Hoist up your eCommerce website speed – Here is how?
Speed, speed, and speed! – eCommerce website speed is one of the critical elements that ensure online success.
When you first built your e-store, the Ecommerce Website Development Services definitely have checked and assured the speed of your website. However, it has been noticed that with the passage of time, the site speed falls. Indeed, there can be many reasons that cause such speed issues, for instance, slow internet connection. However, this post will state the causes and solutions to the problems that outweigh the minor ones.
You should essentially expedite it as speed directly influences the user experience of the website alongside the conversions. For the same reason, we are here to list the tips to help you boost your eCommerce website speed.
Check and replace your web hosting.
Web hosting can be one of many culprits behind sluggish websites. Right from servers and hard drive to bandwidth, the web host renders all the resources. It signifies any up and down in the resources and their quality, and your website is in danger.
So one of the proven ways is to migrate to a web host that offers quality web hosting services. That provides hosting suitable for the eCommerce website and meets its traffic and data needs. You need fast servers with maximum uptime that doesn’t get overloaded and out of order even in peak times.
If your web host is good in what services it offers, it can be possible that you need to upgrade your hosting. Typical upgradation that individuals opt for is from shared hosting to VPS and dedicated servers because shared has limited resources. Choose the plans that can accommodate your eCommerce site requirements.
However, what if everything related to hosting is perfect?
Move on to the next:
Minimizing the HTTP Requests
Every time the website is to load, a user clicks a button/ link or searches something on the website. Then, it requests the server to send the data. What usually happens is the websites have plenty of elements like extensions, media files, content blocks, etc. The more components a website has, the more request it sends to the server. The increased request processing eventually causes a slow loading speed.
To filter out this issue, you need to put in the legwork. For instance,
- Removing the unused and unnecessary media files (images, videos) and extensions.
- Implementing the caching
- Accelerate the JavaScript files – long-running tasks and separate files
- Redirection also sends requests to the servers, therefore, keep them minimized.
Deployment of Caching
Caching, also called in-memory, is another wonderful solution to speed up the website. What we mean is by caching, you can temporarily store the data so that the website browser does not have to send the requests again and again.
For instance, you can store the user information, product catalogs, important and most browsed FAQ. The science behind it is that in this process, the data stores on the RAM. You already know a RAM operates ten times faster than the hard drive. So this strategy effectively influences your eCommerce website speed in a good way.
Lighten your Web Page Size
Page size influences the loading times, too, so focus on reducing your page size by optimizing it. What can you optimize?
Your website’s page(s) consists of plenty of elements; HTML and CSS files and scripts, fonts, media alongside plugins supporting the front end and backend. All elements are necessary for an excellent eCommerce website with happy customers. Thus, eliminating them will not be the solution. So start by optimizing the code, scripts, and plugins and work on compressing the images and other media files. Ecommerce Website Development servers are experts in handling these technicalities like professionals.
Reducing the Round Trips
First, understand what actually is the round trip referring to. As already mentioned, the browser has to process the files/ request the server. With the increasing number of JavaScript files, the accessing and processing escalated. To access all the files separately, it has to make multiple trips back and forth – round trips. On minimizing the requests to only one, the trips lessen and loading times shortened.
Adopt Content Delivery Network
Another viable way to boost your eCommerce website speed is using the CDN. But let’s take a look at the background first. The servers that are hosting the website are in more or less specific locations only. No need to mention, people access a website from different locations globally. So the individuals approaching the site from distant locations somehow face more delays than the individuals in close vicinity.
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. It is a network of servers that are placed in multiple locations globally. Enabling the CDN helps by copying and storing the website data separately in those servers. Whenever a user sets foot into the website or requests a file/data, the nearby server (locally) loads the files pretty fast. It saves the users’ time and helps you retain the customers who might abandon your website due to long waiting.
Install latest PHP Version
Alongside the above, you can upgrade the PHP version of your website. For example, if you have your e-store created using WordPress, you might know that PHP is the basic programming language. PHP being a worldwide recognized open-source language, upgraded frequently.
Thus, the new PHP versions effectively increase the e-store performance and speed. This is not the only thing; instead, it removes the bugs and security vulnerabilities from the roots leaving no room for slow speed issues. Now, check your PHP version and, if needed, switch it to the latest version.
If you get stuck in these challenging processes, you don’t need to be stressed. Instead, get the help from any Ecommerce Website Development Company and let them do the hard job. In return, have a perfectly graphic-rich as well as a user-friendly platform to serve your customers.