Shubhi Ahluwalia, Author at Noibu

Posted on September 28, 2023

“Software is eating the world”

– Andreessen Horowitz, 2013

“AI is eating software”

– Unknown, 2023

A decade ago, one of the world’s most prominent venture capital firms established the writing on the wall for the world to come. Companies that do not embrace software are going to be eaten off by the ones that do. The world, as it stands today, is a testament to that fact.

Since then, the world’s been evolving at a breakneck pace. Software eating the world is now a thing of the past. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has invited itself to the buffet and will feast on everything in its way, including but not limited to what software managed to gulp.

For eCommerce companies, it only means one thing – leveraging AI to gain a competitive advantage. In a climate where survival of the fittest is the war cry, to thrive and grow is a moonshot only a few will be able to manage. All it will come down to will be the willingness to be agile and embrace change at the speed at which it is happening.

In this eBook, we break down:

How can AI potentially transform your eCommerce business?
Applications of AI in driving eCommerce growth
The ultimate eCommerce tech stack to invest in
Brands setting the bar high with their AI-backed growth strategies

and so much more….

We can promise you that this guide is loaded with valuable insights that you can put into practice right away to catapult growth for your eCommerce business. There’s so much being unpacked here, are you ready to join us on this journey? Read on.

Posted on September 25, 2023

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the hottest trend of the year (probably for the next few) and there’s no denying this disruptive technology is out to eat the world. But, let’s not forget that AI has the potential to be game-changing in driving business efficiency and taking over human workload. Businesses that have been quick to acknowledge this potential and jump on the AI bandwagon are undoubtedly better positioned for success in 2024 and beyond.

When it comes specifically to eCommerce, AI has proved to be worth its weight in gold ever since global online retailers have found success with it. Today, AI-driven growth strategies are no longer a good-to-have, but are starting to give eCommerce businesses a competitive edge that can really set them apart.

It’s exciting to see how first movers are driving tangible results by leveraging AI to their maximum advantage. If you’re looking for some inspiration on how you can get started with AI or are simply intrigued by what the best in the business is up to, this blog post is for you. We break down how the biggest eCommerce giants in the world are using AI to supercharge growth for their businesses. So, let’s get right into it!

Optimized Dynamic Pricing: Amazon

Amazon has always been a trendsetter when it comes to adopting emerging technologies and paving the path for disruptive growth. The eCommerce giant relies on AI-backed dynamic pricing algorithms to evaluate and update the prices of millions of products from its catalog in real time, multiple times a day. Sellers on Amazon can then rely on automation to dynamically adjust their prices in order to meet consumer demand, and keep up with shopping patterns and preferences, while maximizing profit margins and undercutting competition.

From historical and anticipated product demand to product availability and stock volume to customer buying behavior and competitor prices, Amazon’s sophisticated algorithms take a plethora of factors into account before suggesting optimized pricing for products.

Smarter Inventory Management: Walmart

Walmart uses AI and ML-backed self-driving specialized mechanical floor scrubbers that make their way through aisles scanning shelves to capture real-time images of products. These scrubbers operate at more than 95% accuracy and are trained to distinguish between brands and automatically alert stock rooms when a particular product reaches a predetermined level on the shelf so it can be marked “available” for online orders. If products are not available, associates are alerted in time so shelves can be restocked for upcoming orders.

Streamlined Supply Chain: Carrefour

French retail behemoth Carrefour leverages AI to detect vast amounts of data from its stores, eCommerce sites, and warehouses to streamline its supply chains and improve inventory management. By integrating software developed by advanced analytics leader SAS into its supply chain, Carrefour was able to free up their teams’ bandwidth, which could then be diverted towards further perfecting their forecasting strategies to meet consumer demand and incrementally reduce waste.

Shopping Assistance with Cognitive Computing: North Face

In an effort to make their online shopping experiences more personalized, interactive, and engaging, North Face partnered with software solutions provider Fluid and IBM’s Watson cognitive computing technology to help expedite and redefine the shopping experience. How this works is that if a customer lands on the website looking for a jacket, the tool prompts a bunch of questions about what, where, and when the jacket is going to be used to recommend the best ones for the particular customer’s needs.

The AI-based tool analyzes massive amounts of data, including customer reviews, social sentiment, previous user preferences, expert recommendations, weather forecasts, activities, and so on to zero in on a few choices that are most likely to meet the shopper’s needs.

Immersive Virtual Try-On Experiences: Sephora

When shopping online for cosmetics, the biggest apprehension most buyers have is not being sure about whether or not a particular product is likely to suit their complexion and facial features, and rightfully so. Sephora knocked it out of the park with their augmented readily-driven virtual try-on experience, developed in partnership with AR company ModiFace to solve for that single biggest challenge.

Whether customers want to try out a particular lipstick shade or check if a foundation matches their skin tone, they can virtually try and test the product out to see for themselves before committing to a purchase.

Redefined Real-Time Support with Chatbots: Whole Foods

A grocery retailer known for its healthy and organic produce, Whole Foods leverages AI to provide customers with an innovative way to discover interesting meal recipes by conversing with a robot chef via Facebook Messenger.

To find delicious and healthy recipes, all you need to do is kickstart a conversation on Messenger and drop in the emoji of the ingredients you have in mind. Within seconds, you’ll be presented with a specially curated list of recipes that feature the particular ingredient for you to explore.

The entire experience is built to redefine real-time support while offering an alternate and exciting way for customers to discover recipes.

Improved Demand Forecasting: Ikea

To reduce overhead costs associated with a poorly managed or inefficient supply chain, Ikea relies on an AI-based smart demand forecasting tool that helps uncover insights into anticipated demand for all their products, across their in-person and online operations.

The tool considers historical data on demand for each product as well as upcoming trends like seasonal shopping patterns, holiday season, festivals, interior design trends, and weather forecasts to accurately determine which of their products are likely to be more in demand in which of their locations. This allows them to make the necessary adjustments to their supply chain in order to reduce waste and stockouts.

Reinventing Community Marketing: Casper

Casper’s always been known for its quirky marketing campaigns, and this one didn’t disappoint either. To help people dealing with insomnia and keep them company when they need it the most, Caper launched the world’s first bot – Insomnobot3000 which is only available to chat between 11 pm – 5 am. From bedtime stories to meditation to midnight snacks, you can talk to this bot about anything as if it were a real person.

The bot was programmed to sound as human as possible so people who have trouble falling asleep can confide in it and talk to it as a friend. This innovative idea helped the brand amplify its community marketing effort and establish a deeper connection with its potential customers.

Enhanced Predictive Analytics: H&M

In an effort to stay at par with global demand, the fast fashion retailer, H&M uses AI to predict fashion trends and determine spend analytics to understand what consumers are likely to buy and how much of it they need. Their AI-based systems are trained to capture trend data from search engines, blogs, and even runways of some of the fashion capitals of the world.

From colors and patterns to materials and fabrics, their algorithms are able to capture all relevant insights needed for designers to make more informed decisions. All of these efforts help them get a sneak peek into consumer preferences and thus, reduce waste and make more sustainable decisions.

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Personalized Geo-Targeting: Skandium

London-based furniture and home accessories retailer, Skandium caters to online shoppers from all across the world with dynamic content. No matter where you visit the site from, Skandium uses AI-based geo-targeting to personalize the content of their shopping site to customize the experience right from the moment you land on the site.

The banner on the homepage is changed dynamically based on where you are logging in from to provide the relevant information on shipping, duties, delivery timelines, etc. Take a look:

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Are You Ready to Jump on the AI Bandwagon?

The future of eCommerce is always going to be uncertain, but what we know for sure is that AI is going to continue to disrupt the world. Businesses that embrace this change and do so with agility are going to witness limitless growth in the coming years. There’s no time like the present to take the plunge and start incorporating AI into your day-to-day business operations and long-term strategies. We hope that the examples we shared in this blog post served as inspiration to help you take the leap and future-proof your eCommerce business.

Posted on September 20, 2023

In today’s competitive landscape, impeccable customer experience is the cornerstone of success for every eCommerce business.

But how much do you know about what goes on behind the scenes of your website to really ensure your customers are having the best possible experience?

On the latest episode of The eCommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives podcast, our host and co-founder Kailin Noivo sits down with Jared Poole, Solutions Delivery Manager at Bass Pro Shops, to discuss the role DevOps plays in the customer journey.

From leveraging automation to why we need to take a step back from analytics to keep shopping relevant, Jared provides a one-stop shop for everything you need to be aware of in the space.

DevOps and Customer Experience: What’s the Connection?

What do you think about when considering customer experience and user journeys?

Is it the surface level transitions from A to B?

Or do you think about what’s going on in the background; what the DevOps team is up to?

We’re going to take a guess, and assume your answer is no, you don’t think about DevOps. Not a lot of people do.

As Jared explains, the DevOps team are the cogs turning in the background; making sure your site is available for customers 99.9999% of the time (feel free to add more nines to that number!).

They are a vital part of your entire team, keeping your users happy and conversion rates high.

After all, if a customer gets to checkout and there’s an error, how likely are they really to come back and checkout?

The Power of Shifting Left as Decoded by Jared Poole

So how do DevOps teams avoid issues cropping up when customers are using your site?

Well, it all comes down to one of their first lessons: shifting left.

Now, what is this?

It’s all about finding issues as early as possible in the testing process to avoid bugs and instability at the production level.

