Improve Your Ecommerce Store Speed by Optimizing What Really Matters

Irene Wanja | Sep 27, 2022

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Speed is one of the most important factors when it comes to having a successful ecommerce store. Not only do visitors expect fast loading times, but Google also takes page speed into account when ranking websites in search results. As a result, optimizing your store for speed can have a significant impact on your bottom line. There are many factors that affect a store’s speed, but not all of them are equally important. That’s why it’s so important to focus on the right things. There is no point in spending hours trying to optimize every last element on your website if the majority of visitors are only concerned with a few key areas. Focusing on the things that really matter can make a big impact with minimal effort. So, what are the most important factors to consider? Let’s take a look!

First and foremost, you need to make sure that your product pages load quickly. Visitors are likely to abandon your site if they have to wait more than a few seconds for a product page to load. Secondly, your checkout process should be as streamlined as possible. Any delays at this stage could cost you valuable sales. Finally, you should also focus on optimizing your mobile experience. With more and more people shopping on their smartphones and tablets, it’s essential to provide a smooth and fast mobile experience. By focusing on these key areas, you can ensure that your Shopify store is performant and responsive, providing an excellent experience for your visitors. 

Although, different ecommerce stores have different areas to address when it comes to optimizing for speed and that is why it is necessary to first identify the problems then devise a plan to resolve them. But how do you go about this? 

1. Run a speed test on Google PageSpeed Insights

If you are looking to improve the speed of your ecommerce store, it is important to first identify where the problems lie. This can be done by running a speed test using Google PageSpeed Insights. This is a powerful tool that provides ecom owners with valuable insights into the performance of their store. This will provide you with a report that highlights the areas of your store that need improvement. For example, the report might show that your store’s images are slow to load or that your HTML code is not efficiently structured. Once you have identified the areas that need improvement, you can then take steps to optimize your store accordingly.

2. Read through the results provided and segment them

Once you run your store’s speed on Google PageSpeed Insights and get the report, you can now go ahead and segment the results into two categories: things that you can do yourself and things that require a developer to fix. Examples of things that you can do yourself include optimizing images and enabling browser caching. Things that require a developer to fix include minifying HTML and reducing server response time. By segmenting the results in this way, you can quickly identify which areas need immediate attention and which can be addressed in the future. Doing this will help make your ecommerce store faster and improve your overall performance. 

A Google PageSpeed Insights report showcasing opportunities to fix to improve speed loading time

While the PageSpeed Insights report can be helpful for understanding your website’s performance, it can be difficult to know how to interpret the data. Here are some tips for analyzing a PageSpeed Insights report:

1. Look at the overview section to get an overview of your website’s performance. This section includes a score for your website, as well as metrics for page load time, First Contentful Paint, and Speed Index.
2. Check the “Opportunities” section to see specific suggestions for how you can improve your website’s speed. These suggestions are based on best practices for web design and development.
3. In the “Diagnostics” section, you can find more detailed information about each of the issues that was identified in the “Opportunities” section. This information can help you understand why certain changes are recommended, and how they can impact your website’s performance.
4. Finally, the “History” section shows you how your website’s performance has changed over time. This information can be helpful for tracking your progress as you make changes to improve your website’s speed.

3. Run another test to see your store’s improved performance

After making the changes suggested in the Google PageSpeed Insights report, you should run another test to check if there has been an improvement in your store’s loading speed. If there are more suggestions in the new report, segment them and fix the important ones. Keep in mind that you should only focus on fixing what really matters, and not everything else. By following these steps, you can gradually improve your store’s loading speed and provide a better experience for your customers. The most important thing to remember is that you should focus on creating a fast and responsive website for your customers. A fast website will improve your customer’s experience and could lead to higher sales.

Wrap-Up

Ecommerce store owners are always looking for ways to improve their store’s performance. Speed is one of the most important factors in determining a store’s success. A slow loading ecom store can frustrate customers and lead to lost sales. There are many factors that affect a store’s speed, but not all of them matter. Each ecom store is unique and one store’s problem is most likely not similar to another – that is why it is necessary to identify and optimize the factors that have the biggest impact on one’s ecommerce store speed. By focusing on these key areas, you can make a big difference in your store’s performance. At BGS we are dedicated to ensuring that we optimize your store all-rounded by covering all steps of optimization including speed. Need to optimize your store? Speak with one of our experts today to speed-optimize your ecommerce store to improve its conversion rate.