Introduction

BigCommerce is a leading eCommerce platform that helps brands develop, design, and market their stores. It provides multiple themes and templates to help brands customize and design their stores as they want. Apart from customization, the loading speed contains value in terms of site ranking and performance.

Optimizing BigCommerce site speed is essential for enhancing sales and expanding business growth. Therefore, in this blog, we will explore ways to optimize BigCommerce site speed for better performance.

Tips To Increase BigCommerce Site Speed

Here, we will explore the techniques you can use to enhance your store loading speed.

Optimizing Images:

Optimize your images for a better online store. Images are important for a beautiful website, but they can slow it down. To make them load fast, use image optimization techniques. Compressed and well-chosen images load quickly without losing quality, making your site better for users. Use JPEG and PNG formats and avoid heavy ones. Tools like ImageOptim and TinyPNG help compress images perfectly.

Reduce HTTP Requests:

To make your store load faster, try to reduce the number of things it needs to fetch from the server. Every element on a webpage, like images or scripts, requires its own request, which can slow down loading. Combine and simplify CSS and JavaScript files to reduce these requests. Also, remove any extra elements, plugins, or scripts that aren’t really needed for your store to work well. This will speed up your website and make it more user-friendly.

Browser Caching:

Browser caching speeds up your website for people who visit it again by storing parts of your store on their devices. Learn how browser caching works and what its advantages are for your consumers. Configure caching settings in your Bigcommerce dashboard to use this helpful speed improvement technique.

CDN (Content Delivery Network):

Improving your CDN (Content Delivery Network) is important for making your website faster and smoother for visitors everywhere. A good CDN speeds up how quickly your website loads, which gives users a better experience. To check CDN performance, focus on delivery speed, handling high traffic, and efficient caching. When choosing a CDN provider, consider factors like performance, pricing, security, customer support, scalability, customization options, and reputation. Optimize content delivery by compressing files, optimizing images, setting up caching, and reducing unnecessary data.

Use AMP:

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a tool that helps mobile websites load faster. Mobile websites can be slow because of slow internet and different coding. AMP uses a standard code that Google understands well, making pages load quickly from a single URL on Google’s servers. Google likes AMP because it loads up to 10 times faster, which is important for mobile users. It also boosts search ranking and makes your brand look professional. To make AMP work best, put CSS and JavaScript in separate quick-loading files.

Preloading:

To speed up your BigCommerce website, use “preloading.” This tells the browser to load important parts of your page first, like the navigation and hero image on the homepage. By lining up these requests in order, you avoid a slow-down from too many elements loading at once, improving overall store speed. This is crucial for website speed optimization and performance enhancement.

Use Automatic Redirects

To speed up your BigCommerce store, use automatic redirects. They prevent visitors from seeing error pages when they click old or incorrect URLs. Here’s how:

• In your dashboard, go to server settings.
• Under “301 redirects,” choose “Add redirects”.
• Update old URLs to point to new ones.

BigCommerce supports both manual and dynamic redirects. Manual redirects require updating if the destination URL changes, while dynamic redirects adjust automatically.

Minimize Third-Party Resources:

To make your website faster, reduce the number of third-party resources suggested by BigCommerce. Too many slow down loading because they often use lots of JavaScript, have large images and videos, and can block page display. Try using ad blockers to speed up loading by 51%, make custom request maps to track resource chains, and use Google’s Page Speed Insights to see their impact.

Dynamic Homepage Content:

Dynamic homepage content can slow down your website because the main server generates it. This can hurt page speed and make visitors leave faster (increasing bounce rate). Use plugins to store frequently accessed content and images to speed up loading.

Avoid Long Blog Lists:

To optimize your BigCommerce page speed, avoid displaying a long list of blog posts together on your website. Instead:

• Use pagination to split posts across multiple pages.
• Implement caching to load popular blogs quickly.
• This prevents too many server requests and speeds up your website.

Pick Theme Wisely:

Choose a responsive theme for your eCommerce store. It adjusts your website’s layout to fit any screen: desktops, tablets, or mobiles, making your website look great on all devices. This improves user experience and lowers bounce rates. Bigcommerce provides various responsive themes to pick from, enhancing your online presence. Additionally, adjusting the themes improve your store loading speed and enhance performance.

Utilize Progressive Web App (PWA):

Turn your BigCommerce store into a Progressive Web App (PWA) for a 45% faster loading time. PWAs use browser caching, storing data after the first visit. This makes returning visits load instantly with stored data. Converting site into PWA is crucial to improve BigCommerce site speed.

Limit Menu Categories Displayed:

If you still thinking of how to fix website speed, utilize this method, simply, limit the menu categories displayed to a maximum of two levels. This setting can be adjusted in your Page Builder (Stencil) or under Categories, then Display Settings (Blueprint). BigCommerce suggests showing only top-level categories like ‘Mens,’ with subcategories like ‘Shoes’ and ‘Work Shoes’ available when selected. This helps customers navigate efficiently without overwhelming your website with unnecessary information.

Streamline Top-Level Categories:

Simplify your website’s main categories. Instead of many specific categories like “Men’s Jackets” or “Men’s Sportswear,” just use broad categories like “Men’s” and “Women’s.” This streamlined structure reduces clutter on your page and helps your website load faster with less information to process.

Conclusion

Thus, we have covered the fundamentals of Wix and site performance optimization in this article. By following the BigCommerce site speed increase tricks you can enhance your website performance, speed, and ranking. Speed is directly relates to various performance metrics. Additionally for store speed boosting you can use tool like Website Speedy that directly enhance your store loading speed and optimize its efficiency.