Today, automation is being heavily leveraged for this, removing as much of the human element from the equation as possible.

Why is this necessary? Because the majority of errors come from human interference. Removing that aspect from the equation eliminates any issues caused by it.

AI: The eCommerce Trend of the Year

AI has taken the world by storm in recent years, so it is no surprise that it is one of the hottest eCommerce trends today.

Leaders are currently looking at ways they can plug AI into all aspects of their business. This is great, because it means that everyone is looking at data differently, businesses are becoming more intelligent and quick in order to make changes that are good for customers.

However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. More money is being poured into data analysis, leading to post hoc fallacies where we start believing that correlations are causations.

It’s Time to Take a Step Back from Analytics

Jared’s biggest advice to any eCommerce brand? Stop being so absorbed in analytics.

As above, focussing too hard on analytics can lead to incorrect conclusions or even over-personalization of user journeys.

Customers have their own perception of noise, and if they receive daily “don’t miss out on this product emails”, they will switch off.

Getting stuck in cycles of thinking about the next things to offer your customers lets your own opinions bleed into the objective data you have collected. In essence, personalization becomes depersonalization.

We all need to take a step back from the data and keep shopping relevant.

Listen to the Full Episode Below!

Tune in to this episode of The eCommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives with Jared Poole to find out more about the world of DevOps in eCommerce.

👉 Apple: https://bit.ly/3sXriyd

👉 Spotify: https://bit.ly/3RAJTdw

Jared Poole is a self-proclaimed tinkerer who can’t just do stock; he has to know how things work, how to fix them, how to build intricate halloween displays, you name it. He is currently Solutions Delivery Manager for Bass Pro Shops, North America’s premier outdoor and conservation company. Prior to this, he was a Solutions Engineer at Noibu, where he helped partners learn how to easily measure and prioritize their tech debt and solve bugs quickly using the Noibu platform.

Posted on September 15, 2023

So, you’ve set up a flashy and functional eCommerce website that boasts a fairly exhaustive catalog of relevant products to keep your target audience engaged and interested. What’s next? Your digital storefront is ready for business!

However, how can you be sure that your potential customers are having a seamless user experience browsing through your online store, creating wishlists, adding products to their carts, or making a purchase? After all, about 14% of online shoppers end up abandoning their carts during checkout due to website errors.

When it comes to positioning your eCommerce business for growth, the final piece of the puzzle (and arguably the more complicated one) is constantly monitoring your website for technical errors, downtime, or performance issues, to avoid any friction in shopping experiences that could potentially cause customer frustration or cart abandonment.

To ensure your virtual cash register never stops going ka-ching, it’s advisable to incorporate a regular website monitoring plan in your eCommerce growth strategy. In this blog post, we shall explore some website monitoring best practices to build a healthy and high-converting digital presence and deliver flawless shopping experiences. So, let’s dive right into it!

But First, What is Website Monitoring?

Website Monitoring is the process of continuously tracking, testing, verifying, and analyzing the performance, functionality, usability, and availability of a website with the end goal of maintaining a frictionless user experience.

For eCommerce businesses, an efficient and optimized website that goes above and beyond to delight shoppers is the backbone of success and sustainable growth in this digital age. Anything less, and you’re likely to be eaten by competition, as today’s shoppers are spoilt for choice and increasingly impatient.

From manual checks to ensure the checkout process is flawless to automated tools that detect inconsistencies, bugs, or downtime, a comprehensive website monitoring strategy encompasses it all to give eCommerce businesses complete control over their shopping journeys.

Types of Website Monitoring

Synthetic monitoring

Synthetic monitoring utilizes simulation or scripted recordings wherein behavioral paths are created to reproduce the end-user experience on the website with the aim of identifying any critical bottlenecks that could potentially be leading to downtime, reduced page load speeds, or any other functionality or performance issues.

This helps businesses potentially spot any possibilities of downtime, glitches, speed or performance issues, or hiccups in navigation on the website, without any actual traffic or before it affects end users. This especially comes in handy when new site features need to be tested before launch to ensure a smooth transition, or even for regular testing.

The most common types of synthetic monitoring include:

Performance Monitoring

Performance monitoring involves testing page load times and speed so that end users don’t experience any form of delays or lags while accessing a site that may encourage them to drop off out of frustration. From slow response times caused due to third-party elements to slowly loading text and images, performance monitoring is a holistic approach to optimizing the accessibility of a website.

Transaction Monitoring

As the name suggests, transaction monitoring is a proactive approach towards testing potential user interactions with a website such as a login or registration, site search, form fills, or checkout with the ultimate goal of ensuring that visitors are able to successfully complete intended tasks without bottlenecks. The process involves running scripts that simulate a user journey on the site to verify anticipated “happy paths” of completing expected actions.

Availability Monitoring

Also commonly referred to as uptime monitoring, availability monitoring is the process of ensuring a particular site is accessible and operational from different locations of the world, without any performance or response issues. This ensures a site is available at all times to end users, whether they access it directly, via email, social media, or an ad.

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Real User Monitoring

Real User Monitoring (RUM) collects data from interactions that actual visitors have with a website to allow businesses to step into their customers’ shoes and gauge end-user experience. Real user monitoring is a comprehensive technique to strategically improve and optimize a site experience by tracking technical bugs, hiccups in navigation, or any slowdowns that might deter users from converting or making a purchase.

As opposed to synthetic monitoring, RUM enables eCommerce businesses to identify and resolve issues that are impacting their customers and potentially leading to revenue loss or at least unsatisfactory user experience.

Any changes made to a live site, third-party elements, multiple integrations, and bulky content might end up causing glitches on a site, which directly impacts the customer journey. RUMs help correlate your eCommerce website’s performance with end-user experience.

Website Monitoring Best Practices

Much like any other testing or optimization strategy, best practices depend almost entirely on your specific website needs, user journeys, and issues unique to your site infrastructure. However, the following are 5 tried-and-true best practices that will ensure you are in an optimal position to make the most of your website monitoring strategy.

Analyze Historical Website Performance Data

As the very first step, make sure to comprehensively deep dive into your historical site performance data to get a fair idea of what you’re working with. This should help you:

Benchmark KPIs such as bounce rates, load times, session durations, etc. to understand what the baseline key metrics are
Identify trends across different time periods to notice and compare patterns in performance highs and lows
Pinpoint exactly what needs improvement, so you have some direction for your strategy

Don’t Trust Averages; Segment Data Before Studying Patterns

It might seem quick and easy to jump to calculating averages when studying monitoring data, but it’s a rookie mistake that could negatively impact your insights. Averages are grossly misleading. Always segment data before drawing any conclusions or interpreting visitor behavior on your site to really understand which group of users are facing what particular challenge.

For example, if your average website load time for a period is 5 seconds for 500 visitors, this should tell you nothing unless you segment this data for various browsers, device types, and/or locations. Only when you get down to studying monitoring data granularly do you get insights that are worth investigating and issues that are worth solving. In this particular case, your page load time could be 3 seconds for desktop users and 7 seconds for mobile users and it’s worth looking into what’s causing a delay for mobile visitors.

Set Up Real-Time Website Monitoring Alerts to Get Notified Instantly

Website monitoring is a passive activity that often takes place behind the scenes as you’re running your eCommerce store. With so much going on, it’s easy to forget about staying on top of any changes or issues that might be affecting your site in real-time. That said, setting up real-time alerts for your team is crucial to reducing the negative impact of issues (read: customer frustration or cart abandonment).

From page load issues to technical errors, setting up notifications that are delivered via email, Slack alerts or Jira tickets is paramount to creating a regular cadence of fixing issues as they occur.

Invest in Both - Synthetic Monitoring and Real User Monitoring

Synthetic monitoring specializes in proactively discovering site issues in a controlled environment, while real user monitoring deals with giving you a sneak peek into the experience a real user has on your eCommerce store. As both have their separate strengths and outcomes, it is important to invest in synthetic as well as real user monitoring to maintain a healthy and flawless website – free of errors, glitches, and downtime.

Synthetic monitoring helps you ensure website availability, optimal performance, and maximum uptime and real user monitoring mirrors the customer journey on your digital storefront. The bottom line is that when deployed together, both techniques work to deliver more value than either of them would separately.

Regularly and Proactively Analyze Monitoring Data

Website monitoring is an ongoing activity that you must regularly revisit. It might seem tempting to analyze results once in a while, implement quick fixes, incorporate long-term optimizations into your strategy, and call it a day. However, in order to truly maintain a frictionless online storefront that prioritizes user experience, it’s imperative to make website monitoring a continuous effort to maximize your site’s potential.

Website Monitoring Tools Worth Investing in for Your eCommerce Store

As an eCommerce store operating in today’s competitive landscape, you’re probably inundated with countless choices for website monitoring tools promising to help streamline your business. When it comes to website monitoring, we’ve collated the select few you can trust to maintain a healthy digital marketplace.

Noibu - A Robust Website Monitoring Tool That Helps Recover Lost Revenue

Noibu is a website monitoring platform that helps eCommerce businesses detect, prioritize, and resolve revenue-impacting errors on their online stores in record time. Noibu detects 100% of all errors that occur on any eCommerce site, alerts you in real-time, prioritizes them as per the impact it has on the revenue, and provides all the technical information required to fix it, making the entire process as smooth and efficient as possible.

