BigCommerce Speed Optimization: Tips for Faster Loading

1. Introduction

In the growing world of ecommerce, the speed of your website is very important. You can’t neglect this element if you want to grow your business as early as you can. An individual who use BigCommerce as their e-commerce platform must ensure that their website loading speed is fast. Otherwise, it will impact the functionality of your website.

To understand it better, imagine you are clicking on a link, and the store takes time to show the product. It will impatient you and influence you to leave the store and move to another. It directly impacts the sales and revenue of the website. Additionally, it affects the other futility of your business. Website speed plays an important role in improving SEO. It consists of techniques that reduce the loading time your website takes to appear on the user’s browser.

Thus, to improve the speed of your website, we introduce this blog to you. Here, we will explain to you different methods for website speed optimization. First, you need to get to know the importance of fast-loading website speed.

2. Why Is A Fast Loading Website Speed Important?

Here are the reasons behind a slow-loading website and how a fast-loading website benefits your business.

Better User Experience: When your website loads fast, it helps the user to get the product and service easily to buy. Additionally, it improves the product recommendation.

Higher Search Engine Rankings: When the website loads fast, it automatically improves its ranking on search engines, as they favor fast-loading websites.

Lower Bounce Rate: BigCommerce stores with high speed usually have a lower bounce rate. I represent that your website is fully optimized to attract users.

Improved Mobile Experience: High loading speed improves user experience and satisfy them to buy product from your store instead of others.

Increased Conversions: When individuals get a product soon, they will be more likely to complete the purchase. It automatically leads to an enhanced conversion rate in BigCommerce.

Better SEO: A good website speed helps with website Search engine optimization (SEO), which is a symbol of a well-optimized website.

Enhanced Credibility: A slow website makes people think before buying products from it. On the other hand, a fast website ensures that your store will remain credible among consumers.

Reduced Server Costs: It eliminates the money you spend on choosing the server. As you already rank high and work smoothly on the user browser.

Faster Loading Images: It makes images load instantly and attract users. Additionally, the folding technique is specially made for it.

Lower Abandonment Rate: Why consumers will leave your website by just adding the product to your wishlist and cart. They will buy it and reduce the cart abandonment rate.

Increased Pageviews: It enables the user to click on your website. When they get everything, they will be more likely to stay longer in your BigCommerce store.

Improved Accessibility: Fast-loading websites are more accessible to people with disabilities who rely on screen readers or assistive technologies.

Better Competitiveness: A fast website will increase the chance of ranking high on search engines and improving your business effectiveness.

Easier Maintenance: When you are getting everything you want, it will be easy to manage the working of your website.

Global Reach: When your website loads instantly and is made for international users, you will get sufficient attention

After knowing the benefits of a fast-loading website, move further towards the reasons for a slow website.

3. Why My Website Is Experiencing A Slow Loading Speed?

Here are the reasons behind the delay in the BigCommerce store.

Large Images: When your website is filled with large images and videos, you will not get a fast loading speed.

Too Many Plugins: Too many plugins and apps slow down and impact your website in multiple ways.

Unoptimized Code: Messay and unoptimized codes are useless and just made to affect your website working.

Not Using Caching: Caching is important for e-commerce stores. It loads the data of your website fast on the user’s browser.

Too Many Ads: Ads are good for generating revenue, but too many ads are bad for your store. So, don’t use too many promotions.

No Content Delivery Network (CDN): CDN is mandatory for online brands. As it improves the loading speed and efficiency of your website, users can access content more quickly, leading to a better user experience.

Old Hosting: Sharing or old hosting is not good; you need to change it and move to a new one and private hosting.

No Mobile Optimization: If your website is not optimized for mobile, it will impact the speed.

Too Many Redirects: Use fewer redirects or minimize their counts. Redirects also improve the revenue, but too many can cause serious issues.

No Minification: Reduce the file size and minimize the CSS and Java Scripts folder to make it load faster.

Thus, these are the reasons that impact the speed of your BigCommerce website. For website speed optimization, in the next section, we will introduce 20 techniques to boost your website speed.

4. Techniques To Improve The Speed Of BigCommerce Store

These are the strategies that will help with website speed optimization.

Image Optimization:

Compress the size of your website images and videos as it makes them load faster. So, use apps to easily compress their size.

Minimize HTTP Requests:

Every element on a web page, like images, scripts, and stylesheets, requires an HTTP request. Reduce these requests to improve website performance.

Use Browser Caching:

With browser caching, users don’t need to download the content again. The second time they visit the website, content shows instantly as it is already stored in the backend.

Enable Compression:

Compressing your website files like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript reduces their size. Smaller files show faster loading times for your website.

Optimize Your CSS and JavaScript:

Clean up your CSS and JavaScript files by removing unnecessary spaces, comments, and code. This makes code loads faster and improves your website’s speed.

Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs):

CDNs store copies of your website in multiple locations. When someone accesses your site, they get the files from the nearest server, reducing loading time.

Prioritize Above-the-Fold Content:

It is a technique that loads essential content first, allowing visitors to see the main parts of your page quickly. Non-critical elements can load later without affecting user experience.

Optimize Server Performance:

A fast-loading server is important. Additionally, if your website is experiencing high server response and traffic, it is important to choose a private server.

Implement Lazy Loading:

Lazy loading delays the loading of images and videos until users scroll down to that portion of your web page. It shows that the important content loads first and then rest.

Regularly Update Your Website:

Keep your website software, plugins, and themes up-to-date. Developers develop system updates to improve the website’s performance; thus, it’s crucial to keep your website updated.

Reduce Redirects:

Minimize the use of redirects on your website. Each redirect creates an additional HTTP request, which slows down loading times. To fix this, directly redirect your website with the final content URL.

Optimize Database:

If your website uses a database, optimize it by cleaning up unnecessary data, tables, or plugins. An optimized database means quicker data performance and faster loading.

Implement Gzip Compression:

Enable Gzip compression on your server. Gzip reduces the size of your website files, making them quicker to transfer, especially for text-based files like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Use Asynchronous Loading:

For JavaScript files, use independent loading. In this technique, your website content remains to load, while other things complete the process in the backend.

Optimize Fonts:

Don’t use multiple fonts and styles. Different designs and fonts reduce the fast loading speed. Each additional font requires an extra HTTP request, impacting loading times.

Thus, these are the techniques to boost BigCommerce website speed.

Conclusion

So, in this blog, we have explained the basics of website speed and how it affects the performance of BigCommerce stores. To optimize the speed, we introduced multiple techniques, such as reducing HTTP requests, image compression, browser caching, and more.

Additionally, to optimize the speed with the best performance, you can use Website Speedy which provides support and enhances your BigCommerce site speed. Website Speedy is a SaaS-based website speed optimization tool that performs multiple tasks to satisfy your requirements.