Talkin’ About That PageSpeed & BigCommerce
At IntuitSolutions, we’ve become quite the experts on PageSpeed. In the modern era, you’re being judged by search engines, customers have been conditioned to expect instant results and in the world of e-Commerce, it’s especially critical.
But, Won’t People Just Buy Stuff Anyway?
NO!… They won’t, unless you’re the only person selling a completely proprietary product or service with the market absolutely cornered, otherwise customers can easily ‘X’ off of your slow site and skip along down to the competitor. Thus, your loading time significantly affects not only conversion rates, but also bounce rates, AdWord campaigns, organic search rankings, and nearly every aspect of your online presence.
Because of this, it’s easy to see why we continue to help BigCommerce stores stay successful, through continued dedication to ensure all landing pages load lightening fast.
How Does Page Speed Directly Affect Business Success?
90% of Customers Possess Attention Deficits
In the world of eCommerce, it’s critical that your site’s page speed is on point. Your store’s loading time affects conversion rates, bounce rates, AdWord campaigns, organic search rankings, and nearly every aspect of your online presence. Because of this, it’s easy to see why successful BigCommerce stores continue to put in the time and effort to ensure their pages are loading lightening fast.
Google Frowns Upon Those Super Slow-Mo PageLoads, Too!
Naturally, users hate web pages that load slowly. There are hundreds of studies confirming that slow loading pages are terrible for a user’s experience, directly relating to lost sales for each second of additional load time. Trying to guide users through the sales funnel is difficult enough; doing it on a slow loading site is nearly impossible.
Google stated years ago that they were using page speed as a ranking factor. So, you may have a poorly ranking site on the first results page, but you’ll certainly pay for it. Increasing your store’s page speed and, along with it, organic ranking, is key.
If Your BigCommerce Site Is Slow – We Can Fix It
While every BigCommerce store is unique, we almost always find the same issues
We won’t go too in-depth here, but let’s take a look at some low-hanging fruit first. To begin, we make sure the store’s entire category structure is listed only once. Typically sites will have the same large list of links outputted 2, 3 or more times. This is almost always hundreds of lines of code that can be greatly shaved down with some light JavaScript.
Content Is King, Don’t Get Beheaded By A Tyrant
Not to mention, these excessive lines of code are generally above the page’s real and relevant content. In other words, the content itself makes up a lower percentage of the source and is pushed further down the page as though it were less important.
Image Optimization … Don’t Overlook It!
Poorly embedded images are another huge factor in slowing down BigCommerce sites. Quite often, we find that the image dimensions are far too big for the size they take up on the page. This additional weight adds up very quickly, ultimately adding several megabytes worth of unnecessary resources that the user needs to download. This is especially troubling for mobile users who may not be browsing with unlimited data or the greatest Wifi connection. It is for this reason that we go a step further and optimize all images with our compression tool, essentially reformatting the file algorithm so that the file size is reduced and its quality is maintained.
How to Make Your BigCommerce Store Load Faster
IntuitSolutions, BigCommerce Certified Developers
The first step in making your BigCommerce store load faster is finding, understanding, and fixing the root problem areas.
Here at IntuitSolutions, we provide a Page Load Speed Package that focuses solely on this task.
With our years of experience, there is truly no one more qualified to help your BigCommerce store rank higher and convert to more sales through lighter and more efficient code.
