4 Reasons Page Speed is Key to Success and How to Improve It

What makes a winning Shopify store?

Marketing, great ads, amazing products, and effective campaigns.

These are essential for driving traffic and ultimately: converting customers.

However, focusing solely on these elements can be short-sighted. What happens next? How do you elevate your sales and scale your business beyond its current limits?

What truly makes a difference?

Our hot take: a fast-loading online store.

Customers can’t purchase what they can’t access. And with today’s technology, customers just expect your website to be fast.

If your store takes too long to load, potential buyers won’t stick around to see your products. The success of an e-commerce site hinges on its ability to deliver a seamless user experience.

A well-designed, fast, and user-friendly website creates a strong first impression, builds trust, and motivates customers to make purchases. In the crowded e-commerce landscape, a fast-loading site is crucial for standing out.

So, why is page speed so vital for e-commerce platforms like Shopify? Because in the world of online shopping, speed is synonymous with success.

Here are 4 reasons why your Shopify page speed matters.

1. Page Speed and User Experience

Every second counts.

Page speed, often referred to as “site speed,” is the measure of how quickly the content on a web page loads. It’s a critical factor for SEO, as faster pages tend to perform better in search engine rankings.

Page speed directly influences how users perceive a brand and its products or services. Users expect consistent performance across both mobile and desktop, and slow-loading pages can lead to higher bounce rates, making it important to optimise for both to ensure a consistent user experience.

Bounce Rates

Bounce rates refer to the percentage of visitors who land on a website and then leave without interacting with any other pages or taking any further action, such as clicking on links, filling out forms, or making a purchase.

A high bounce rate often indicates that visitors did not find what they were looking for, or the website’s performance was not fast enough to keep them on the site. According to Google, the probability of bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds.

Page Load Time increases every second (Data from Google, Image by Findstack)

User Experience

User experience is the primary reason search engines prioritise website speed in their ranking algorithms.

Search engines understand that users expect quick access to content, and if a website takes more than a few seconds to load, most users won’t wait—they’ll simply move on.

On the other hand, studies have shown that websites with fast load times tend to retain users better leading to increased conversions.

This is particularly important in e-commerce, where a slow website can mean the difference between a sale and a lost customer.

2. Page Speed and its Impact on SEO and Rankings

Page speed is a critical factor in SEO and rankings because it directly affects how search engines like Google assess and rank websites.

• Google’s Ranking Algorithm: Google considers page speed as one of its key ranking factors.Fast-loading websites are favoured by search engines, leading to higher rankings. Pages that rank higher are more visible, and 49% of the time, they capture the majority of search traffic — a significant advantage.
• Mobile Optimization: With the increasing number of users accessing websites via mobile devices, Google has implemented mobile-first indexing, where the mobile version of a website is considered for ranking. Since mobile networks are often slower than desktop connections, page speed becomes even more crucial. Slow mobile load times can lead to lower rankings, especially on mobile search results.
• Core Web Vitals: Google’s Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that assess the user experience of a website, with a significant focus on load speed.These vitals include metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures how quickly the main content of a page loads. A slow LCP can negatively impact your rankings, as Google emphasises sites that deliver content quickly.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Ranking Factors

Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a vital tool for assessing your website’s performance, particularly its speed. This tool provides detailed insights into how quickly your website loads and offers suggestions for improvement.

While the PageSpeed score it provides is not a ranking factor, the report helps to identify ways to improve how fast your site loads. The real load times of your website, or page speed, will impact search performance.

A report suggests that page speed remains a confirmed ranking factor in Google’s search results, despite recent Google updates.

While it plays a role in evaluating page experience, it doesn’t always carry significant weight on its own. The most crucial factor for ranking continues to be content relevance.

Page speed is important primarily because it affects user experience, influencing how effectively users can interact with your website. Speed is a component of the broader page experience, which can indirectly affect rankings if it hinders user engagement.

3. Page Speed and Conversion Rates

Effect on E-commerce Sales

The speed of your page has a direct impact on e-commerce sales. Faster websites create a smoother shopping experience, which leads to higher conversion rates.

A collaborative research between Google and Nitropack revealed that improving load time by just 0.1 seconds can boost e-commerce performance by 8.4%.

On the other hand, slow-loading pages frustrate customers, leading them to abandon their shopping experience. The same research showed that visitors typically leave a website after 2.75 seconds of load time.

If your site doesn’t load quickly enough, potential customers will leave before even viewing your offer.

For e-commerce businesses, ensuring a fast website is crucial for maximising sales and driving revenue.

