In spite of ever rising broadband connections, site speed remains an issue for many users. Jakob Nielsen noted this in 1997 and it holds true 11 years later. In fact, Google incorporates it as a factor in Quality Score.
As you plan your website redesign, don’t forget…
Ecommerce Tip #7 – Speed Up Your Website
Images, javascript and heavy Flash can all way down your site performance in terms of speed and, sometimes, conversion. Before you start slashing and burning features, first assess the problem.
Here’s where I’d start:
- Any of your entry pages are obvious candidates
- The homepage
- Pages with a high bounce rate
- Pages with a high exit rate
- Content/code heavy pages
Next, run the pages through a few tools:
- Site Report Card – Free
- Web Page Analyzer – Free
- UI Test – Free
- Net Mechanic – Pay
Read up on some of the thoughts about site speed
- High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers
- How To Improve Site Conversion, Minimize Google Ad Cost, And Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
- Google article
- Check your current standing in AdWords
Finally, it’s time to optimize. If you’re cutting out invisible code, go for it. Trimming image sizes? Fine. But if you’re planning on cutting out elements, don’t forget to test!
Tune in next week for another tip.
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