What is a good performance of your online store?

The performance of your online store is undoubtedly high on your agenda. You have a beautiful brand with some really nice products and an online store that looks good. But the performance needs work! Read further...

When it comes to a good performance, many people think of an optimized speed of the online store, but a good performance is more than that.

In this article, we will inform you about what good performance consists of according to us, and why a good performance is important.

The speed of your online store

A good performance and the speed of your online store go hand-in-hand. A fast online store has many advantages.

For example, multiple studies have shown a fast online store has a positive effect on the conversion rate. So, in other words: an online store optimized in terms of speed has a better performance in terms of conversion, in general.

A while ago, Amazon stated that when the online store is 1 second slower, it will cost the company 1.6 billion dollars annually.

The American company Walmart has also investigated what the impact of the online store’s speed is on the conversion rate. They found out that for every second your website is faster, the conversion rate will increase by 2 percent. In combination with the revenue they gain, it is an enormous amount of money.

The above examples are big American companies. However, we also have experienced it with our customers as well.

Google PageSpeed score

There are many ways to test your site speed. A good way to measure and eventually improve the speed of your online store is to look at the Google PageSpeed Score.

Google rates a website with a score from 0 to 100 to show how good the speed of your site is (according to Google itself).

Given that Google made page speed as one of the main ranking factors, it is smart to keep an eye on your page speed score regularly and improve it where it is necessary.

You can test this score via Pagespeed Insights. You will see the score and also immediately some elements you can improve to boost your page speed score.

Hipex would not be Hipex if we were not fully committed to speed and the Google PageSpeed score. That’s why we are working on a unique tool that improves your score fully automatically.

The great thing about this tool is that it is scalable and that it can be used for both mobile and desktop. The importance is great: speed is getting more and more important for the SEO ranking, and so the conversion. This is the solution to achieve the maximum score without putting much effort into it or extra costs.

But which things do influence the speed of your online store?

There are so many things that have an impact on the speed, too many to mention all in this article. GTMetrix, a website on which you can measure the speed of your site, analyzes websites on 45 different elements.

As a web host, we also have a major impact on the speed of your website. Elements that can be improved from hosting perspective are:

TTI

TTI stands for Time To Interactive and is getting more attention since Google has included it into the Page Speed Insight reports.

The TTI metric measures how long it takes for a web page to become interactive. Google defines interactive as following:

• The page has rendered usable content, that can be measured with First Contentful Paint
• Event handlers are registered for the most visible page elements
• The page responds within 50 milliseconds to user interactions

The best way to improve the TTI is to use a CDN (for example Cloudflare) or delete/postpone Javascript while a page is loading.

Time To First Byte (TTFB)

TTFB and TTI are being confused, but they clearly differ from each other.

While TTI measures the time it takes a page to become interactive, the TTFB measures the time it takes the browser to receive back the first byte sent from where the server is hosted.

If it takes a long time, your visitors will experience a slow website.

Google PageSpeed Insights recommends a server reaction time of less than 200 ms. Do you have a lower score than 200 ms, you have it neatly arranged.

PHP version

PHP version 8.0.1 has been already available since the 7th of January, 2021. Despite this, there are many online stores still running on the older version 5.6x.

Switching to the latest version of PHP can make a real difference in terms of speed. The latest PHP version is often up to two times faster than its predecessor.

Does your website still run on an older PHP-version? Make sure your web host upgrades it to the latest version.

Hosting

Hosting can have a major impact on the speed of your online store. If you opt for a shared hosting solution, you share resources with some other online shops that make your online store slower than if you go for dedicated hosting.

Other things that are arranged through the hosting such as the memory, the hard disk (we use the fastest SSD RAID), or the number of CPUs can also have a big influence on the speed.

In addition, there are many software optimizations in the field of hosting that affect speed. You can imagine that Magento 2 specific web hosting has a better performance than hosting that is available for all generic shop software.

Optimized for conversion

The performance of your online store is more than only a lightning-fast shop. Namely, you can have a fast online store but if the other fundamental principles are lacking you will have a low or even reduced conversion rate.

Findability of products

Are your products or services easy to find? How is the navigation structure? And how does the search feature work? Will the right filter shown at the right moment? Make sure all your visitors can find the right products quickly (within a few clicks).

Optimized checkout

The main pages of online stores are the checkout pages. The visitor already has decided to buy the product (or service) and now the time has come to finish the process. It is a shame if a visitor quits the process at this stage, especially after all the effort you and the visitor have put into it.

So make sure that the final steps of the customer journey are optimized. Minimize distractions, optimize your forms and ensure your checkout is extremely fast and ensure trust and social proof.

Web design

Your website has to look professionally, this ensures visitors trust the website. Only settle for the best you can get and blow away your competitors.

Use your web design to provide guidance for visitors and do not forget your content!

Moreover, this ensures a better performance of your online store.

Optimized user experience on multiple devices

The user experience of your visitors is key. If they have a negative or less good experience, you may assume that they will leave your site and visit the competitor’s one.

It is not without reason Google is fully committed to User Experience and search results.

You can assume a bad user experience usually leads to a lower Google ranking.

But even more important: a bad user experience causes unhappy customers who will not convert.

Causes of a bad user experience:

• Slow website
• Information can not be found
• Wrong information
• Bad web design
• Many pop-ups (or other distractions)
• Server errors or 404 pages
• Badly-written texts

Speed remains important for performance

The speed of your online store remains really important. An extremely slow shop causes visitors to leave the website.

In a time when everything has to be faster and people are used to getting everything quickly, a fast website is a must.

Our customers such as Brandfield, Flinders and PME legend noticed this as well. With the help of Hipex, they improved their speed, and so the performance of their online store.

In our opinion, speed is the basis for a good performance of online shops. The foundation on which you can build further.