E-commerce is big everywhere. As the industry continues to grow, performance optimization is more essential than ever, especially for medium and large-scale websites that need to handle huge amounts of traffic and transactions. It is not easy to remain competitive. Investments are necessary to stay in the front line and remain a top choice for customers. Where to start? 

Optimization is mandatory if you want to achieve steady growth and success with your e-commerce website. A sluggish website will frustrate users, with a profound negative impact on search engine rankings and revenue. For example: a 1-second delay in page load time can result in a staggering 7% loss in conversions. Who will stand idly by to such a revenue loss? 

Strategies to optimize your website for E-Commerce success

Primarily you should know that optimizing a website is not an easy journey. It takes time and effort to put every piece of the puzzle in place. In this article, we will share with you the primary strategies to enhance your website capabilities to handle heavy traffic and obtain more conversions.

Optimize loading time and reduce server response time

Page load time is an essential factor to user experience and search engine optimization. Recent studies show that 53% of mobile visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load. In the special case of a large e-commerce website with thousands of products, load time and server response need to be top-notch in order to offer fluid user experiences.

How to improve load time?

1. Use a CDN (content delivery network) because it distributes content across multiple servers, reducing the load on your main server and thus ensuring faster access for users irrespective of their location. Examples of CDN: Cloudflare  and Amazon CloudFront.

2. Minimize HTTP requests by reducing the number of elements present on your page. For example: limit the number of scripts, images, and fonts. By doing so, you will significantly decrease the number of HTTP requests the website makes, thus improving load speed.

3. Optimize server response time. Google recommends a server response time under 200 milliseconds. You can achieve thus better results on this front by opting for premium hosting solutions.

Use micro-frontends to improve maintainability

If you do not know anything about micro-frontends, time to learn a couple of things about them. Micro-frontends ensure an elegant solution to managing performance challenges by breaking down the front-end into smaller and easier-to-manage pieces. This particular feature permits independent development, testing and deployment.

The primary benefits of micro-frontends:

1. Better load time 
2. Independent deployment 
3. Better segmentation of code and faster testing 
Implement micro-frontends for e-commerce website and see quality results and smooth development processes.

Optimize images: compress and use next-generation formats

Don’t overlook image optimization. It is the key to your website's fast load and general user experience. According to Google, in normal parameters, images make up around 50 to 60% of a website’s page weight.

It is important to prioritize image optimization because it can slow down your website and lead to poor user experience. In addition, if the website does not run fast, it may lead to higher bounce rates.

How to optimize images? Things to consider:

1. Compress images. There are many online tools, free as well, that you can use to compress images without compromising quality. Some of the most popular tools may include TinyPNG, ImageOptim and ShortPixel.

2. Use with confidence modern formats. We recommend you switch to image formats like WebP or AVIF. Why? Such formats reduce image size by 24-35% compared to classic formats like JPEG or PNG. Time to switch things up.

3. Lazy loading. Make sure images load only when they come into view on the user’s screen. This feature significantly reduces initial page load time. It matters when you add all the other elements up.

Image optimization improves page speed and general SEO score, as all search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Baidu) prioritize fast-loading websites. 

Leverage browser caching: how it works

Browser caching stores different elements of the website (images, stylesheets, JavaScript files) in the user’s local storage. On the next visit, the page loads faster. According to the mighty Google, it seems that leveraging browser caching can improve load times by as much as 60%, which is quite impressive and with positive impact on the long run. 

Things to consider for browser caching:

1. Set expiration dates for static content like images, CSS files and logos, from 6 months to 12 months. 
2. Use cache-control headers. To this extent, you must specify how long a browser should cache specific files and under what conditions to revalidate them. 

Discuss with your developer browser caching and set up an efficient caching strategy. Implement it and reduce load time, targeting specifically returning visitors.  Browser caching for e-commerce websites is important.

Minimize and bundle JavaScript and CSS files

JavaScript and CSS files play an important role in your website performance. They are essential for the functionality and style of your website. Yet, you have to take care of files that can slow down page load times.

How to approach this feature?

Minimization: You can use tools like UglifyJS for JavaScript or CSSNano for CSS to remove any unnecessary characters and spaces from various files. By adopting this approach, you reduce the file’s size.

Bundling: You should combine multiple JavaScript or CSS files into a single file to minimize the number of requests browsers need to make. As a result, you will reduce latency.

Set an optimized database for fast queries

Optimizing the database matters a lot.  Large e-commerce websites store vast amounts of data. From product listings and customer information, such websites need to handle impressive data. If you leave your database without proper optimization it can lead to slow queries and poor website performance.

How to optimize your database?

Appeal to indexing. Make sure your database is properly indexed to make it easier and faster to obtain the necessary information.

Optimize for queries. You have to write efficient and clear SQL queries and avoid querying unnecessary data. To this end, you might consider using tools like MySQL query cache to speed up response time.

Perform frequent database maintenance. Try to allocate time to perform regular cleanups, remove obsolete data, and optimize the database to limit slowdowns.

It is very important to optimize the database to improve your e-commerce site performance. By doing so, the website will handle the load without compromising performance, especially during peak sales times.

Monitor with precision your website performance. This is the best way to ensure it remains fast and efficient at every moment of the day. Some of the most important metrics to consider might include:  

Time to first byte (TTFB) – this is the time it takes for a browser to receive the first byte of data from the server. 
First contentful paint (FCP) – the time it takes for the first piece of content to appear on the screen. 
Largest contentful paint (LCP) – the time it takes for the largest element to fully load. Examples of LCP .

What tools can you use to monitor such elements?

Google PageSpeed insights. This tool will offer important insights into the website’s performance. In addition, the tool offers actionable recommendations to improve the website.

GTmetrix is another tool to have in mind. It provides a detailed breakdown of various performance metrics and suggests certain areas for improvement.

There are also other tools available online to measure metrics. Use the ones you feel comfortable with and implement improvement suggestions. Only through proper monitoring, you will identify the problematic areas and resolve them in record time. Every action can improve the website’s speed and general user experience.

Now you know the necessary steps to optimize the performance of a large-scale e-commerce website. You need a strategic approach that covers various aspects of web development, from load time and database optimization to image compression and browser caching. Every optimization step improves user experience but also contributes to better SEO performance and high conversion rates.

Newroco is your partner for web development

When it comes to web development and the growth of digital websites, companies and large-scale e-commerce, Newroco has the experience to deliver the best results possible.

Newroco, a European-based web and mobile development company, is uniquely positioned to create and improve websites for a wide range of necessities.

If your e-commerce website is the backbone of your business and performance directly impacts customer satisfaction and heightened conversions, contact us to create something special. Do not let a slow website to unlock your site’s full potential. 

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