It goes without saying that your website, especially if it is an eCommerce one, must be fast – as fast as lighting, some may say. It doesn’t matter what you plan to sell on it – from CBD oil to alternative medicine – as long as you make sure that it runs properly.

If your website is not fast enough, people – potential customers – will likely leave it before even checking what you have in store for them. For example, you may start a sale for a particular item that your customers may miss just because your website is too slow.

Therefore, in the following lines, we will show you exactly what to do to increase the speed of an eCommerce website!

CDN – Content Delivery Network

A CDN implies using a group of servers that are dispersed all over the world. The content that your clients want to reach is stored on those servers. Therefore, when a client accesses your website, the CDN will distribute the delivery load to the closest server of their location.

Because of this, local user experiences will be faster, no matter the location your website gets accessed from.

Tracking Organization with Google Tag Manager

Even though customer data is what fuels your marketing and eCommerce strategies, it can also slow you down. Naturally, we refer to your website here.

When your website is collecting your customer’s data, the latter may be slowed down significantly – for all of those using it. However, a Tag Management System will condense all the tags into a single JavaScript request.

Mobile Performance Optimization

Back in 2018, mobile users accounted for 66% of all Shopify sales made during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Since people want to shop more and easier, the mobile shopping trend will keep on growing.

This is the main reason why you must ensure that your website is correctly optimized for mobile. Moreover, if your webpages load faster on mobile, they are bound to work great on desktop platforms!

Specifying Image Dimensions

One too many times, we access a particular website and cannot see any data until its images are fully loaded. Naturally, in most cases, the photos are the last things we are interested in.

This is because the owners forget to – or don’t – specify the width and height of the images they put on their website. If they’d do so, the clients’ browser would be able to create image placeholders. The latter can load both the webpage and the images on it at the same time, with little to no impact on the site speed.

Avoiding Redirects

You may already know that a redirect implies a separate request to your website’s server. This comes with increased load times.

It is highly recommended that you minimize redirects on your website – if it is really necessary for you to use them. 

Proper Hosting Servers

Not all hosting servers are made the same. You might have got a deal when you started your eCommerce website, but that host service may not keep up with your traffic requirements.

In short, it may be the time for you to change your hosting server, especially if you receive complaints about your site’s speed. 

A hosting server must be properly fitted for your traffic requirements – in terms of hard drive storage, RAM, CPU speed, and so on.

The Bottom Line

As you can see, most ways through which you can increase your eCommerce site’s speed usually imply going back to the basics – such as specifying the image sizes and re-checking your hosting server’s specifications.

Even if most of the above can be considered necessary – mobile optimization – they must become a routine of everyone who is managing a website. This means regularly updating and checking their website, as well as its speed.