From detecting critical errors that could otherwise go undetected and lead to customer frustration and potentially cart abandonment to providing suggested fixes to minimize error resolution time, Noibu is a one-of-its-kind solution that helps businesses and product teams correlate the impact of technical errors with revenue loss.

Before partnering with Noibu, Oak & Fort was struggling with errors on their eCommerce site and relied heavily on customer complaints to detect and resolve them. Feature releases and a large number of third-party tools integrated through the platform had amplified the introduction of new errors, which was another cause of concern.

Our team at Noibu was quick to realize that there was a missing link between how the team at Oak & Fort was detecting errors and the overall workflow of gathering enough relevant information to reproduce and resolve. With Noibu, they were able to detect errors in real-time while launching multiple features a week, prioritize engineering resources based on revenue impact, and leverage granular stack trace views to gather session information vital to resolving errors efficiently.

Read more about Oak & Fort was able to identify reproducible and high-value bugs through Noibu and resolve them in record time to reduce any negative impact on their revenue.

Datadog

A real user monitoring tool, Datadog provides end-to-end visibility into user journeys for eCommerce websites. Datadog offers error troubleshooting capabilities, product usage analytics, and frontend performance issues resolution to improve the overall site experience by fixing errors that might be discouraging users from converting.

Uptrends

Uptrends is a robust website monitoring tool that focuses specifically on avoiding downtime, improving site speed, pinpointing broken website interactions, and identifying inconsistent experiences to streamline how users navigate a website. It ensures you’re the first to know about any downtime and can instantly fix the corresponding issues.

Hotjar

Hotjar offers heatmaps and session recording capabilities to enable businesses to determine the “why” behind their site user interactions. From how visitors interact with specific elements on a particular page to stuff they seem to be ignoring to friction-causing elements and conversion blockers, Hotjar gives you insights into it all – from the perspective of real users!

Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides all the quantitative data you need to break down user experiences on your site. With the launch of Google Analytics 4, behavioral data is now available in an event-based model to track the various activities users engage in on a page. From unique visitors to views to engagement time, Google Analytics 4 offers data on all key website monitoring metrics required to maintain the health of a site and ensure it functions without hiccups.

Posted on September 13, 2023

2020 – The peak of COVID-19 was an exceptionally difficult time for the whole world. With so many businesses struggling, laying off staff, and even shutting down for good, it’s hard to imagine any company starting up and then being extremely successful, isn’t it?

Well, Hobbiesville managed it and how!

A hobby shop, stocking all types of collectibles, from Pokemon to Magic the Gathering, Hobbiesville was launched in 2020. Today, they have over eight figures in revenue. That’s just in three years! It’s an extraordinary achievement for any business, let alone one that started out during such a hard time for businesses everywhere.

So how did they do it?

On the latest episode of The eCommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives podcast, our host and co-founder Kailin Noivo sits down with Edmond Georges, Co-Founder of Hobbiesville, to discuss the journey Hobbiesville has been on in the last three years.

Their chat covers everything from technology decisions taken early on in the growth journey to managing moving parts today. Find out exactly how they’ve achieved greatness in a short space of time by reading on and tuning in to the full episode.

Making The Transition From Online to Brick-and-Mortar

We typically see businesses transition from brick-and-mortar to omnichannel, venturing into the eCommerce space (we’re looking at you Pet Supermarket). Hobbiesville did the opposite.

Having launched during the height of COVID-19, it’s understandable that their initial presence was strictly online. After all, none of us were really going to stores in person. Initially, their launch was experimental; they were just seeing if there was a market for the old collectibles they found in their parents’ basement by setting up a Shopify store.

There was a clear market. However, restrictions across the collectibles space meant that they needed to have in-person trading to stock certain products.

This spurred them on to open their first brick-and-mortar location.

Like their online offerings, this was incredibly successful, and only lasted a year before it completely outgrew its infrastructure. This led to them opening up an Ottawa base, which is now supported by a Toronto store.

Their omnichannel approach has benefited both them and their customers, particularly in the realm of buying online to pick up in-store.

Achieving Eight Figures Revenue in Just Three Years

We’ve already said it, but we’ll repeat it here: growing to eight figures in revenue in just three years is exceptional. But how did Edmond and his Co-Founder do it?

Well, from day one, part of their ethics was centered around scaling responsibly.

Prior to the pandemic, there was a definite era where all people cared about was top-line revenue. Having seen the end of that philosophy, Edmond and his Co-Founder have been bootstrapped since day one.

Have they ever had a fundraiser? No.

What do they do with any debts? Leverage them strategically.

And how long have they been profitable? Since day one.

Over the years they have utilized different tools, such as traditional banks and alternate lenders, to grow, and now, at the closing of year three, they are sitting at 62% up year over year.

Managing Moving Parts: How Hobbiesville Does it Efficiently

Before even venturing into the collectibles business, Edmond and his partner interviewed merchants across the industry to find out about pain points and the biggest issue across the board was inventory syncing, particularly around returns and single-item skews like unique cards.

Hobbiesville itself has many moving parts. They have their online store, brick-and-mortar locations, and they have customers who come in to get their unique collectibles priced and potentially put into inventory. It is these unique collectibles that have helped to build the Hobbiesville catalog to around 60,000 individual skews, an immense amount to manage.

To get ahead of the game, and make their management easier, they utilize a variety of methods. For one, they have their own dedicated fulfillment warehouse that they run and operate. They have further launched on eBay recently in a long-term partnership. And finally, they utilize a mobile sales channel that helps them cope with customer returns.

All of this together keeps them on top of inventory synchronization while allowing customers to be able to interact with the business in different assets and avenues – it’s a win all around.

Quality Customer Experience: The Foundation of Hobbiesville’s Growth Strategy

Hobbiesville has always tried to place customer experience high in their priorities.

In their early days, Hobbiesville tried to be as responsive as possible to customers, with a focus on proactivity in letting the customer know where their order is at every step of the journey and automations set up to deal with pre-orders.

As part of their future plans, they are looking to expand their focus on customer experience, by building an ecosystem of content around the different products they sell and creating customized experiences on their mobile app, giving back to the loyal customer base they have built over the past three years.

Listen to the Full Episode Below!

Tune in to this episode of The eCommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives with Edmond Georges to learn more about the Hobbiesville journey to eight-figure revenue.

👉 Apple: https://bit.ly/3Z8R5iM

👉 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/44FlWVw

Over the past ten years, Edmond Georges has built eight companies in the hospitality, retail, eCommerce, and tech spaces. His most recent venture is Hobbiesville, where he is currently President and CTO, as well as Co-Founder. Hobbiesville is a hobby shop, stocking all types of collectibles from Pokemon to Magic the Gathering, shipping across Canada and internationally.

Posted on September 11, 2023

It’s 2023, and online shoppers today have no patience for inefficient, clumsy, or downright frustrating online shopping experiences. Interruptions in navigation, technical glitches, or downtime can cause irreparable friction between you and your potential customers. This disruption not only breeds user frustration but also erodes trust, often resulting in cart abandonment as consumers seek more reliable alternatives.

Although conversion rates vary depending on industries, Web pages that load in 2.4 seconds have been found to maintain an average website conversion rate of 1.9%. However, increasing the loading time to 4.2 seconds causes this rate to plummet to less than 1%. This trend further echoes in B2C eCommerce, where websites that load in just 1 second have conversion rates 2.5 times higher than those taking 5 seconds.

But even if your website has slower loading times, this is not a reason to panic. This article will help you understand how website performance and conversion rates are related and list some actionable steps for achieving a high conversion rate by enhancing your site’s performance.

Decoding Website Conversion Rate

Website conversion rate is a vital metric that determines the percentage of visitors who engage in a specific desired action on a website. This action could range from making a purchase, adding a product to a wishlist or cart, or even contacting a business.

To calculate conversion rate, the number of conversions on a particular webpage is divided by the total number of website visitors. This crucial percentage offers a snapshot of the ease of site usage, efficiency of marketing positioning and value proposition, and the overall user experience the site provides.

A higher online conversion rate is a testament to effective messaging, seamless user journeys, and the alignment of the site’s content with its target audience’s expectations and preferences. Conversely, a lower-than-average conversion rate or a drastically low conversion rate may hint at underlying issues such as slow page load times, misaligned content, or a mismatch between calls to action and the actual offerings.

Furthermore, it’s essential to note that the website conversion rate by industry can differ significantly. For example, the average eCommerce conversion rate isn’t the same as the SaaS conversion rate.

So, what is a good conversion rate?

The overarching average website conversion rate, when considering multiple sectors, lies between 2.35% and 5.31%. Another key aspect that affects eCommerce conversion rate benchmarks is that conversion rates can vary depending on the type of conversion, making it crucial to track different conversions individually.

For businesses and website owners looking to decode their website conversion rates, tools like Google Analytics come highly recommended. Such tools don’t just aid in tracking but can also provide insights into areas of improvement, whether it’s refining design elements, optimizing load times, or integrating testimonials and other forms of social proof.

Why Does Website Loading Speed Affect Conversion Rates?

So, if you’re wondering why page speed is relevant, it has a direct impact on website conversion rates for several reasons:

User expectations and patience

Today’s online shoppers expect web pages to load extremely swiftly. Even a minor deviation from this can result in lost potential customers. Human attention span is constantly diminishing and online shoppers have very little patience for poor eCommerce experiences and web pages that are hard to navigate or worse, take too long to load. So, if your digital storefront is not quick to load, your potential customers are likely to lose interest and switch to a competitor.

