The last quarter is a particularly intense period for e-commerce sites. In almost 3 months, retailers experience a series of commercial operations that are unparalleled compared to the rest of the year. Black Friday opens the season, followed by Cyber Monday, and this Cyber Week then gives way to the Christmas holidays and then the Winter Sales. No respite for merchant sites! We help you boost the performance of your website in 5 key points, with studies and technical advice to speed up your web pages and improve your conversion rates, even during traffic peaks that put your server to the test.
1. Optimize the loading speed of your web pages for a quality user experience…
Be aware that navigation difficulties are cited in nearly 20% of cases to explain shopping cart abandonment. So, on your web pages, do everything possible to make your users’ journey easier! Highlight your CTAs and product availability, simplify reading by avoiding overloading the content (no more elements such as pop-ups, animations and other image carousels)… For the checkout , offer the possibility of finalizing orders even without being logged in , facilitate the creation of wish lists, and offer as many online payment methods as possible… In short, roll out the red carpet for your visitors! Also, as you may know, loading speed is one of the priority UX criteria . Your pages must therefore continue to be fast, on desktop and mobile, especially during promotional periods. Knowing that 1 second of additional loading time can cause conversion rates to drop by 20% in retail , optimizing the speed of your pages is essential! To understand the impact of web performance on your entire marketing, sales and SEO strategy, and for your brand image:
2. … and to promote your SEO
The quality of the user experience is important for your visitors, but also for Google. Indeed, the search engine integrates metrics that allow it to evaluate speed into its algorithm, starting with Page Experience Update (its 2021 update).
In practice, Google will observe 3 aspects of UX and take these elements into account for SEO:
- display speed with Largest Contentful Paint
- interactivity with First Input Delay
- visual stability with Cumulative Layout Shift .
So, to boost your SEO, you obviously need to work on your content, but also optimize the speed of your website pages. To see things more clearly and understand the issues, here is the replay of our webinar dedicated to these three metrics that Google groups under the name “Core Web Vitals”:
3. Monitor and compare your website speed to your market
But how do you know if your website is “fast enough”? In addition to the metrics and scores that allow you to evaluate the speed and performance of your website ( Speed Index , Time To Interactive , Time To First Byte , Start Render / First Contentful Paint , PageSpeed score , etc.), it is important to identify yourself in relation to your market. Indeed, not all websites have the same level of complexity in terms of content. Thus, optimizing speed does not involve the same investments for a WordPress blog with little content and a few image files, compared to a merchant platform with rich content, a large number of images and value-added features for users (customization, online help, search engine, geolocation, AB Test , etc.). Beyond the fact that not all websites have the same level of complexity in terms of content, the maturity of e-retailers on web performance issues varies from one sector to another. So, to stand out from the crowd from an SEO, UX and conversions perspective, you need to do better than your direct competitors! Otherwise, Google will put them ahead of you, and your users risk leaving your site for those of your competitors who offer a better experience (for example, on mobile, 53% of visitors leave a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load, and 80% of them never come back).
To help you get your bearings in relation to your ecosystem, we have evaluated the speed, performance and loss of revenue of French retail sites in 2020 in a study to download below (and you can also consult our monthly mobile webperf ranking in partnership with JDN to compare yourself over time):
4. Manage your Third Parties
We have just mentioned rich content and value-added services on web pages, and as you know, some depend on third parties (images, multimedia content, JavaScript, tracking , advertising, etc.). During promotional periods, to increase your chances of boosting your turnover, your website must obviously be accessible and fast every second. Your Third Parties must remain an asset and above all not become a burden on the loading speed of your pages. In the event of an anomaly, you must be able to intervene in real time, even if it means disabling the third parties that are causing the problem, so that your users can complete their online purchases. To understand how to prioritize and manage your Third Parties, follow the replay of our webinar, or download our dedicated study. You will see that a large number of third parties on your site is not necessarily responsible for the slowdown of your pages… provided that they are well optimized, and your JavaScript is well implemented .
5. Anticipate traffic peaks
It’s no secret: during sales periods, traffic increases. According to data collected by Similar Web during Black Friday in 2019 : Cdiscount saw a 120% increase compared to its average number of visits per day in November, Fnac recorded a traffic peak of 111%, and Boulanger 100%. For conversion rates to keep up, the pages of your Ecommerce site must continue to offer a quality user experience. As we have just seen, this requires good management of your Third Parties, and it is also a question of anticipation on other technical aspects of your website, regardless of the platform or CMS you use (WordPress, Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Magento, Prestashop, custom solution , etc.), or your hosting solution.
For example, know that an unavailability of almost 1 hour already cost Amazon $99 million during Prime Days in 2018 ; or that the pages of the Macy’s department store website remained inaccessible for an entire day during Black Friday in 2016 , which necessarily led to significant losses. How to avoid these mishaps? Simply by predicting traffic peaks, to relieve your server and preserve your performance. Here is a complete guide with a checklist and technical advice that will help you maintain the availability and speed of your web pages:
We hope that all of this content and resources have helped and inspired you, and that you are ready to make the most of the holiday season!
Finally, for optimal efficiency and lasting improvements, keep in mind that, like SEO, optimizing the loading speed of a website requires working on your code and resources over time .
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