Did you know that Walmart reported a 2% increase in conversion rate for every one second improvement in page load time? That’s how much speed matters in e-commerce. If you love money, remember—money loves speed! A faster website means more conversions, which means more sales.
If you’re a small Shopify store owner trying to grow, your website might be slowing you down. If your site feels sluggish and the data backs it up, it’s time to take action. Here’s what you need to do to take your user experience to the next level.
While I’ve written a full post with measurable data on how to improve your page speed, here are three basic things you should start doing right away:
1. Compress Your Images
This might sound simple, but it’s extremely important. Images often make up 50-70% of your web page size. By compressing them, you can significantly reduce load times. Spend time optimizing every image on your site—it will bring results.
2. Enable Browser Caching, Lazy Loading, and Preloading
These techniques can make your website load faster for returning visitors and improve the overall user experience. Browser caching stores copies of files in a user’s browser so they don’t have to be re-downloaded each time. Lazy loading means images or videos load only when they are about to appear on the screen, speeding up initial load times. Preloading helps load important files faster in the background.
3. Use Shopify’s CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Shopify offers its own Content Delivery Network (CDN) to speed up your site by distributing media like images, videos, and other files across different locations worldwide. This ensures your site loads faster no matter where your customers are.
Why Speed Matters
A slow website can seriously hurt your business. It not only affects your conversion rates, but it also has a direct impact on your SEO rankings and customer satisfaction. Visitors won’t stick around if your site takes too long to load—they’ll bounce to a competitor’s site instead.
For even more tips on page speed optimization, check out my full post on how to boost your site’s speed and performance.