Increase in bounce rates

Slow-loading web pages experience a higher bounce rate, especially on mobile devices. Online shoppers are quick to drop off if a landing page is slow to load, thus negatively impacting conversion rates. Mobile speed should be prioritized over desktop due to connection disparities. Many users now access sites through mobile devices, and a slower load time on mobile can significantly diminish website conversion rates.

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First impressions matter

For many website visitors, the loading speed of a website is their first interaction with a brand or business. Slow speeds can give the impression of unprofessionalism or a lack of care about user experience, influencing their perception of the brand as a whole.

Overall user experience

Page design, layout, and content all influence conversion rates. If a user has to wait for these elements to load, their overall experience diminishes, which can deter them from completing a conversion action.

It’s easy to see why a fast website loading speed is essential for maintaining high conversion rates, as users expect quick and smooth browsing experiences. Optimizing load times can lead to significant revenue gains and an advantage over competitors.

Site Speed's Impact on Search Rankings and Brand Visibility

Site speed, a term referring to how quickly a website loads and becomes interactive, is undeniably a major factor impacting both search rankings and brand visibility.

Here’s a breakdown of the key elements surrounding site speed and visibility:

Historical emphasis on speed

Google began emphasizing the page speed ranking factor in 2010. The degree to which it affected rankings became especially pronounced with the introduction of Google’s Core Web Vitals in 2018.

Metrics and correlations

While various speed metrics exist, Time to First Byte (TTFB) has shown a strong correlation with higher search rankings. Simpler sites, often of smaller firms, appear to rank higher, possibly due to faster loading times.

Empirical evidence

An experiment, with domains having different page speed scores but equal SEO optimization, showed that the fastest page (green score) reached a #1 ranking in Google. In contrast, slower pages didn’t even make the top 50. This experiment emphasized the crucial role speed plays in search engine rankings.

Progressive Web Apps

PWAs offer a solution to speed challenges, ensuring rapid website experiences regardless of the back-end setup. Their usage can lead to higher user engagement, an increase in website’s conversion rate, and consequently, improved SEO rankings.

Beyond rankings

While speed influences search rankings, it also shapes the broader user experience, affecting website visitation, sharing, and overall satisfaction, which can indirectly boost rankings.

Advanced Optimizations to Create Seamless User Journeys That Convert Better

In the digital era, optimizing the customer journey is imperative for crafting memorable experiences that can drive conversions and brand loyalty. After all, today’s savvy online shoppers have abundant choices, so they’re unlikely to spend their precious time browsing slow or complicated eCommerce sites.

Take a look below for some website conversion rate optimization techniques to ensure better website conversions and seamless user journeys.

Understanding Audience Needs

Before diving into design, get to grips with the needs and behaviors of your target audience. Utilize user personas and journey mapping to predict and cater to these needs, ensuring intuitive interfaces that keep users engaged.

Conduct user surveys or interviews to collect qualitative data.
Create detailed user personas, capturing demographics, behaviors, and pain points.
Develop journey maps, visualizing user interactions from awareness to conversion.
Reevaluate user needs regularly, adapting based on evolving trends or customer feedback.

Mobile-first Design

With 86% of the global population owning a smartphone, having a mobile-responsive site is paramount. Not only should your website look good on mobile, but it should also offer a seamless experience tailored to mobile users.

Design mobile interfaces with touch-friendly elements and larger buttons.
Prioritize essential content, ensuring fast loading times and reduced data consumption.
Use responsive design techniques, guaranteeing consistency across various screen sizes.
Test the mobile experience on multiple devices and browsers for compatibility.

Feedback Loops

Incorporate mechanisms to provide real-time responses to user actions, ensuring they feel acknowledged and guided.

Before initiating feedback, outline your aims such as improving user satisfaction or retention. Set KPIs that align with your conversion goal.
Engage users who rely on feedback widgets, chatbots, email campaigns, or social media to capture both quantitative and qualitative data.
After feedback collection, use techniques like affinity mapping and thematic analysis to spot trends and patterns.
Deploy changes based on feedback, measure the impact through tests like split testing, and notify users of the changes, showing you value their input.

Dive Deep into Analytics

Use advanced analytics tools to understand user behavior and refine the user journey.

Start by integrating testing tools such as Google Analytics and UXCam into your website or application.
Categorize users based on behavior, location, or demographics to understand varied user journeys and experiences.
Using the analytics tools, study user pathways, page views, click-through rates, and drop-off points. This will offer insights into potential bottlenecks or areas for improvement.
Based on the analytics data, tweak user flow, optimize content, and adjust design elements to provide a smoother and more intuitive user experience.

Usability Testing

Leverage both moderated and unmoderated usability sessions to unearth insights. This information can refine interactions, improve the overall customer experience, and ultimately increase conversions.

Organize moderated usability sessions, gathering in-depth insights on specific aspects.
Use unmoderated sessions for broader feedback on the overall experience.
Prioritize iterations based on user feedback, focusing on high-impact areas.
Regularly schedule usability tests, ensuring updates or redesigns meet user expectations.

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A/B Testing and Feedback

Regularly test different variations of your web pages and gather real user feedback to continuously optimize and adapt to changing user preferences.

Design two versions of a landing page and track how each of them performs against your key metrics.
Analyze conversion metrics like website conversion rate, bounce rate, and user retention.
Once you collect enough statistically significant data, implement the superior variant, continuously refining based on insights.

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Integrate AI with Social Media

AI-driven chat support enhances real-time interactions. Additionally, integrating social media can foster trust and ease of sharing.

Integrate AI chatbots, offering potential buyers instant support and guidance.
Utilize social media logins, simplifying the sign-up process.
Embed social sharing buttons, promoting content virality.
Monitor social media mentions, engaging users and addressing any concerns proactively.

By embracing these advanced optimization techniques, businesses can create user journeys that not only meet but exceed user expectations, thus increasing conversions, as well as driving satisfaction and brand loyalty.

Final Thoughts

In the digital marketplace, every second counts. A slight delay in loading time can significantly impact the quality of user experience on the site. Today’s smart shoppers know what they want and are unlikely to convert on eCommerce sites that offer anything less than a delightful experience.

Prioritizing website speed is not just better to boost conversions, but it’s also vital for enhanced user experience, increased brand visibility, and overall business growth. The competitive edge lies with those who recognize and act on the imperative of a fast website.

While there are various elements that businesses focus on to boost conversion rates and ensure success in the digital marketplace, site speed remains an underlying cornerstone. An increase in conversion rates is not just an enhancement but a necessity for sustainable growth in the ever-competitive eCommerce sector.

Posted on September 8, 2023

In today’s hyper-competitive eCommerce landscape, each second is extremely important for businesses striving for success by offering frictionless shopping experiences. When your page loading speed can make all the difference in whether you secure a successful sale or witness a valuable customer slip away, optimizing your eCommerce site performance is definitely worth your team’s time, attention, and dedication.

Did you know that 70% of all online consumers openly admit that a sluggish website significantly impacts their decision to engage with an online retailer? This stone-cold fact is an excellent example of why it’s imperative to strike the right balance between delivering visually captivating, content-rich shopping experiences and a fast-loading website.

Google’s analysis of 11 million landing pages concluded that slow-loading pages correlated directly with higher bounce rates. Therefore, if your potential shoppers end up bouncing off your site due to slow-loading pages, it is going to directly impact your conversion rate and revenue.

Source: Backlinko

To help you position for eCommerce success, this blog post delves into the complexities of eCommerce site speed optimization and website performance. We will discuss why website speed is vital to succeed as an eCommerce business, the typical culprits behind sluggish websites, and offer some actionable insights on conducting thorough speed tests and optimizing for desktop and mobile users.

We will also try to establish the tangible return on investment (ROI) for eCommerce giants that comes from committing to optimize website speed. All of this reinforces the notion that in the world of enterprise eCommerce, speed isn’t just an advantage; it’s an absolute imperative!

What Is Website Speed Optimization?

eCommerce site speed optimization, also known as eCommerce website performance optimization, is the strategic process of enhancing your website’s page load speed. This crucial endeavor is aimed at ensuring that your eCommerce website loads as swiftly as possible, preventing potential customers from growing frustrated with their online experience and prematurely closing their browser tabs.

To gauge eCommerce site speed, two key metrics come into play:

Page Speed: This metric measures the time the content on a specific URL takes to fully load. It is a critical aspect of eCommerce site speed optimization, directly impacting user experience.
Site Speed: Site speed encompasses the overall performance of your website. It is assessed by services like Google PageSpeed Insights, which evaluates various load times across your site as a whole.

Google recommends a page load speed of two seconds for an eCommerce site. However, it’s important to note that faster loading times are generally more advantageous. Research reveals that, on average, an eCommerce store’s conversion rate decreases by 0.3% for each additional second it takes for the website to load.

eCommerce site speed optimization is the art and science of ensuring that your website operates at peak efficiency, delivering not only a faster and more responsive user experience but also safeguarding your revenue from the backlash of slow-loading pages.

Consider this: If your store caters to an average order value of $30 and attracts 5,000 daily visitors, a mere one-second delay in site speed could potentially cost you $4,500 in revenue per day. That’s something that you truly want to avoid, right? eCommerce site speed is that important.

