Web applications have been dominating the website space for several years now, wherein, they exceed the functionality they provide than what is present in mobile apps.
To achieve this, various types of technology stacks and different programming languages are used in the development process which also determines the visual appearance of the respective website.
Compiling and integrating these resources efficiently is important because the loading time of a webpage plays a vital role in driving or declining sales based on the speed it allows for user interaction. The same is also the case with search engines where if they do not deliver results quickly, a user may choose to use an alternative search engine to seek the information they need.
Thus, while it is important to maintain good quality content and the aesthetic appeal of a website, it is also crucial that it should function at a fast pace.
This claim is supported by surveys where it was found that 45% of users abandon a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load which only adds to the urgent necessity of making the websites run smoothly, always. This can be prevented by performing Web Optimization.
Website Optimization for eCommerce
An eCommerce website will be instantaneously dumped by the user if it has performance issues or if it has a long waiting time to complete actions such as sign-ups, transactions, and so on. When these issues are avoided, the increased usability allows for better site visibility to a larger audience while it also drives conversion rates steadily.
Web optimization focuses on all these aspects and requires that you make changes to certain elements of your eCommerce website to make it more robust.
Reputable companies such as Adaptify and other similar companies that provide both SEO & Web development services can help you avert poor performance scenarios. They’ll apply respective web optimization techniques among others, to ideally make your site deliver a better user experience on a day-to-day basis.
Techniques for eCommerce Website Optimization
SEO & Web Development firms such as Adaptify that hold substantial experience in providing robust web solutions can deploy the following types of changes to make your eCommerce website run smoother.
Content Delivery & Resources Caching
By using multiple CDN(Content Delivery Servers), you can reduce the eCommerce website loading time by several seconds. These types of servers are located in major continents which allows quick data transfer because the overall request time is significantly reduced.
Additionally, they are also capable of holding website assets and elements such as images, javascript files, stylesheets, etc in the form of cache for providing quick and convenient user interaction by loading the website content speedily.
HTTP Management
Each element on the website will make an HTTP request to the server to load itself and too many of such at the same time will make the webpage load slowly. The total number of HTTP requests can be reduced by doing the following things to allow quicker loading times:
- Refrain from using unnecessary CSS, javascript, plugins, and images.
- Don’t use third-party frameworks unless absolutely necessary.
- Bundle the multiple CSS and javascript assets together, respectively.
- Minify Javascript, CSS, and HTML files to remove unnecessary characters.
- The use of sprites could allow sending a single request for loading multiple images at the same time.
Manage Redirects
When you have inconsistent links, you may use redirects more but although these connect your web pages together, they also considerably slow them down. Eliminate inconsistent or slower redirects and keep them at a minimum.
Compression
Having your eCommerce website files and elements compressed can work in your favor. Files such as web pages, CSS, and JavaScript when compressed at the server level can make the website delivery quicker.
The commonly used compression tools or plugins replace the common strings in all these files with shorter characters which still allows delivering the original content as it is.
Local Storage Cache Utilization
Upon the user visiting an eCommerce website, some elements of that website are stored on the user’s local drive as a cache which is basically the current version of the website.
This practice improves the loading speed of the webpage by displaying the user the stored version when multiple website requests are made frequently. Different platforms and servers provide different options for storing cached content which only accelerates the website performance.
Database Optimization
This is an unparalleled factor in terms of managing eCommerce website optimization as the database CMS contains numerous plugins and encrypted data that support various functions.
By removing the unnecessary data as well as plugins from the CMS, you can also reduce the collection of garbage data such as post revisions, dumped images, or trash contents. It is important to note that different CMS use different optimization techniques so beware.
Image Optimization
Everything from the logo to images to icons and visual elements needs to be optimized because bigger files will naturally require more time to load. Even product pages that contain but three images could take a while to load and although the presence of more of them improves user engagement, they will slow down your eCommerce website.
Compression of images is possible through the use of certain APIs as well as thorough tools that reduce the storage space of the file while maintaining the respective aspect ratios.
Final Words
These techniques and many others are popularly used by technologically adept SEO & Web Development companies like Adaptify and others to make a better user experience available to their client’s eCommerce websites.
Factors such as choosing the correct hosting service, prefetch techniques, fonts, and others can also deliver a compound impact on your website so use them in appropriation only.
The post Grow Your eCommerce Business Steadily with these Techniques appeared first on Evertise.
