Today we discuss all the good aspects of having your Website Speed Optimized for SEO and Traffic this 2022. In case you didn’t know, having your Website Speed Optimized helps Search Engines find you faster and in turn gets you more traffic than before. More traffic means more conversions while that, in turn, means more business!
This 2022, we at MS Webdesigner will help you get the most out of your Shopify Website. Call it a New Year’s gift!
According to Google’s research on the average Website Speed Optimization; just a fraction of the websites out there are close to their recommended speed. So, if you optimize your website speed to an acceptable level, you will get a significant ranking advantage over competitors.
The accepted response time of a Website is 7 seconds, but those who do Website Speed Optimization get their Websites ranked within 2 to 3 seconds. That means your website name is at the top of any search engine’s indexing.
- Q) Why is Website Speed Optimization important?
- A) Website speed optimization can lead to a boost in on-site sales conversions and SEO search results because faster sites are more appealing to both users and search engines.
A fast page load speed also amplifies visitor engagement as the user can binge on what is being displayed and maybe even make impulse purchases. It’s like watching television.
As per the facts by market intelligence company, Aberdeen Group Research; every second delay in page load decreases customer satisfaction by 16% and page views by 11%, and most importantly “conversion rates” by 7%.
(Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2012/12/04/fast-sites/?sh=54aafb7c53cf)
The highest E-commerce conversion rates occur on pages with a load time between 0 to 2 seconds. 52% of shoppers say that quick page loading is important to their site loyalty and 44% say that they tell their friends about it if poor.
100 milliseconds is the time the Occipital lobe in our brain stores visual information as a memory. This means one has 100 milliseconds before the brain asks for more information to be processed by the eye for a seamless flow of thought. That’s 0.1 seconds time till the brain waits for the next bit of information to come in.
Ideally, a website must open within 3 seconds and if it’s an E-commerce website, the speed fastens to 2 seconds. Yes, the speeds vary depending on what kind of site and customers we are talking about. 2 seconds is enough time to give the brain a moment to breathe. In fact, 40% of consumers will wait no more than 3 seconds before abandoning a site!
Check with a Shopify Expert regarding the statistics for your requirements.
Monetary-wise as per FastCompany research, every one-second delay in page load time could lead to $1.6 billion in annual losses for online merchants as big as Amazon.
(Source: https://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/how-one-second-could-cost-amazon-16-billion-sales)
Google mentions that by slowing its search results by just four-tenths of a second they could lose 8 million searches per day–meaning they’d serve up many millions fewer online advertisements.
A Shopify Expert’s joke: Just for laughs, the average mobile web back in 2018 took Fifteen seconds to load. Now that benchmark has moved to 5 seconds or less with a 3G connection. Even a 1-second improvement could increase conversions. – And this is NOT an overstatement. Up to 7 seconds maximum is accepted in today’s day and age. That too with almost half the visitors having abandoned the search.
The truth about Website Speed Optimization:
An average user spends several extra minutes browsing fast-responding but irrelevant websites, instead of waiting a few more seconds for a sluggish but relevant website to respond.
The eventual losers are online businesses unable to reach their online customers fast enough through Website Speed Optimization, despite hosting the exact information and services being sought. Strange enough, visitors would rather spend excessive time browsing for the information elsewhere than waiting a few seconds more for the right website to load.
Website performance impacts business success – It’s true:
Website performance is all about user experiences – the power of page speed load ups translating into attractive online shopping experiences inspires sales figures and eventually determines the online business success.
Google, the search engine giant once experienced a 20 percent slump in traffic resulting from half a second delay in page load times. While Google was quick to resolve the issue that barely crippled its market share the same is not always the case with online businesses yet to establish their presence in the competitive online marketplace. We are referring to SMEs.
SMEs affected by website performance issues can have dramatic sales problems. While service and product quality apparently have the biggest impact on business sales, converting website visitors into purchasing customers in the cyber world largely depends on developing a positive customer impression. And this is where E-commerce website performance parameters such as ultra-fast page speed and rapid check-out processes come into play, ultimately giving customers a positive psychological impression encouraging sales and customer loyalty.
What deters a sale is a website exceeding human limitations which is of utmost importance such as patience and frustration. Thus giving the impression of ignorance or incompetence.
High-performing websites on the other hand impact the three parameters that define user engagement: User feelings, User mental states, and User interactions. These three aspects create an emotional, cognitive, and behavioral connection between human visitors and the website. [IMPORTANT]
With this connection in place, online businesses can exploit user engagement characteristics such as focused attention, motivation, and trust in converting visitors into customers or repeat customers.
As a Shopify Expert, what you should focus on for Website Speed Optimization:
Simple Page Layouts. Keep your website clean and simple. An easy-to-use website wins over complex navigation sites even if they have more to offer. The website should be user-centric and almost predictive to use. Websites with the best learning curves achieve the highest customer traffic.
Initial Page Speed. Downloading lots of memory-hogging website content within milliseconds of initiating browser requests is not entirely possible without a thorough revamp and speed optimization for slow websites. In many cases, visitors only seek the primary information in the form of content, product information, and contact details. Add too many complimentary graphics and website features, and page rendering times rise. This is where Image Optimization comes in mentioned later.
Full Page Load Time. Monitoring the time consumed in rendering entire page content onto requesting browsers is an integral element of the user website experience. This information drives strategic IT decisions in deploying and optimizing hardware infrastructure to maximize website performance. This is a back-end job.
Geographic Performance. One of the perks of operating an online business is the ever-expanding global market reach. But this reach is not always equally efficient – and hence effective. Traffic from across the globe can limit client-server communication. Keep checks on website speed and availability tests. Localize servers if the global market reach is important to your business.
Load Tolerance. Website performance depends on traffic. Be sure to conduct stress tests, especially during peak hours.
Server Load. Performance issues intensify during peak load times when insufficient server computing power fails to process website download requests efficiently. Monitoring server CPU load stress levels is important. Beware of Bots, they don’t buy anything and they’re not users!
Image Optimization. As a general rule of thumb, larger files take longer to download than smaller files. So don’t put up large images were not required as the user side downloads the entire image size and then resizes it to a smaller shape. Instead, resize the image beforehand using photoshop or other photo editing software to reduce the file size and yet maintain quality and then upload it to your website. This way the user downloads the image without any resizing done. Thus saving valuable time.
End-users expect the following traits from websites:
◉ Easy to operate, navigate and understand websites.
◉ Directly deliver relevant information and controls being having to look for them.
◉ Accessible across all devices (Desktop, Tablets, Mobiles) and geographic locations.
◉ Delivering legitimate, credible, and high-quality information, products, and services with minimal clicks and browser requests.
Fulfilling the above traits is important to maximizing website performance, usability, and customer loyalty. This makes the customer happy and feels in control over their moves. All of which are the overlapping elements to online business success.
As the new year begins, people will be starting their latest online ventures with the utmost enthusiasm! We from Shopify and MS Webdesigner (The Shopify Experts), wish you all the best and a very Happy New Year!
This is where we conclude How Shopify Website Speed Optimization helps in SEO and Traffic this 2022. We will also be writing Part 2 of this Article regarding the future of Website Speed Optimizations.
For any queries, feel free to connect with us Shopy Experts on https://www.mswebinternational.com
