The speed of a website is an essential key to improve the customer’s experience and to boost conversion rates. Web giants have understood this for a long time now and they worship performance. Google is one example whose characteristically bare homepage allows an incredible speed. Amazon is also a king in terms of speed, this e-commerce giant has gauged that it generates an additional 1% in revenue each time that its speed increases by 100ms! Speed is therefore key. But then, how can it be improved on the scale of a Magento site?
An e-commerce site has become a complex machinery
We all know it. Today, an e-commerce site is a big factory. Whether you offer hundreds or thousands of products for sale, there are many technical layers that overlap and interrelate. To complicate the whole thing, it is not one team but rather many technical and marketing teams that work on the site (web, system, network, brand).
The performance of the site is linked to the operation of the entire technical chain since each element is very interwoven with the others. We can thus schematize it as a huge machine:
If a slowdown appears on the site, where should you look? Which part of the machinery is jammed? Is it a server problem? Is it a problem with Magento? Is it the source code developed by my agency? Is it my database?
A partial view of this machinery does not allow understanding the slowdowns or the differences in performance.
Performance Intelligence
So, how can you quickly identify issues? There is a method called Performance Intelligence. This is the method that was used in the conception of Quanta, the Performance Intelligence tool SaaS is devoted to optimizing Magento platforms.
What is the approach? The approach is to regroup the performance indicators of each cogwheel on the technical chain. By having a comprehensive view, you can correlate, analyze and finally optimize effectively the performance of a site.
So how much do you gain in the end?
The effects of improved speed on conversion
Google and Amazon are not the only companies to have noticed these effects. Today Quanta Computing along with 250 Magento sites in France, may of these are top 40s, have measured effects on conversion rates that revolve around the same ratio of 100ms = 1% conversion rate, identified by Amazon!
Lets consider three examples of Magento e-commerce sites that use the Quanta solution to improve their pages’ loading time, and let’s look at the impact on sales:
- For Blanc Cerise, an online retailing site that specializes in linen, a gain of 2 seconds in loading speed translated into an increase of 27% in conversion;
- For Octant Design, which offers furniture design and interior decoration products, 1.2 seconds gained and an increase in conversion of 15% was observed;
- For ETAM, a lingerie and ready-to-wear retailer, 700ms gained allowed increasing the conversion by 20%.
Optimized speed causes a chain reaction: The number of page views per session increases because the navigation is more comfortable. Visitors appreciate this comfort and spend more time on average on the site. They see more products, interact, and ultimately, they transform more.