Factors Increasing Your E-Commerce Site’s Load Time

Over the past few years, the web has gotten faster, partly because more people have broadband Internet now, and partly because users’ expectations of how websites should perform have grown.

Here are some things that could be slowing down your e-commerce site:

A Limited-Capability CMS

First, it’s important to understand that some content management systems (CMS’s) were built for general web publishing purposes, while others were designed especially for e-commerce.

Hence, some content management systems may not be flexible enough for an e-commerce site (that is, not flexible enough to allow you to do the tweaks I’m going to tell you about), or they might perform poorly during traffic peaks.

A Mediocre Web Host

Running an e-commerce site often means getting uncontrollable web traffic spikes, hosting large volumes of data, adding multi-media content, etc.
So, the web host you choose needs to be:

• Reliable (good uptime, high-performing servers, etc.)
• Flexible (lets you configure things the way you like)

One more thing to consider is that it’s best to get a dedicated IP address for your account. As per GoDaddy, a dedicated IP could “ensure faster response during periods of high traffic load.” (If your site uses an SSL certificate, this means there already is a dedicated IP allocated for you, since it’s required to establish an SSL connection.)

A Large Number of DNS Lookups

Another thing that can affect the speed of your site is the number of DNS (domain name system) lookups it takes to load it.
Before a browser can load a page, it has to find out which IP address corresponds to the “pretty” domain name people normally use to locate it (for example, Apple.com). For that, the browser consults a DNS server (that is, it performs a DNS lookup). It looks like this:
The “pretty” domain name: Apple.com.
Its corresponding IP address (that the browser needs): 17.149.160.49.
Ideally, it should take only one DNS lookup (which is 20-120 milliseconds long on average) to load a page. But what if your page has embedded YouTube videos, a Twitter feed, and other content that has to be obtained from external resources?

This increases the number of DNS lookups required, which in turn, slows down your site.
More importantly, for important webpages (like landing pages, your home page, or checkout) – be sure to minimize external resources.

Too Many HTTP Requests

A site, essentially, is a collection of data files. Now, imagine that a separate HTTP request is required each time the browser needs to fetch a file from your server. If the browser continues to get your site’s files in this manner, the site will take a long time to load.




Courtesy:  https://blog.kissmetrics.com/ecommerce-load-time-hazards/




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