Shopify Performance Optimization: Elevating Your Online Store’s User Experience
Online shopping is painting the town blue with its incredible features & functionalities and Shopify is leading this race with an invincible baton.
However, there is much more to be explored as the digital ear is on us and despite having multiple online stores in the market, only a few are making a hustle and others do not.
The simplest reason is that these stores lack some essential elements that curb their sites to gain attention.
In this blog piece, we have brought a series of tips that are required for Shopify Performance Optimization.
Let’s scroll ahead and find out together.
Optimize Page Speed
It has been observed that page loading speed can be an engaging factor for the users to stay glued to your site.
Web pages that load slowly despite having better services and products, lose big time on the user’s interest.
The average loading speed that gains attention from the users is anything between 0.3 to 0.5 seconds or less than that.
Anything that loads slower than that increases the bounce rate and drastically impacts SEO reach.
Here the best way to combat the page load issue is to implement asynchronous loading using Shopify development services that allow multiple scripts to be loaded in one go without wasting the time of the users to access the site.
Select Shopify Approved Theme
Shopify offers a huge ground of themes to choose from and it is tempting enough to choose from this glut.
However, a poorly managed theme can bog down the user experience by slowing down the page speed.
In other words, not every theme is suitable for your site and there has to be well-thought and research analysis must be conducted before taking a step forward.
You can always take a look at the other stores using the themes and they make your decision. However, the themes available on the Shopify store are vetted to be used.
SEO Optimization
In the digital world to gain explicit recognition few practices deal with SEO
SEO is often considered for paid marketing but not many of us know this tactic can be a game changer to improve visibility on search engines, provided the right practices are being followed.
Including the right keywords meta tags meta titles that resonate with your products and services can help search engines reflect your site for relevant searches.
Another way to optimize your Shopify site on the SEO ground is by making it mobile-friendly.
When you Hire Dedicated Shopify Developers, you must ensure the site is mobile optimized, so users don’t have to juggle on their laptops or machines to check your website.
Shopify Online Image Resizer
On the other hand, it is highly advisable to optimize the images, as the heavy files are bound to make the page slow.
Often it has been noticed that designers do compress the images which loses the quality and makes the outcome look pixelated or of poor quality.
You must use Shopify’s online image resizer which helps reduce the image size without compromising on the image quality from any angle.
Optimize Server Response Time
As we all know Shopify is being hosted on its specific servers which leads to a diligent infrastructure in practice.
However, servers at times can face glitches and cause hurdles; this is where server response time needs to be improved.
This can be done by using CDN which is used by Shopify named Fastly.
This CDN ensures caching site content in different locations across the geographies leading to less friction and improved user experience between server and user.
There is another tip where reducing redirects can improve server response time..
User Checkout
Hmm, when your users are buying the products the very next thing they want to do is checkout!
Bingo!
That is the deal you were looking for but any disturbance in the checkout process can lead to a bounce rate at this stage also.
Yes, that is the saddest and the most painful part to lose a customer at the checkout stage but this can be addressed if only a few steps are being considered.
To start with you must design the checkout process with the least steps possible where users do not need to swallow a hard pill just to buy a product from your site.
Follow every legal payment option adhering to specific country’s guidelines. This ensures that users have trust while buying products from your site and they will love to return to buy more product
Fonts Optimization
Does this sound absurd to you?
Many out there must be thinking about what fonts have got to do with the optimization part as they are believed to be leaving no impact on the page speed.
But this is where you need to revisit your thought process. Fonts can cause slowed page speed!
When we upload multiple fonts their weights can slow down the site.
It is highly recommended to pick either one or two font families and apply those sacrosanct to address the page loading speed due to font types.
Customer Support and Service
It might sound odd to you why customer service is a part of essential features to optimize Shopify user experience but trust us, this mostly overlooked aspect can have a huge impact on the way people prefer returning to your store.
It does not require any special techniques to handle the need but needs integration of a live chat option that allows customers to directly connect with the executives and improve the customer experience to another level.
On the other hand, to handle common FAQs or troubleshoot common issues, you can include chatbots that not just help your team but also your business to flourish out of bounds.
Set Up- Product Pages
Any website is consumed first by the eyes and then by the features; this indicates the way products are displayed on the pages makes a huge difference. You must ensure that collection pages are eye-pleasing and not cluttered.
You must limit the number of products being displayed per page.
Adding too many products on a page not only slows down the page speed but also distracts users from buying their target products and they end up bouncing off the website.
The ideal limit to keep products on a page is between 20 to 30 and keeping anything beyond that only creates havoc in the user experience.
Here is another tip to keep the products clean and concise so users can view the product and related information without being bothered about unnecessary information.
No prize for guessing but this boosts the conversion rate and increases returning users to a larger extent.
Test, Test & Test
The reason the test is written thrice in the heading speaks volumes of its importance and it ought not to be neglected at any given cost.
As a business owner you must remember that your brand value is traversed through online stores to your customers, therefore, it is highly important to maintain the quality of each element that impacts the operation.
This can be done by conducting regular testing of performance and checking out the page speed to identify improvement areas.
One of the most useful tools here is Google Analytics which helps you glean insights on how visitors are interacting with your site, and what are the specific elements that must be improved to increase user footfall.
In a Nutshell
Indeed, when it comes to ecommerce platform development then Shopify hits the top line owing to its popularity.
However, despite having a plethora of features to offer, Shopify needs to be managed in a way so its performance can be optimized.
Here, the aforementioned tips can be your best bet to make a distinctive approach in the world of online shopping.
Shopify development services can be elevated following these tips ensuring your platform offers an eye-soothing user experience to help your business get an edge over the competitors with Elan.