Why Is eCommerce Site Speed Important?

In the dynamic eCommerce sector, website speed issues emerge as a genuine factor, majorly contributing to each enterprise’s online success. In this regard, every fraction of a second becomes significant, and the loading speed of your website stands as the ultimate empire, capable of defining the line between a flourishing online presence and a squandered opportunity.

To truly comprehend the gravity of website speed, it’s imperative to delve into why it holds such a pivotal role in the contemporary digital ecosystem.

User Experience and Engagement

The patience of today’s internet users is wearing really thin because of their pursuit of instant gratification. So, when a web page lags and takes an eternity to load, visitors are not inclined to stick around; instead, they swiftly pivot toward alternative options. In this sense, studies have revealed that 47% of users expect a web page to load within a mere 2 seconds or less.

Now, picture a potential customer eagerly arriving at your eCommerce site, brimming with anticipation to explore your array of products. However, their eagerness morphs into impatience and frustration as they encounter sluggish loading times. In this all-too-common scenario, you’re not merely jeopardizing the potential for a sale; you’re effectively ushering that potential customer into the open arms of your competitors.

Users demand urgency, and if your website fails to meet this expectation, the consequences are twofold—not only do you risk losing a potential customer immediately, but you also tarnish your brand’s reputation, potentially deterring future interactions.

Search Engine Rankings

Since competition for online visibility is relentless, the battle for search engine ranking is nothing short of fierce. In that context, search engines, particularly Google, rate eCommerce site speed as a pivotal factor, fundamentally changing the dynamics of online discoverability.

The statistics paint a compelling picture: a one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. Moreover, Google has not only acknowledged the significance of website speed but actively integrated it into its ranking algorithms. Faster websites optimized for speed are rewarded with higher positions in search results.

The fruits of this labor manifest in improved search engine visibility, leading to heightened organic traffic and, of course, more customers at your store’s digital forefront.

Conversion Rates

The correlation between website speed and conversion rates carries substantial financial implications, particularly for eCommerce enterprises where conversions equate to revenue. This relationship is straightforward: as website speed lags, conversions decline, and revenue suffers.

Consider this analogy: With every extra second your website takes to load, you risk losing valuable customers and revenue. It’s a direct and quantifiable loss. Conversely, websites that load swiftly tend to exhibit superior conversion rates.

Beyond the financial aspect, speed imparts another crucial intangible asset – trust. When users encounter a website that efficiently and rapidly delivers content, it fosters a positive impression. This trust translates into increased confidence in the platform, ultimately boosting the likelihood of users completing a purchase.

It’s the difference between potential customers departing in frustration and embracing a seamless, trust-inducing experience that culminates in a successful transaction, fortifying the bottom line.

Common Factors That Affect eCommerce Site Speed

To improve eCommerce website performance and speed, first, it’s essential to identify and address the factors that contribute to slow loading times. In that regard, the most common elements that can affect your site’s speed include:

Large Media Files

In the multimedia-rich landscape of the internet, product images and videos are standard components that enhance websites’ visual appeal and user experience. However, they can also be significant culprits behind slow-loading sites.

Did you know that high-resolution images and uncompressed videos consume substantial bandwidth, take longer to load, and usually result in frustrated users?

To mitigate this issue, the practice of compressing and optimizing media files comes into play. Compression techniques, like JPEG for images and H.264 for videos, reduce file sizes without compromising quality.

Additionally, adopting responsive image design ensures that the appropriate image file and sizes are delivered based on the user’s device, further enhancing loading speed.

Excessive HTTP Requests

When a user accesses a web page, the browser must fetch various elements such as images, scripts, stylesheets, etc. Each of these elements triggers an HTTP request, and excessive requests can bog down a site’s speed. This issue is particularly prevalent on complex web pages with numerous components.

Web developers employ strategies like file concatenation and minification to address this challenge. File concatenation involves merging multiple files of the same type (e.g., CSS and JavaScript files) into a single file, reducing the number of HTTP requests. Conversely, minification entails eliminating unnecessary characters and spaces in code files, further optimizing loading speed.

Inefficient Code

The underlying code of a website is its foundation, and poorly written or outdated code can severely hinder its performance. Inefficient code can lead to various issues, from slow load times to compatibility problems across different browsers and devices.

eCommerce site owners and developers must adopt best coding practices and stay up-to-date with the latest web development standards. Regularly auditing and optimizing the codebase is essential for maintaining a fast and efficient website. This process involves identifying and rectifying redundancies, eliminating unused code, and implementing efficient algorithms to reduce page load times.

Server Performance

While many aspects of website speed optimization focus on the front end, server performance is equally critical in determining how quickly a website responds to user requests. The quality and speed of the web hosting server directly impact website speed.

Therefore, selecting a reliable hosting provider with fast servers is paramount. Shared hosting plans may be cost-effective but can lead to slower performance, especially during traffic spikes.

Consider opting for dedicated or virtual private server (VPS) hosting solutions to ensure optimal server performance. Additionally, a content delivery network (CDNs) can be employed to dispense the eCommerce website’s content across several servers globally, thus decreasing latency and enhancing loading times for users in different geographical locations.

How To Run A Website Speed Test?

Running a website speed test is akin to conducting a diagnostic check-up on your digital storefront. It gives you the knowledge needed to make informed decisions about where and how to enhance your website’s speed and overall performance.

This proactive approach leads to a faster and more responsive website and sets the stage for improved user satisfaction, higher search engine rankings, and, ultimately, online success.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to conduct a website speed test and uncover your speed score:

Choose a website speed testing tool. Many online tools are designed specifically for website speed testing. Prominent options include Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, Pingdom, and WebPageTest. Each tool offers additional features and metrics, but they all share a common goal: comprehensively scrutinizing your website’s performance.
Enter your website URL. To initiate the test, visit the chosen speed testing tool’s website and locate the field to enter your website’s URL. Simply input your website’s address; the inspect tool will take it from there.
Analyze the results. Once the test is underway, the tool meticulously assesses various aspects of your website’s speed and performance. It generates a comprehensive report that typically includes critical metrics such as page load time, server response time, and opportunities for optimization. These metrics provide a clear snapshot of your website’s current state, highlighting areas that require attention.
Prioritize fixes. Armed with the test results, it’s time to chart your course for optimization. Not all identified issues are created equal, and it’s essential to prioritize fixes based on their impact on website speed and customer experience. Address the most critical issues first, as these often yield the most significant improvements. Common optimization tasks may include compressing images, minifying code, leveraging browser caching, and refining server performance.

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Optimizing Speed For Both Desktop and Mobile

Make no mistake: optimizing eCommerce site speed is no longer solely the concern for desktop users. With the growing prevalence of mobile devices in online shopping, ensuring a swift and seamless eCommerce website performance for mobile users is equally crucial. Here’s a quick guide on how to achieve speed optimization that caters to both desktop and mobile users:

Responsive design. Implementing a responsive web design is foundational to accommodating users across various devices. This approach ensures your website dynamically adapts to different resolutions and screen sizes. Whether accessed on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone, your site will appear and function optimally, providing a consistent and user-friendly experience.
Mobile-first approach. With the mobile audience in mind, adopt a mobile-first mindset. This entails optimizing the design and the content specifically for mobile viewing and mobile site speed. Ensure that text is legible, buttons and links are easily clickable, and navigation remains intuitive on smaller screens.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). Consider implementing accelerated mobile pages (AMP), a technology endorsed by Google. AMP creates lightweight versions of web pages tailored for rapid loading on mobile devices. Google often prioritizes AMP pages in mobile search results, potentially boosting your mobile visibility.
Image optimization. Images significantly contribute to page load times. To expedite mobile loading, compress and resize images without sacrificing quality. This approach balances visual appeal and speed, ensuring mobile users aren’t left waiting for images to load.
Minimize pop-ups and interstitials. While pop-ups and interstitials can be effective for specific purposes, they can impede mobile page loading. To maintain a seamless mobile experience, use these elements sparingly and ensure they don’t disrupt navigation or hinder access to content.

ROI vs. eCommerce Site Speed

While investing in website speed optimization is often perceived as an additional expense, it’s essential to recognize that these efforts can yield substantial ROI. Here’s why optimizing your website’s speed is a highly worthwhile investment:

Increased sales and revenue. Faster websites have a compelling advantage – they convert visitors into customers more effectively. For eCommerce websites, a speed-optimized website can significantly boost the conversion rates of the business. From there, the income generated from increased conversions can substantially outweigh the optimization cost, making it a prudent financial decision.
Improved user retention. Website speed isn’t just about attracting new online shoppers; it’s also about keeping them engaged. Fast-loading websites encourage users to stay longer, explore more products or content, and are more likely to return for future visits. This contributes to customer retention and builds a loyal customer base that generates long-term revenue. Slow websites, on the other hand, can frustrate users and drive them away, potentially resulting in lost opportunities for engagement and revenue.
Lower ad costs. Many businesses use paid advertising campaigns to drive website traffic. What’s often overlooked is that website speed plays a role in these campaigns. Search engines and advertising platforms consider landing page experience and loading speed when determining ad quality scores. A faster website can lower ad costs, making your marketing budget more efficient. This means your advertising dollars go further, delivering a better ROI on your marketing spend.
Enhanced brand reputation. Website speed isn’t just about numbers; it also reflects your brand’s commitment to providing an excellent user experience. A speedy website sends a positive message to your visitors, indicating that you value their time and strive to offer the best possible online experience. This can lead to improved brand perception, increased trust in your products or services, and greater customer loyalty. Over time, a well-optimized website can enhance your brand’s reputation, translating into sustained revenue growth.

