Customers Will Love You for Speeding Up Your Ecommerce Website - Part 1
The COVID-19 pandemic hugely increased the number of people shopping online. Consumer behaviour changed drastically during the lockdown and many of those changes are here to stay! More people than ever are now shopping online, so it's important that you (and your website) keep up with them. A recent report concluded that an estimated £60bn each year is lost in sales as a result of slow loading times. E-commerce websites are only as good as the speed that they load. This is a fact of e-commerce life. Customers will quickly abandon your site if it takes too long to load, and you'll lose revenue in the process. It's crucial for e-commerce website owners to take steps to ensure their website loads quickly, or else customers will go elsewhere and find a faster e-commerce website! Here are four tips on how you can make your e-commerce website load fast enough for even the most impatient of customers:Install a WordPress Caching Plugin
The more people that visit your e-commerce website at any one time, the more chance there is of your website slowing down. By installing a caching plugin, the user will see a cached version of your HTML page. Thus freeing up your server resources - allowing your website to run smoothly (and fast).
There are many different plugins you can use, but WP Rocket is one of the best tools around. This tool automatically generates a cache of your website AND keeps it up to date. Use the latest version of WordPress & WooCommerce
WordPress is always striving to improve the performance of their platforms and with each new version, they fix bugs and strengthen security. As a business (and website owner) it is your responsibility to keep your e-commerce website up to date. Regularly updating the software within your website will not only protect your site but will speed it up too. The latest version of WooCommerce also includes a host of features that should help to speed up your e-commerce website - such as their new REST API and increased Nginx cache size limit (to name just two).Optimise your product images
Images are an important tool for your e-commerce website. They help you to showcase and sell your products easily. Images are also important when it comes to the speed at which e-commerce websites load. The more images you have on your e-commerce website, the longer it can take to load. So, you must ensure that your images are optimised. Your images should be high-quality, but also as small as possible. The use of e-commerce plugins can ensure that your images are optimised and used in a way that will not slow down your e-commerce website, for example, WP Rocket's Image Optimizer plugin allows you to resize any image on the fly!Choose your plugins wisely
People often ask, how many plugins can I have on my website. The answer is, as many as you like. However, it is the quality not the quantity of the plugins that can slow down your website. One single poorly coded plugin can have a huge impact on your load time. So, you should ensure that the plugins on your e-commerce website are well coded and will not slow down. Check the reviews and online platforms before installing plugins to ensure they are going to serve you well.If you would like to know more about how to get started with an Ecommerce website then please take a look at www.thewebguys.co.uk or even book in a meeting directly with Brian to discuss how to get started using this link https://thewebguys.zohobookings.eu/#/customer/brianlynggaard