Constant access to information and information overload causes us to quickly skim sites for info that’s desired and relevant. Stop and think for a second what your personal browsing habits are and where you fall on the impatience scale. Generally, a multitude of tabs are simultaneously open and tabs get closed abruptly if a page is slow loading or irrelevant in content.
For e-commerce sites, it’s the same and quick page loading is even more important. You’d browse products the same way as for any other info. You’d have an idea what you want or need and make some research for options. Once you’ve decided on a selection of products you are set on a goal - to gain possession of them. The final step standing between wanting and owning is completing your order.
Performance is User Experience. Conversion Rate Equals Revenue
This is where speed comes in as a major factor. A person gets frustrated if anything is holding them back from getting what they want and that includes completing their order. So commonly a slow loading site and checkout process are a major part of that frustration, in addition to any bugs or general UX blunders that also reduce trust. What’s more, this frustration stays with them.
Some sobering statistics on page load speeds:
- 0.1 seconds is when a user feels the web site is responding to their actions and displaying results instantaneously.
- At 1.0 second the user will notice a delay, although their thoughts remain uninterrupted.
- 10 seconds is the limit for keeping a user’s attention – in other words, the general point when a site is abandoned.
Some more statistics on speed and conversion rates:
- Conversion rates are reduced by 7% with every 1-second delay in page response.
- 79% of users who are disappointed with the performance of the site and are likely not to return
- Reducing load times from 8 to 2 seconds results in a 74% increase in conversions.
It comes very clear how your slow site results in decreased revenue, increased costs and damaged brand reputation.
A good benchmark tolerable to users is 2 seconds or less, but anything above that hurts revenue. If a customer is short on time they have an even lower tolerability. And on mobile devices users expect sites to load even faster! You will gain a great advantage over competitors if your site loads quickly, as the average site load time in 2016 is 5 seconds.
Increasing page load speed the hard way
The usual approach to increasing site speed is first ramping up the server in addition to complicated server infrastructures with load-balancers and separate instances for back and frontend are used for bigger projects. But the most substantial effect is achieved with Varnish Turpentine and heavy caching...This will cost big bucks.
What’s caching in layman terms?
What’s 804132 by 6382? To get the answer you first have to calculate but the second time you already know it equals 126. An example you’d come across daily is as instantly recalling 2x4 equals 8.
Achieving page load speed the easy way - SPA’s (single page applications)
SPA or a single page application is a web application that’s served as a single web page. All necessary code is loaded with a single page load or resources are dynamically loaded in response to specific user interactions when necessary.
SPA gives a similar user experience as using a desktop application. Facebook, Gmail and Google Maps are single page applications that you probably use daily.
The biggest advantage of using a SPA is the substantial increase in speed when browsing a site. As the page is never reloaded achieving that 1 second load time is suddenly tangible.
Magento store as a single page application
As Magento back-end and front-end is the same unit it makes big Magento projects slow. Daily admin work, catalogue size and order volumes all affect front-end speed. However, when you implement Magento frontend as a SPA it’s served as a completely separate page from Magento. Anything happening in the database will not affect front-end speed nearly as much as with a regular Magento setup.
When you visit a specific URL of any standard solution website, then caching loads elements only for that single page, not for the whole site. So If you loose internet connection and try and navigate to a different page the new page won’t load.
What’s exciting is that with our Magento 2.x SPA solution you can continue browsing the site even if internet connection is lost (normally SPA's don't allow this!). And not to make it too out of this world, then obviously you have to have visited the site before and not cleared browser cache. What’s more, it’s theoretically possible to develop further functionality to place orders while browsing offline!
Why wait while you lose revenue?
The best time to implement a SPA is in the very beginning of building a new store on Magento 2 or migrating from M1 to M2. And with the 1-second page load, you’ll have peace of mind about the 79% of users who would otherwise flee if your site is lagging.
With two Magento 2.x single page application projects already under our belt, we have the process nailed down. Contact us for a quote to get your page loading times under 2 second, to enjoy increased conversions and a big revenue boost.
