Have you ever wondered how you can improve customer engagement? You are not alone. Almost every internet marketer is trying to enhance customer engagement or at least is thinking about it.
And that’s hardly surprising because customer engagement is an important factor, if not the most important, for success in e-commerce. If you get it right, not only your sales but also your brand image will improve.
However, the opposite is also equally true. Poor customer engagement dents more than just the bottom-line. It can badly tarnish your brand image, making it harder for you to convince people to do business with you. If there is one thing that alone can affect customer experience and engagement a great deal, this is website speed.
Today’s consumers don’t want to waste their time on slow sites, something which the research done by hostingtribunalcom also proves. As the attached infographic shows, the bounce rate probability of a site with a load time of 6 seconds is 106%. When the page load time increases to 10 seconds, bounce rate probability shoots to 123%.
Besides increasing bounce rate probability, slow page load time also affects brand image and customer loyalty. A study reveals that 44% of customers share their bad experience online. Another report states that 79% of online shoppers are not keen on purchasing again from a site whose performance was below their expectations.
Given the fact that slow speed can cripple your e-commerce business, it is imperative that you work on it without any delay. To help you out, we have listed three important tips you should start with.
Compress Images
It goes without saying that an e-commerce site needs to have truckloads of images. However, images can become a problem as far as site page load time is concerned if they are unreasonably bulky. Thankfully, there are several WordPress plugins that can compress images at the click of a button. We recommend that you use one such plug-in.
Compress files
Weighty files, much like heavier images, can put brakes on your site’s speed. The solution is to use a compression tool, such as Gzip. An easy-to-use tool, Gzip can decrease file size by up to 70%. Contact the support team of your hosting provider and ask them to implement it for you. Should take them minutes. Also, make sure to use a good theme, because not all WordPress themes are made the same!
Use a CDN
CDN stands for content delivery network. There are many free and premium services of this type. Their popularity is only growing as they improve website performance on many levels. First off, a quality CDN should improve website speed across the globe by service the site content from a location close to the end user. In turn, this reduces the load on the actual hosting server and boosts performance further. Lastly, CDNs provide defense against malicious attacks like denial of service, and this is always a nice thing to have.
Check out the below graphic and see the real impact site loading speed has on customer loyalty, conversions, and SEO. For more details, please take a look at the detailed guide on Hosting Tribunal.
Published on November 26, 2018 under performance, speed.
