How Fast is YOUR E-Commerce Website?

The sheer number of eCommerce websites vying and competing with one another for business has made the internet into a customer-driven arena; if one eCommerce website isn't up to scratch in one way or another, the potential customer is spoiled for choice with alternatives. Myriad factors affect the usability and functionality of a website but in this edition of the Brickweb blog, we're going to be taking a look at page loading speeds.

Put simply, a slow-loading website is going to cost you in terms of both reputation and sales. A plethora of studies and surveys have repeatedly proved this to be true. No matter how good your website looks and no matter how high the quality of your products, a slow loading time will make the vast majority of customers abandon your site and choose another.

Google is the undisputed giant of the search engines. By using a range of different indicators, from mobile-friendliness to the HTTPS protocol, Google's algorithms rank websites to determine where they appear in search results pages. One of the newest of these ranking elements is page loading speed: if Google's algorithm has to select between two websites of equal relevance, it will award the higher position on the search results page to the website with a faster loading speed.

A study carried out by ISP Fasthosts revealed that over half of UK shoppers abandoned a planned purchase online due to the website loading slowly. The same study suggested that slow-loading websites account for a massive £60bn every year in lost sales.

The results of another study, this one carried out by Retail Systems Research, were published by US-based web optimisation service Yottaa. The websites of 80 large online retailers were evaluated in terms of site performance and loading speeds. Over 1,000 online shoppers were also surveyed about their opinions and experiences when using these websites. Below are some of the key findings from this research:

• Reducing page load speed by just one second results in an average conversion increase of 3.3% from desktops/­laptops and 5.7% from smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. 
• 59% of all sales were made from web pages which took less than four seconds to load. Page load times longer than this resulted in 58% of all bounces.
• The vast majority (92%) of online consumers said that slow-loading websites were 'frustrating'.
• 87% of online consumers cited four seconds or less as the only acceptable page load time. 

ECommerce website from Brickweb are designed to load quickly and completely on any device, solving the potential problem of lost customers in one fell swoop. Our websites utilise state-of-the-art HTTP compression in addition to pre-check and post-check caching to keep those vital load speeds high. The content of each Brickweb eCommerce site is continually optimised, which also helps when it comes to page load times.

Want to find out more about eCommerce websites from Brickweb? Please browse our website, where you can also find out details about our other services such as web development and internet marketing. When you're ready to start your journey, get in touch with our team and we will be with you every step of the way.