Online Shop Performance Optimisation made easy!

Online Shoppers attach great importance to a structured and fast website, because slow performance disrupts the shopping experience. Google has also recently declared the shop performance and thus the loading time to be a ranking factor due to usability. If the shop is too slow, this can have serious consequences, because while the loading time increases, the patience of the customer decreases. Ultimately, the customer bounces and switches to another online shop. A high bounce rate is the result of poor loading performance and a revenue problem in the long run.

Those who optimise their shop performance, however, have a good chance of becoming more attractive to customers and the search engine.

Importance of Page Speed & Continuous Optimisation

The impact of so-called page speed can no longer be overlooked today and is directly related to shop performance. Users are used to websites being available within milliseconds and are impatient with long loading speeds. The goal of every online shop should therefore be good, optimised shop performance and PageSpeed, which, in addition to satisfied customers, is also rewarded by Google with better rankings in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Let’s take a closer look at the importance of loading times.

User experience is directly linked to shop performance

A large-scale Google study shows: The average loading time of German websites is 2.6 seconds. Just 5.4% of websites load in less than 1 second. (2: Quelle) This puts websites from Germany in 15th place among the best-ranked countries worldwide. Long loading times prevent a positive user experience, so that many customers not only bounce, but may not visit the site a second time. The study illustrates the enormous effect shop performance optimisation can have on your online shop. It seems that most of the competition is still not optimised. This results in a significant competitive advantage for better positioned online shops.

SEO ranking factors

Already a few years ago, Google made an effort to sensitise website operators to loading times. In 2010, the announcement was made that page speed would become a ranking factor and thus influence the rankings in the search engine results. In the years that followed, page speed became increasingly important. Today, page speed is also a ranking factor for mobile searches. Therefore, it is important to pay special attention to the performance of the mobile version of an online shop.

With the “Page Experience” update in 2020, Google bundled mobile usability, security, HTTPS and advertisements with the Page Speed metrics, also known as Core Web Vitals. The three metrics Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) are representative of shop performance in terms of speed within the Page Experience framework.

A positive customer page experience is one of the most important factors for Google today, which is why optimised shop performance can ensure better rankings in the SERPs.

Conversion Rate

The loading time has an enormous influence on the conversion rate. This is especially true for mobile devices. If there is a delay of only two seconds on the mobile website, the conversion rate drops by more than 36%. A high loading time can go hand in hand with massive sales losses for an online shop. On the other hand, optimising the shop’s performance can increase the number of purchases or leads and boost sales.

How to optimise online shop performance?

For online retailers, there are several measures to optimise shop performance so that the loading speed becomes significantly faster.

Optimise images

Too large images or graphics often cause a considerably long loading speed. It is therefore particularly important to use appropriate image sizes from the outset. If images are too large, the browser scales them down to ensure optimal image display. This process has a negative effect on shop performance.

Gzip compression

If compressed content is sent, a significantly faster transmission is possible, which has a positive effect on the loading speed and the shop performance. Gzip compression, which reduces the file size by around 80%, is suitable for this.

CSS and JavaScript Files

Online shops also achieve shop performance optimisation by minimising CSS and JavaScript files. This applies first of all to the removal of comments, superfluous spaces or line breaks. Small and lean file sizes of the code increase the loading speed. It is a good idea to combine both CSS and Javascript files in one script and outsource them. This way, additional local files can be loaded.

With the tips mentioned above, you are already taking important measures to optimise your shop’s performance. Tools such as PageSpeed Insights from Google or Pingdom are suitable for getting an overview of the status quo of the loading speed and identifying the optimisation potential for improving page speed. The need for online shops to reduce response times and make slow shops faster is reflected in the fact that purchase cancellations and shop performance are strongly linked. The poorer the shop performance, the more shopping cart abandonments occur.

Quick and easy solution: the uptain plugin

However, optimising shop performance is not a one-off event. Loading speeds must always be checked and appropriate measures taken. There will never be an ideal performance, because errors occur again and again. In order to be prepared for these eventualities, the uptain plugin is the ideal solution. With uptain, online shops prevent shopping cart abandonments that occur for various reasons – including long loading times. Intelligent solutions such as personalised abandoned cart emails, individual exit intent popups and user-centred newsletter popups reduce shopping cart abandonments by up to 30%.

Don’t waste any (loading) time & optimise shop performance now!

Optimising shop performance and PageSpeed can be decisive for the success of an online shop, because users attach great importance to loading times. The slower a shop, the higher the risk of shopping cart abandonment. This in turn leads to lower sales and a poorer ranking on Google. A few measures to optimise the shop performance can reduce the loading time. Supporting solutions such as our abandonment emails, exit intent pop-ups or newsletter pop-ups additionally reduce the purchase abandonment rate and have no influence on the loading time.