Reducing Cart Abandonment

One of the biggest challenges in e-commerce is cart abandonment, where customers add items to their cart but leave before completing the purchase. A slow website is a significant factor contributing to this issue.

Research shows that 22% of customers abandon their carts if the checkout process is too long or complicated. Additionally, an older study found that 18% of shoppers leave their carts due to slow load times.

To combat this, improving website speed is crucial. By optimising the speed of your e-commerce site, you can significantly reduce cart abandonment rates.

For platforms like Shopify, this means streamlining the checkout process, minimising unnecessary steps, and ensuring that pages load quickly, creating a smoother and faster shopping experience that keeps customers engaged and reduces the likelihood of abandonment.

4. Page Speed: Competitive Advantage and Business Growth

Benefits for Online Stores

Customers expect quick and seamless experiences. A fast-loading website sets your business apart from competitors who may have slower sites.

The benefits are clear: faster websites lead to increased customer satisfaction, higher engagement, and more conversions.

Long-term Impact on Customer Loyalty

The speed of your website doesn’t just affect immediate sales—it has a lasting impact on customer loyalty and retention. When customers have a positive experience with a fast website, they are more likely to return, fostering repeat business.

Over time, this builds customer trust and loyalty, which are essential for sustainable growth. A slow website, on the other hand, can erode trust and drive customers to competitors.

By investing in website speed optimization, businesses can ensure long-term customer satisfaction, leading to a loyal customer base that supports continued growth and success.

Tools and Best Practices for Speed Optimization

Using PageSpeed Insights and Website Analyzers

To optimise your website’s speed, the first step is to identify existing performance issues.

Tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights and other website analyzers are invaluable in this process.

For example, PageSpeed Insights not only scores your website’s speed but also offers specific recommendations, such as compressing images or reducing server response time.

It evaluates page speed using two (2) types of data:

1. Real user metrics (field data): Reflects actual performance data from real visitors, showing how your site performs under various real-world conditions.
2. Simulated audits (lab data): Controlled tests that assess page speed in a consistent environment, identifying potential issues but not capturing real-world variability.

Together, these metrics offer a comprehensive view of your site’s speed and performance, helping guide targeted optimizations.

Sample of PageSpeed Insights result

Other website analyzers, like GTmetrix or WebPageTest, offer similar insights, allowing you to run web page speed tests and track performance over time.

By regularly using these tools, you can stay on top of speed issues and ensure your site remains fast and efficient.

Best Practices for Speed Optimization

Once you’ve identified the issues, the next step is implementing best practices for speed optimization.

Use speed optimization apps
Shopify-specific speed optimization tools are available, like Hyperspeed. Hyperspeed is a speed optimizer app that improves site speed and helps boost PageSpeed scores. At its core, Hyperspeed:

• Optimizes site speed and page speed with LazyLoad, critical CSS and JS deferral
• Has unlimited image optimization & image compression to optimise store speed
• Minifies code, cut site load time & boost page speed with JS and CSS minification
• Reduces the SEO ranking impact of 3rd party apps
• Learn more about Hyperspeed’s features here

Get your FREE Trial Today!

Utilise a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is another effective strategy, as it distributes your website’s content across multiple servers worldwide, ensuring faster load times for users regardless of their location.

Shopify simplifies this process with its own built-in CDN infrastructure, which automatically caches and serves your store’s content from a global network of servers, enhancing speed and reliability without the need for additional setup.

Choose lightweight themes
Opting for lightweight themes can significantly improve your site’s loading speed. Heavy themes often come with excess code and features that can slow down your website.

Lightweight themes are particularly beneficial for platforms like Shopify, where speed is crucial for maintaining high conversion rates and reducing cart abandonment

Limit the use of apps and plugins
While apps can add functionality to your website, they can also slow it down, especially if they are not optimised or if you have too many installed. Each plugin can add additional requests, scripts, and styles to your site, increasing the load time.

Regularly audit your apps, deactivate and delete those that are unnecessary, and ensure that the remaining ones are well-maintained and optimised for performance.

Page Speed for a Winning Shopify Store

Website speed is more than just a technical concern—it’s a critical factor in the success of your online store. A fast website enhances user experience, reduces bounce rates, and makes a strong first impression.

Website speed is crucial for SEO, directly affecting your search engine rankings and visibility. For e-commerce, a fast site maximises sales and reduces cart abandonment. Additionally, speed provides a competitive edge, enhancing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term business growth.

By leveraging tools like PageSpeed Insights and following best practices for optimization, you can ensure your website performs at its best, delivering the speed your customers expect and your business needs to thrive.

Find more best practices and tips and tricks with our Ultimate Guide to Shopify Speed Optimisation.