affordable too, though.
If you don’t use WordPress, NitroPack will be your best option as it works with Magento, OpenCart, and custom-built websites. Not just WordPress & WooCommerce.
NitroPack offers the following features:
- Cloud-based performance optimization
- Browser caching
- Preloading
- Prefetching
- Device and cookie-aware caching
- Image compression
- Lazy loading
- Advanced lazy loading for background images
- Preemptive image sizing
- Adaptive image sizing
- Built-in CDN
- File minification
- GZIP and Brotli compression
- Deferred JavaScript loading
15. Use pagination for search results
When visitors search for products on your site, they receive search results.
The number of products they see in the search results is dependent on a few different factors, including the number of products you have on your site and how varied your products are.
If the search terms your customers input return a lot of search results, consider using pagination on search result pages.
Pagination is a web design technique that breaks up a lot of products or blog posts into different pages instead of listing them all on one page.
By doing this, only a set number of products and their images load at one time. The user needs to skip to the next page or click a Load More button in order to see more.
This reduces the number of elements, especially images, that need to load when customers search for products.
16. Use a lighter theme or template
If you built your site with a predesigned theme or template, you may have inadvertently installed quite a bit of code on your site.
Some themes and templates are poorly optimized. WordPress themes built with page builders like Elementor are especially notorious for causing performance issues.
Decent web hosting, a CDN, caching, image optimization and an optimization tool definitely help, but if you’re still struggling to hit decent performance scores as you monitor your ecommerce site speed, consider searching for a lighter theme.
17. Eliminate animations on your site
The animations you picked out for your site may seem cool and unique. They may even be great for engagement.
Unfortunately, animations are another notorious web design technique known to cause performance issues.
If your ecommerce site has a slow loading speed, see if there are any animations you can eliminate.
Even something as simple as disabling autoplay on a slider can improve performance. Or better yet, removing the slider entirely.
18. Avoid using too many sliders on one page
You don’t need to give up sliders entirely. Most of the tips on this page will improve your site load speed well enough to allow you to get away with using one slider or a simple animation here and there.
However, you should avoid using too many sliders on a single web page.
Use one slider that highlights multiple products or discounts, then use grid layouts and calls to action to highlight additional products.
Note: If you can get away without using any sliders, that would be your best option. Most CRO pros are not fans of sliders and they’re generally not good for UX.
19. Avoid using too many popups
A lot of ecommerce sites try to grab their visitor’s attention right off the bat by offering a discount in a popup as soon as the visitor lands on the website.
This is not recommended as it blocks the visitor’s access to your website. Even worse, it causes performance issues.
If you want to use popups, use different trigger methods, such as when the user scrolls to a certain part of the page, when they’re idle for a certain amount of time or when they attempt to leave your site (exit intent).
20. Don’t autoplay videos
It may be tempting to use a large background video in your hero section, especially on your homepage. It makes for a great web design.
Unfortunately, waiting for that video to not only load but also start playing can do a lot to negatively impact ecommerce site speed.
Disable autoplay for videos.
If the videos are a few minutes or longer, upload them to YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia instead, then embed them on your website.
Videos are great for product demonstrations and product showcases, but it’s better to give your customer the choice on whether or not they should play.
21. Reduce third-party integrations
Third-party integrations are services you acquire and manage from outside of your website but integrate with it so you can use it on your website.
For ecommerce sites, common third-party integrations include chatbots and customer relationship management platforms.
Unfortunately, they result in quite a bit of HTTP requests and elements that need to be loaded as soon as your visitor lands on your website.
Review every third-party integration you have on your site, and consider whether you truly need it in order to make sales and offer customer service.
For example, if you don’t have customer service representatives to offer live chat, consider whether or not you need a chatbot. A knowledge base with a powerful search feature might suffice.
22. Limit the number of reviews that appear on the product page
Every product page should have a review section where customers can read reviews from other customers and leave their own.
Unfortunately, reviews are more elements that need to be loaded when a customer visits a product page on your site.
Limit the number of reviews that appear initially, and use pagination for additional reviews. This will require your customer to interact with the review section in order to have more reviews show.
Like your search results page, you can also use a load more button.
23. Use fewer advertisements
Ecommerce sites don’t often have advertisements as they prefer to sell their own products instead of advertising someone else’s.
However, in the case that you are using advertisements to promote your own products or someone else’s, especially on blog post pages, consider cutting back on a few.
This is especially true if they’re produced by an ad network, such as Google Ads, Mediavine or AdThrive.
Not only do ads block your customer’s view of your website, especially on mobile devices, they’re resource hungry and take awhile to load.
If they’re produced by an ad network, they’ll also refresh every so often as your customer browses your site. This means they’ll periodically refresh in order to display new ads.
Final thoughts
Page load times matter for all websites but it becomes even more important for ecommerce sites purely because operating them is more resource intensive.
Now, it’s important that I mention that while page load times are a ranking factor in search engines, it’s a minor one. You likely wouldn’t see a ranking improvement from faster load times.
Instead, you would potentially see a demotion if load times were extremely bad.
But the main reason to focus on speeding up your site is conversions. There is a strong correlation to faster load times and increased conversions.
So, don’t do this for Google. Do it for your customers. Give them a better and faster experience and you’ll see more orders coming through.