In today's fast-paced world where attention spans are only getting shorter for people, consumers mustn’t feel like their time is being wasted, which leads to them moving on to another seller. This translates to the eCommerce market as well. According to a survey up to 79% of consumers never purchase from the websites they feel dissatisfied with.
This dissatisfaction may be caused by several factors but one of the major ones and possibly the most important is the time it takes to load a site. As the availability of abundant choices in the market, most consumers expect the fastest and most efficient results when browsing through websites and many get turned away simply because the page takes longer to load. This can lead to the loss of many valuable sales and traffic to your Big Commerce Store.
Luckily, being on BigCommerce alone gives you an advantage as the e-commerce software provider heavily prioritizes on improving the site loading speed for its users. However, here are a few more neat tips and tricks you can apply for BigCommerce store speed optimization and ultimately increase traffic on your site.
1. Site Speed Test:
Site speed tests are an accurate way to analyze your BigCommerce store speed, as it determines the top factors affecting the speed of your BigCommerce store. It can also tell if you if your site is using images that have a higher than necessary file size which may be causing slow loading speed. PINGDOM and Google's Page Speed are two free online services you can use for this purpose.
2. Image optimization:
This may be the number one factor affecting site speed on your BigCommerce online store. It should be kept in mind that even though it is very necessary to catch the customer’s eyes, the images displayed don’t have to be excessively large. Here are a few guidelines that should be followed when setting up a BigCommerce store.
- The Width of your images should not exceed 1250 PX. This is the recommended pixel width on BigCommerce.
- Dpi or “Dots per inch” is also very vital. When an image is printed it is 300 dpi, in comparison when an image is used on your BigCommerce online store it should be of 72 dpi as it will increase page load speed and also prevent loading errors.
- Use JPG files instead of PNG as the former has a lower file size and the quality of the image is also not sacrificed.
3. Fix redirects:
As time passes and like every somewhat successful online store, your BigCommerce online store will also undergo many changes which may include making new categories and sub-categories for your products. There is nothing inherently wrong with such developments but this may cause an unclear path to form as some of your products and sub-categories may still be linked to older categories.
Fortunately, BigCommerce provides a solution to this problem as it automatically redirects. However, if the category names have been changed more than once a trail of redirects has been created which will result in slower load time on your BigCommerce online store? A quick and nifty solution is to inquire about your site's redirect page and do some cleaning up.
4. Use a CDN:
Using a CDN or Content delivery network can be very efficient when dealing with consumers around the world. The basic function of a CDN is to store the images and others to static data from your BigCommerce store to global network nodes. So, for example, when a consumer sitting in Europe visits your site, the data will be loaded from the nearest data center to the consumer rather than the main data center which might take a longer period. You can use the BigCommerce CDN for the related services.
5. Optimizing your Content:
No doubt the content on your website is the sole reason for its existence but it should be kept in mind that unnecessary and pointless content will only push your actual website further down and result in low speed. Similarly, decreasing the number of products displayed on your homepage will also improve site loading speed on your BigCommerce store. As Big Commerce gives the user total control on setting up the layout of their store, it is recommended to keep the number of items displayed to around five for better site loading performance. Check out how to Get your BigCommerce Store at Top of Search Engine with Best BigCommerce SEO Features!
Another handy tip is to optimize your menus. Many websites use menus enlisting several products. An efficient solution would be to make a few categories and then making further sub-categories of them. All of this will result in decreasing the site load time. Similarly, keeping in check the number of products being showed per page will also serve the same purpose.
6. Avoiding third party Applications:
While it is very handy that BigCommerce provides the use of third-party applications for the benefit of our BigCommerce online store, it should also be remembered that excess of these applications will directly result in slower loading times for your Big Commerce online store.
7. JavaScript Errors:
There might be very basic errors in your JavaScript which might have gone unnoticed the first time around such as syntax mistakes that might be causing some scripts to not run properly. These should be fixed as soon as possible.
8. Google Tags:
It might be possible that a combination of old google tags (ga) and the newer ones (gags) are being used at the same time which is causing the tracking of your Google Analytics three times. If this is the case then it should be cleaned up immediately and it should be made sure that your conversion tracking code is using the same tagging system.
By using the above-mentioned techniques, you can easily increase your BigCommerce online store site leading speed. As the consumers leave satisfied with the performance of your online store it will automatically result in bringing in more traffic and increasing BigCommerce SEO.
We provide BigCommerce development service to fuel your business with enterprise level capabilities and keep your customer coming back! Whether you want to migrate to BigCommerce integrate any application, redesign your online store, require a new development and maintenance for your store, let us know about your requirements and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!