Final Thoughts

For eCommerce enterprises, website speed optimization isn’t merely an option; it’s an imperative. After all, a swiftly loading website elevates user experience, elevates search engine rankings, amplifies the eCommerce conversion rate, and, in the end, propels revenue growth.

By tackling prevalent speed-related challenges and prioritizing optimization for both desktop and mobile users, you’re charting a course for eCommerce success. It’s important to remember that the faster your website, the happier your customers and, consequently, the more prosperous your online business will become.

Neglecting website speed optimization in today’s digital era is a risk no savvy eCommerce team can afford to take. Don’t wait; start working with your team on optimizing your eCommerce website performance today and pave the path for future success!

Posted on September 6, 2023

eCommerce websites serve as the virtual marketplace for almost 219 million people in the US alone. Speed and efficiency, the backbone of these platforms, play a vital role in influencing purchase decisions.

As web development continually evolves, from simplistic HTML sites to dynamic web applications, integrating third-party tools to enhance functionality is increasingly becoming the norm. While they bring forth an array of advantages, these third-party elements, if unchecked, may pose significant risks to website speed and performance.

This article explains the concept of third-party elements and lists some valuable tips on how to optimize them and implement third-party checks to minimize their negative impact on the load speed of your eCommerce website.

But First, What Are Third-Party Elements?

Third-party elements or tools help websites offer a rich user experience, automate functionalities, and gather insights to optimize business strategies.

They are usually embedded into eCommerce platforms via scripts and their primary function is to automate specific site functions and to enhance the overall user experience. Their use is so prevalent that 94% of websites employ at least one third-party tool.

Below are some of the primary functions of commonly deployed third-party elements:

Analytics: These tools help businesses track user behavior, understand purchasing patterns, and gain insights into customer preferences.
API-driven components: APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) allow the integration of external functionalities and data into the eCommerce site.
Adtech: Advertising technology tools help eCommerce businesses monetize their sites, run targeted ad campaigns, and track ad performance.
Personalization: Based on user behavior, personalization tools tailor the shopping experience to individual users, offering them relevant product recommendations and personalized deals.
Integrations: These include but are not limited to inventory management, marketplace management, marketing analytics, email marketing tools, CRMs, live chats, ERPs, and order processing systems.
Payment and financial management: Integration with payment gateways is crucial for eCommerce businesses to ensure secure transactions, while tax integrations help simplify tax calculations. POS (Point of Sale) integrations also enhance data synchronization and simplify accounting processes.
Customer service and engagement: Tools like live chat enhance customer support, while integrations like RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) automate and simplify product return processes for customers.

Performance Problems with Third-Party Content

While third-party elements bring added functionality and enhance user experience, they also introduce potential performance challenges that can hinder a site’s efficiency.

Bulky code

Overloaded scripts can slow down your site. These can be external scripts related to analytics, third-party javascript files, social media plugins, or even advertising. Certain analytics can significantly decelerate load times, with even small tracking pixels adding up to half a second of load time.

These bloated scripts not only increase the overall size of web pages but also increase the number of requests that a browser must make, further hindering performance.

External server calls

Third-party content often requires database calls and (data requests) from external servers, adding latency. As a result, download speeds can suffer as a result.

These requests often fetch data for analytics, ads, or social media scripts. These are usually reliant on the response times of the third-party servers, over which you have no control.

Incompatibility

Sometimes, a third-party script may play poorly with your site’s other components. Incompatibility can arise from various sources, such as plugins, ad-blockers, or even other third-party scripts that you might have running on your website.

Specific issues can include delays, blocking effects, and Single Points of Failure (SPOFs) that can result in substantial slowdowns or even complete site crashes if a particular third-party service becomes unavailable.

Whether you’re building a site from scratch or migrating your existing eCommerce website, you want to make sure that third-party apps are fully compatible with your website platform.

Privacy and data protection

A significant concern with third-party tools is data privacy. Given that many of these tools collect user data, there’s a potential risk of data breaches and non-compliance with data protection regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

Needless to say, if a third-party tool or service faces an issue, it could indirectly tarnish the reputation of the eCommerce site using it.

That being said, third-party elements, when used judiciously, can greatly enhance an eCommerce website’s functionality, user experience, and profitability.

However, businesses must remain vigilant, ensuring that they reap the benefits of these tools while mitigating potential risks.

Here are a few tips for complying with GDPR and CCPA regulations while also utilizing data to enhance shopping experiences:

Sectors like healthcare and finance have managed to garner higher trust levels due to their stringent data protection measures. Such trust is vital for eCommerce businesses for improving customer retention and loyalty.
Employing methods like tokenization, encryption, pseudonymization, and masking can safeguard customer data. Regular privacy evaluations are crucial to ensure consistent compliance with evolving privacy norms.
Adopt GDPR principles like lawfulness, transparency, data minimization, accuracy, and storage limitation. Ensuring clear privacy policies and maintaining transparency about data collection, usage, and storage fosters trust with customers.
eCommerce firms can market their GDPR compliance to European customers, highlighting their commitment to data privacy, which can be a unique selling point in today’s data-conscious market.
Collaborating with tools and platforms that prioritize GDPR compliance, like Google Analytics, Google AdWords, and Shopify Plus, can make adherence more manageable for eCommerce businesses. It’s essential to ensure any third-party tools or platforms used for marketing or operations adhere to privacy standards.

How to Measure the Impact of Third-Party Elements

Measuring the impact of third-party elements on website performance is a complex task that necessitates specific tools and strategies. Various third-party elements, such as scripts and ads, have distinct performance implications for websites.

It’s noteworthy that specific third-party elements can heavily influence page speed. Analytics tools, for example, can cause substantial delays due to their connection methods and loading sequences.

One of the significant advantages of testing tools like the Uptrends Full Page Check is their ability to provide comprehensive insights through waterfall reports. By analyzing these reports for each third-party provider, it becomes easier to address performance issues, and these insights can also be shared with providers for further optimization.

On a broader scale, managing third-party risks is crucial for businesses to prevent issues like supply chain attacks, data breaches, and potential reputation damage. The global regulatory landscape now emphasizes vendor risk management, particularly with the rise of fourth-party risks emerging from sub-contracting and on-sourcing mechanisms.

Central to this is the process of due diligence, which focuses on security assessments of third-party vendors. As the digital landscape evolves, the process has become continuous, adapting swiftly to emerging security threats. In this context, security ratings emerge as vital tools, offering real-time evaluations of third-party security conditions.

Optimizing the Code and Reducing the Impact of Third-Party Scripts on Your eCommerce Website

Reducing the impact of third-party scripts is essential for maintaining a smooth and responsive eCommerce website. Here are some steps you can follow to minimize their impact.

Understand the impact

Before taking any action, it’s essential to understand the effects of third-party code on your site’s performance. Tools such as WebPageTest, Chrome DevTools, and Google’s Lighthouse can help identify third-party scripts that are problematic and measure their impact on your site’s load time and responsiveness.

Moreover, metrics like First Paint, Contentful Paint, and Input Delay provide insights into how long it takes for your site’s content to become visible and interactive for users.

Optimization techniques

Async/defer loading: Use the `async` and `defer` attributes for script tags. While both attributes allow scripts to be downloaded in the background without blocking page rendering, `defer` ensures that scripts are executed in the order they appear on the page.
Lazy loading: The lazy load method defers the loading of resources until they’re needed, thus improving the user experience by speeding up the initial page loading time.
Self-hosting critical scripts: By hosting necessary third-party scripts on your server, you reduce the reliance on external servers, potentially improving loading speed and reliability.
Resource hints: These establish early connections to required third-party domains, ensuring that the resources from these domains are loaded more quickly when needed.
Remove unused scripts: Regularly audit and remove any third-party scripts that are no longer needed or used on your site.
Avoid `document.write()`: This method can block page rendering and is considered harmful to performance.

Monitoring

The first step here is to set a performance budget to establish limits on certain metrics (e.g., page load time, the number of requests). This helps in monitoring the site’s performance and ensuring that the addition of new scripts or content doesn’t degrade customer experience.

Next, instead of solely relying on synthetic tests, monitoring real user metrics provides insights into how actual users experience your site. This can guide optimizations based on real-world data.

Proactive measures

Regular third-party checks are critical in managing various issues. Some recommended steps include:

Full page checks (FPC): Tools like Uptrends’ FPC can be pivotal in diagnosing and managing third-party content’s impact on performance. These tools help monitor page load times, block specific third-party content, and analyze performance from various locations.
Optimization strategies: Asynchronous script loading, managing third-party fonts, and using Web Workers for resource-intensive scripts can help in mitigating some of the performance impacts of third-party content.
Service level agreements (SLAs): By having SLAs with third-party providers, organizations can ensure accountability and set clear performance benchmarks. Monitoring tools can then be used to track and report on these benchmarks, ensuring that third-party providers maintain the agreed-upon performance levels.

Pushing Boundaries: The Future of Third-party Integrations

As the web evolves, with technologies like progressive web apps, AI, and IoT, third-party integrations will only play a more crucial role. Regular third-party checks will ensure that as we push the boundaries, we do not compromise on third-party performance and website speed.

