Is PageSpeed affecting your web site revenue?

Written by Shahil Bhimji

Slow and steady vs need for speed: who’s leading the eCommerce web page race?

We tested a range of sites to see what could be done to improve website speed, experimenting with 35 categories to build our own eCommerce index, full of pagespeed insights.

View our leaderboard to find out who the winners and losers were

Google is about to introduce updated Core Web Vitals, including new website speed metrics such as ‘largest contentful paint (LCP)’. Under the updated guidance, anything that takes 2.5 to 4 seconds will ‘require improvement.’ This means page ranking criterion is set to change, to include a pagespeed metric as a key indicator of search performance. Search engines expect more from eCommerce, and so do consumers, making it more important than ever for businesses to have access to accurate and up-to-date pagespeed insights.

The impact of Covid-19
Although website optimisation has long been a key consideration for businesses, it has taken on a newfound importance in 2020. UK eCommerce sites have been tested with huge user volumes recently, as the pandemic has changed the way we shop almost overnight. Most people now shop weekly or fortnightly; venturing out less frequently than before. What’s more, a third of all sales now happen online. This is putting pressure on eCommerce sites and the business infrastructure that supports them.

Online shopping saw record highs during the UK lockdown due to COVID-19, with sales rising up to 70% for some stores. For many retailers, this added pressure caused gridlock. Some businesses even queued entry to their website to cope with demand. Despite online demand tailing off after the lockdown was eased in the summer, COVID-19 has almost certainly had a lasting impact on the retail sector.

So, we decided to generate some pagespeed insights of our own. Since March we’ve been collecting and analysing the data from over 200 company websites in multiple sectors. Our new pagespeed index leaderboard reveals the huge variety in website speed and performance across the UK eCommerce sector. We developed our own criteria to rank the speed of sites, which included:

• Page load time
• JavaScript execution time
• Content size
• Caching

The findings in our Pagespeed Index e-book show that businesses with market-leading footprints don’t always have page load speeds to match. According to our website speed tests, eCommerce only competitors typically outperform them, with sites that are faster and easier for consumers to navigate.

This may have serious long term implications in terms of customer retention, as consumers no longer tolerate slow loading websites. If the user experience isn’t up to scratch, their loyalty will be tested.

In fact, just a one second delay in page load time can lead to a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction and a 7% loss of conversions.

Reach your top speed
Clearly, it’s more important than ever for eCommerce sites to provide the very best UX. That’s why we’ve developed a list of actions, tips and tactics that your IT team can implement to improve your page load time dramatically.

To find out more, visit our pagespeed leaderboard and download the e-book.

References

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/26/dixons-carphone-sees-70-jump-in-online-sales-as-britons-move-to-home-working

https://zoovu.com/blog/customer-satisfaction-factors

https://neilpatel.com/blog/loading-time/

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en