How can you increase website load speed?
I’ve previously talked about how important it was to focus on page load speed and it’s correlation to conversion rate. Lower load times = higher conversion.
Before you start making any adjustments to your site, you should start by benchmarking where you are now so that you can measure your improvements (and set backs) over time.
I’ve found the easiest way of doing this is by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights to record the desktop and mobile score of 4 key pages – homepage, a high traffic collection page (PLP), a high traffic product page (PDP) and a high traffic landing page. Update this weekly in a Google Sheets or Excel file.
The great thing about using PageSpeed insights is that it also gives you actionable insights into how you can improve your score.
The most common, the quickest and the most impactful website load speed improvements:
Improve image size
- Convert your images into .webp formats
- Make sure your images aren’t much bigger than their size they will be rendered at
- Use a Shopify app called Crush to help optimise your images
- All of this doesn’t doesn’t require your developer to help you implement!
Minify or remove excess Javascript
- Shopify’s community of third party apps is one of the greatest points of leverage on the platform – but they come at a cost (not just $)
- Every time you add an app it increases the amount of requests that your website is making and slows down the page – this applies to additional JavaScript you add
- Make sure you regularly audit your apps and measure their impact on speed – remove anything that you no longer use or find an alternative that doesn’t slow down your site.
- Apply the same process to your scripts – do you need it? If so, how can you reduce its size? Can you achieve the same result in a better way? A developer will need to help you implement this.
Lazyload
- Often PageSpeed Insights will recommend “deferring offscreen images”
- This is indicating that all of the page’s images are loading at the same time and slowing down the site
- A Lazyload will only load the images within view of the user and then continue to load only as the user scrolls down the page
- Shopify has great implementation documentation (just search “Lazy Loading Shopify” in Google)
- This will require a developer to help you implement
Fortunately, a lot of the heavy lifting is already being done by Shopify straight out of the box. That means you can benefit from key methods like browser caching and content delivery networks (CDNs) straight away without configuring anything.
Finally, you must view every planned site change or every new app installation through the lens of your website load speed. You must evaluate the change and the impact that it has on your score and ask yourself the question:
Is the downside from slower speeds made up for by the upside from the deployment?
If no, then revert immediately!
How do you approach website load speed?
Are you struggling to scale your DTC business and don’t know where to start?
Then it sounds like you need an eCommerce consultant to help you get started. Drop me a contact form and let’s have a conversation today!