In conclusion, third-party content can be a double-edged sword for eCommerce websites. The balance lies in leveraging the benefits they offer while being cautious of the potential pitfalls.

Fortunately, Noibu comes to the rescue. It helps detect and prioritize errors on eCommerce websites along with providing all technical information required to resolve them. It offers a wide array of features you can use to reduce or even eliminate the negative impact of third-party tools on web performance, while significantly decreasing your overall error resolution times.

Posted on August 30, 2023

Pet Supermarket: a fifty-year-old, highly successful pet specialty retailer with over 200 stores across a dozen states. Having only recently transitioned from brick-and-mortar operations to omni-channel, it is incredible that they are now shipping products out to their customers faster than any of their competitors. They are becoming increasingly more successful in their eCommerce offerings, but how have they done it?

On the latest episode of The eCommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives podcast, our host and co-founder Kailin Noivo sits down with Matt Ezyk, the Director of eCommerce at Pet Supermarket to unravel the company’s transition from brick-and-mortar to omnichannel.

Their insightful conversation digs deep into the importance of considering customer experience at every step along the way, and explores how combining in-store experiences with digital channels can enhance the customer journey, leading to loyal, lifetime customers.

Digital versus In-Store Shopping: Which One Do You Choose for a Pet Store?

We’ve all been to a pet store. It’s an experience like no other!

You can see the animal you want to adopt, pick them up, learn about them, buy their habitat and food, and take them home.

Can that really be replaced with online services? According to Matt, the answer is a succinct NO.

Nothing would ever replace that experience. But, it could definitely be enhanced.

When he took over the eCommerce operations of Pet Supermarket, he looked at what was going well for the company and how he could supplement that with digital services to enhance the customer experience. Nothing could replace what it was like to go into a store and meet the animal you were looking to adopt, and so he didn’t try to remove that from the customer journey.

Instead, the customer journey could start off digitally by having information pages on animals that could be adopted, so that potential customers could learn everything they needed to know prior to going to the store and picking out the animal.

Tech to Enhance the Customer Journey

Once a customer has their animal, their situation has changed, they now need to make sure they can provide everything that the animal needs: food, stimulation, and a home. Pet Supermarket has leveraged different technologies and services to fulfill these consumer needs, thus keeping the customer loyal and online.

In the modern day, with the likes of Deliveroo and Amazon Prime, when we want something, we want it then and there. Pet Supermarket saw this and focused their attention on ship-from-store. This allows them to get customers their products within hours of ordering (if not less), meaning that they are faster than all of their competitors. They further offer subscription options for repeat purchases, such as food, so that the customer doesn’t need to think about reordering, it just arrives when they need it!

Matt shares that they are also leveraging predictive AI to make suggestions to customers when shopping online. Say you were browsing cat food, the AI would understand that you were shopping for a cat and suggest other products a cat owner may need, such as litter or cat trees. Not only does this make for a more seamless customer journey, but it has boosted the company’s revenue and margins – it’s a win for everyone!

Matt Ezyk on Allowing Customers to Choose How They Wish to Shop

Even with all these exciting offerings, Matt makes it clear that they never force the customer down any path. It is up to them how they interact with the business. At the end of the day, you wouldn’t force your customers to walk down certain aisles of your physical store if they didn’t want to, so why would you do it digitally

Many of Pet Supermarket’s customers have been loyal customers for decades, and they don’t want that to change. If they were to force their customers to do something, chances are they would look elsewhere and they could lose out on that loyalty.

Networking is Your Best Friend: Matt Ezyk

Matt couldn’t have gotten Pet Supermarket to where it is now without relying on external partners to help build the tech base and get it moving. He did build his own team but the external partnerships were invaluable. However, when outsourcing any aspect of business, it is crucial you trust the partner to build the part correctly and support you if things go wrong.

One way to ensure you find partners you trust: network! You never know what you’ll learn from fellow eCommerce professionals and who you may need to lean on in the future.

Unlocking Opportunities: The Power of Networking and Paying It Forward Shorts

As Matt says: “The more people you know, the easier it is for you to open yourself up to more opportunities.”

Listen to the Full Episode Below!

Listen to this episode of The eCommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives with Matt Ezyk to learn how to transform an organization from brick-and-mortar to omni-channel.

👉 Apple: https://apple.co/3OONxO0

👉 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/45BkeW3

Matt Ezyk is an eCommerce leader with a wealth of experience in digital strategy, agile management, business process optimization and more. He is now the Director of eCommerce at Pet Supermarket, a successful pet specialty retailer with over 200 stores across a dozen states.

With over twelve years of experience providing eCommerce leadership and managing Salesforce implementations for multiple high-profile organizations, Matt is always one step ahead of change in the rapidly evolving eCommerce landscape.

Posted on August 28, 2023

The digital era continues to be characterized by the rapid growth of mobile users. In 2023, global mobile users are expected to reach an astounding 7.33 billion.

Image source

In today’s digitally-driven market, consumers expect fast-loading, efficient, and smooth online shopping experiences. And with mobile usage continuing to grow, eCommerce businesses can’t afford to overlook mobile page speed.

Slow mobile load times can adversely affect user engagement, conversions, and SEO rankings. A delay as short as one second can result in significant traffic and revenue losses.

Whether you’re building an entirely new eCommerce website or preparing it for migration, it needs to have an excellent version for mobile devices. Read on to find out about the advanced tactics that can help you enhance your website’s mobile page speed and ensure a responsive web design.

Understanding Mobile Page Speed Metrics

Mobile page speed metrics are crucial indicators that determine the performance and efficiency of a website on mobile devices. With the majority of web traffic coming from mobile users, optimizing mobile web page speed is essential for better user experience, reduced bounce rates, and improved rankings on search engines.

Here’s an in-depth look at key mobile page speed metrics and their significance.

Google PageSpeed Insights metrics

First Contentful Paint (FCP): This metric signifies the time taken for the first piece of content to render on the screen. It is influenced by server speed, network conditions, and other factors. Improvements can be made by optimizing rendering, reducing server response time, and optimizing CSS.
Speed Index: Represents the average time at which visible parts of a page are displayed. To enhance this, it’s recommended to use smaller images and have a streamlined code.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Denotes the time taken for the most significant content to become visible. Influencing factors include CSS, server speed, and rendering processes. To improve LCP, focus on reducing render-blocking elements, optimizing CSS, and server response times.
Time To Interactive (TTI): This measures the time taken for a page to become fully interactive. Key areas for enhancement include optimizing JavaScript, reducing requests, and utilizing resource hints.
Total Blocking Time (TBT): Gauges the delay from FCP to the point when the page becomes interactive. This can be improved by enhancing the main thread’s responsiveness.

Top 3 site speed metrics

Time to Title: Measures the time users first see the title of the web page. A delay in this can lead to high bounce rates and negatively impact search rankings.
Time to Interact: This gauges the speed at which users can interact with the content, and it plays a significant role in influencing conversion rates.
Time to Start Render: This represents the time taken for users to see the first visual element on a page. This metric is crucial for engagement and conversions.

Tools for tracking speed metrics

Google PageSpeed Insights: Offers comprehensive performance analysis, insights from real-world data, and mobile web performance optimization suggestions.
GTmetrix: Gives detailed insights on performance and load times, and furnishes recommendations to boost loading speed and user experience.
Pingdom: Provides global monitoring of uptime, performance, and user interactions with in-depth reports.
WebPageTest: Allows for testing from different locations and devices, and it’s packed with features
valuable for developers.

Image Optimization: Enhancing Load Times Without Compromising Quality

Image source

Images play a pivotal role in the overall makeup of a website, accounting for approximately 64% of a website’s total size. This significant percentage can drastically impact page-load speed and, consequently, the overall user experience.

As users grow more impatient and demand faster-loading websites, there’s a pressing need for businesses and developers to optimize their images effectively. This mobile web performance optimization aims to reduce the file size of images without sacrificing their visual quality, ensuring quick load times and an appealing user interface.

Choosing the right file types for mobile web performance optimization

JPEG: Best suited for colorful photos and shaded illustrations. They can be compressed while preserving visual appeal.
PNG: Ideal for images requiring transparency or those that are simple. They’re also suitable for logos which require both transparency and crispness.
GIF: Specifically used for animations and line art, but one should ensure their readability by assistive technology.
SVG: These text-based XML files work exceptionally well for abstract illustrations, ensuring minimal image sizes.

Resizing and cropping images

Large images should be resized to match their display sizes on websites. Image editors like Photoshop are useful tools for resizing or cropping images without compromising on quality.

Compression techniques

Lossy compression: Focuses on reducing redundant pixels, resulting in some quality loss.
Lossless compression: It reorganizes image data but keeps every pixel intact, ensuring no quality loss.

Online tools like Kraken, Optimizilla, and Image Optimizer offer effective image compression.

Eliminating metadata

Extraneous metadata in images can be removed to decrease their size. This can be achieved by adjusting camera settings or using image editing software.

Using CSS sprites

By merging multiple images into one, HTTP requests are reduced, enhancing page speeds, particularly for frequently used visual elements like icons.

Enhancing load times through external solutions

Caching: Once users visit a site, assets are stored in their browsers, enabling quicker subsequent loads.
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): CDNs enhance loading speed by distributing images from servers closest to the users, ensuring quicker accessibility.
Load Testing: Vital for maintaining website performance, tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and LoadNinja provide invaluable insights by identifying bottlenecks and suggesting improvements.

Minifying and Compressing Web Assets

Minifying and compressing web assets are vital techniques that significantly improve website performance. By reducing the size of code and other web files, these methods enhance page load times, user experience, and bandwidth efficiency.

Minification

Minification is a process that reduces code and markup in web and mobile pages and script files without changing their functionality. It mainly involves removing unnecessary characters, comments, and whitespaces, and shortening variable names.

The benefits of minification include enhanced website load times (particularly beneficial for users on limited data plans), a significant reduction in network traffic, and efficient use of bandwidth. Some tools you can use for this purpose are Terser, UglifyJS, CSSNano, and HTMLMinifier.

For instance, a JavaScript code segment before minification might have explanatory comments and extra spaces. After minification, these are removed, which can result in a file that’s often up to 60% smaller.

Data compression

Data compression involves modifying web assets using algorithms like Gzip and Brotli. These algorithms decrease the bits required for code representation, thereby lowering data transfer.

Especially with the Brotli algorithm, data compression can achieve file size reductions of up to 90%. As a result, your website will have enhanced page load times and reduced data transfer.

Gzip and Brotli are popular compression algorithms. Tools like Express with its compression middleware offer dynamic (on-the-fly) compression, while plugins like BrotliWebpackPlugin or CompressionPlugin with webpack are utilized for static compression.

It’s important to mention that, unlike minification, compression is reversible. However, compressed files need decompression before execution, while it’s recommended to prioritize minification before compression.

Streamlining the User Experience (UX) for Mobile Users

An optimized and seamless mobile UX ensures user satisfaction and encourages prolonged engagement with the platform, app, or website. The main objective of user experience design is to enhance user interactions and satisfaction. A streamlined UX is aesthetically appealing, user-friendly, mobile-friendly, and interactive.

Key mobile UX tactics

Responsive design: Ensuring the design adjusts and looks optimal regardless of the device or screen size.
Usability testing: Evaluating the site or app’s interface with real users to gain insights into improvements.
Identifying user goals: Understanding and catering to the primary objectives users have when they access the site or app.
Accessibility: Ensuring that everyone, including those with disabilities, can access and use the platform efficiently.

If you want to learn more about properly designing your website, take a look at the common mistakes businesses make when redesigning their eCommerce websites.

Best practices for mobile app UX

Clear navigation

Navigation should be intuitive, guiding users without confusion.

Use intuitive icons and terminology.
Simplify navigation structures, preventing deep hierarchical menus.
Minimize the number of actions needed to reach any feature.

Focused Screens

Each screen should have a clear purpose and not bombard users with too much information.

Eliminate unnecessary elements or buttons.
Prioritize content based on user needs.
Minimize pop-ups and disruptive UI elements.

Readability

Choose the right typeface.
Have a minimum of 12-point text size.
Use whitespace effectively.
Ensure contrast between text and background.
Use adaptive design for varying screen sizes and resolutions.

Mobile optimization

Employ lazy loading.
Build a simplified layout.
Compress images to reduce load times.
Implement a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for faster content delivery.
Design for variable connectivity. Ensure your app can handle interruptions and slow connections.

Consistency

Ensure that users have a seamless mobile experience across all channels and platforms.

Keep UI elements, colors, and typography consistent across all screens.
Ensure similar features and interactions work similarly across different sections.
Use standardized patterns familiar to most users.

Mobile-specific features

Implement features that leverage mobile capabilities, such as tap-to-call.
Implement swipe gestures for easy navigation.
Ensure touch target optimization to prevent mis-clicks.
Make use of mobile device features like cameras, GPS, and microphones for enhanced functionality.

Real-time support

Integrate features like live chat for immediate customer interaction and support.
Provide a live chat feature for user assistance, addressing queries promptly.
Highlight the accessibility of the support feature, ensuring users can easily find it when needed.

Community building

Components that foster interaction among users can boost engagement.

Integrate social media sharing options.
Offer features like forums or user-generated content sections for user interaction.
Implement in-app chat or communication features for users to engage directly.

Security

Especially crucial in regulated industries, a secure user experience helps build trust.

Regularly update app security protocols.
Use encryption for user data storage and transmission.
Be transparent about data usage, ensuring users know how their data is being used.

Leveraging Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and Web Hosting Solutions

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are an essential tool for mobile web performance optimization and are particularly valuable in today’s digital age where the speed, reliability, and security of content delivery are paramount.

A CDN is a system of distributed servers that deliver cached content, such as web pages, images, and videos, to users based on their geographic location. This results in reduced latency, decreased bandwidth usage, and an alleviated server load.

The benefits of CDNs include:

Enhanced performance: CDNs can dramatically affect mobile site speed optimization by reducing the distance between users and the content they’re trying to access, minimizing content travel distance, and optimizing server responses. This is particularly vital for media-rich content delivery where issues like audio-video synchronization and jumpy video playback can be a concern.
Reliability and uptime: CDNs offer redundancy through their network of servers, ensuring that if one server fails, the “failover” system transfers tasks to backup servers. This means uninterrupted service, high uptime, and a fault-tolerant system.
Cost savings: By caching content, CDNs reduce the amount of data that origin servers need to transfer, leading to lowered bandwidth costs, typically charged by web hosting providers.
Security enhancements: CDNs provide a line of defense against threats like DDoS attacks and encrypt data. They also offer features like SSL certificates, firewall, and anti-virus protections.
Global reach: CDNs facilitate effective content delivery to a global audience, ensuring that users worldwide experience minimal network disturbances.

However, there are also a few drawbacks of CDNs you should keep in mind:

Cost and complexity: CDNs can sometimes introduce added expenses, especially with hidden fees or additional feature charges.
Reliability concerns: If a CDN service faces downtime or outages, it can adversely affect website availability.
Potential outdated data: Aggressive caching can occasionally result in CDNs serving outdated content to users.

Reaching the Finish Line: Why Every Second Counts

The speed of an eCommerce site isn’t just about numbers on a test report. It directly impacts the user experience, conversion rates, SEO rankings, and ultimately, the bottom line.

With mobile commerce on the rise, optimizing for speed is imperative. By implementing the tactics from this guide, eCommerce businesses can ensure they’re not just keeping pace in the digital race but leading the pack.

How can AI potentially transform your eCommerce business?

Applications of AI in driving eCommerce growth

The ultimate eCommerce tech stack to invest in

Brands setting the bar high with their AI-backed growth strategies

Optimized Dynamic Pricing: Amazon

Smarter Inventory Management: Walmart

Streamlined Supply Chain: Carrefour

Shopping Assistance with Cognitive Computing: North Face

Immersive Virtual Try-On Experiences: Sephora

Redefined Real-Time Support with Chatbots: Whole Foods

Improved Demand Forecasting: Ikea

Reinventing Community Marketing: Casper

Enhanced Predictive Analytics: H&M

Personalized Geo-Targeting: Skandium

Are You Ready to Jump on the AI Bandwagon?

DevOps and Customer Experience: What’s the Connection?

The Power of Shifting Left as Decoded by Jared Poole

AI: The eCommerce Trend of the Year

It’s Time to Take a Step Back from Analytics

But First, What is Website Monitoring?

Types of Website Monitoring

Synthetic monitoring

Performance Monitoring

Transaction Monitoring

Availability Monitoring

Real User Monitoring

Website Monitoring Best Practices

Analyze Historical Website Performance Data

Don’t Trust Averages; Segment Data Before Studying Patterns

Set Up Real-Time Website Monitoring Alerts to Get Notified Instantly

Invest in Both - Synthetic Monitoring and Real User Monitoring

Regularly and Proactively Analyze Monitoring Data

Website Monitoring Tools Worth Investing in for Your eCommerce Store

Noibu - A Robust Website Monitoring Tool That Helps Recover Lost Revenue

Datadog

Uptrends

Hotjar

Google Analytics

Making The Transition From Online to Brick-and-Mortar

Achieving Eight Figures Revenue in Just Three Years

Managing Moving Parts: How Hobbiesville Does it Efficiently

Quality Customer Experience: The Foundation of Hobbiesville’s Growth Strategy

Decoding Website Conversion Rate

Why Does Website Loading Speed Affect Conversion Rates?

User expectations and patience

Increase in bounce rates

First impressions matter

Overall user experience

​​Site Speed's Impact on Search Rankings and Brand Visibility

Historical emphasis on speed

Metrics and correlations

Empirical evidence

Progressive Web Apps

Beyond rankings

Advanced Optimizations to Create Seamless User Journeys That Convert Better

Understanding Audience Needs

Mobile-first Design

Feedback Loops

Dive Deep into Analytics

Usability Testing

A/B Testing and Feedback

Integrate AI with Social Media

Final Thoughts

What Is Website Speed Optimization?

Why Is eCommerce Site Speed Important?

User Experience and Engagement

Search Engine Rankings

Conversion Rates

Common Factors That Affect eCommerce Site Speed

Large Media Files

Excessive HTTP Requests

Inefficient Code

Server Performance

How To Run A Website Speed Test?

Optimizing Speed For Both Desktop and Mobile

ROI vs. eCommerce Site Speed

Final Thoughts

But First, What Are Third-Party Elements?

Performance Problems with Third-Party Content

Bulky code

Site Speed's Impact on Search Rankings and Brand Visibility