BigCommerce Speed Optimization: How To Do It?

Introduction

A speedy website is crucial for a good user experience in online shopping. Slow websites can frustrate visitors, making them leave and find faster options. This blog will explore essential BigCommerce site speed optimization techniques to make your BigCommerce website faster.

From optimizing images to using caching plugins and adopting responsive design, we’ll discuss practical strategies to ensure your online store performs at its best, providing a smooth and efficient browsing experience for your customers.

Tricks To Fix BigCommerce Site Speed Issues

Certainly explore these techniques to speed up your BigCommerce store.

Optimize Images

Enhance your website by optimizing its images, a crucial aspect of any online store. We all know that images play a vital role, large, high-resolution ones may slow down your site, especially on mobile devices, leading potential customers to exit prematurely. To address this issue, optimize your images for web usage. This involves reducing file sizes and compressing images without compromising quality. Tools like TinyPNG offer online compression, while plugins like ShortPixel Image Optimizer automatically compress images upon uploading to your website. By taking these steps, you ensure faster load times, keep visitors engaged, and improve overall user experience on your eCommerce platform.

Utilize Caching Plugin

Boost your website’s speed by using a caching plugin. Imagine your website storing a ready-to-go copy of its pages, so when a user asks for them, it serves that pre-made copy instead of creating the page from scratch each time. This clever trick speeds up your website because the server doesn’t have to start from zero every time someone requests a page. BigCommerce comes with built-in caching features, and plugins can take it up a notch. These plugins not only cache your pages faster but also lighten the load on your server, giving your website a speedy boost for a better user experience.

Optimize Device for Everything

Ensure your online store caters to various devices and search engines. Nowadays, people access the internet through different gadgets like iPads, mobiles, and smart home assistants like Amazon Alexa or Google Home. It’s crucial to tailor your website for these diverse platforms to avoid a bad user experience, low search engine rankings, and revenue loss. To make your site mobile-friendly, adopt a responsive design that automatically adjusts to different screen sizes. Additionally, optimize by using smaller images, minimizing page elements, and using a caching plugin to enhance mobile website speed. This strategy helps improve overall user satisfaction and boosts your online presence. Also, it benefits in BigCommerce conversion optimization.

Optimize Shopify Store Theme

Crafting an attractive online store on Shopify involves a crucial decision – picking the right theme. Many store owners make the common mistake of choosing visually stunning but heavy themes, causing slow loading on mobile devices. It’s essential to prioritize themes that balance aesthetics and functionality for an enjoyable user experience. Opting for lightweight, fast, and simple mobile-friendly themes is the solution. These themes ensure quick loading across all devices, improving the overall responsiveness of your Shopify store. A mobile-optimized theme not only serves mobile shoppers but also aligns with search engine preferences, enhancing your store’s visibility.

Apps and Integration

In Shopify’s app store, there are lots of tools for your online store. But be careful not to add too many, as it can make your website slow. These apps promise cool features, but too many can slow down your site. To avoid this, pick apps that match your business needs. Choose the important ones and regularly check and remove any extras to keep your website running well. It’s not about having lots of apps; it’s about choosing the right ones. With a smart approach, Shopify store owners can make the most of the app store without making their site slow. It is crucial for BigCommerce site speed optimization and better performance.

Minimize HTTP Requests

To make your website load faster, it’s essential to reduce HTTP requests, which happen when someone visits your site. Each request takes time to process, so fewer requests mean quicker loading. Simplify your website by minimizing the count of elements like images, scripts, and plugins on each page. Combine CSS and JavaScript files into one to decrease HTTP requests further. Online tools like Bigcommerce’s Stencil Optimizer can help you to minimize requests. By implementing these steps, you enhance user experience with faster load times and smoother browsing.

Use Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A content delivery network (CDN) is like a team of servers placed in different areas that team up to quickly give people the stuff they want from a website. It’s like having helpers all over the place to make sure your website loads fast and works well for everyone. Bigcommerce, a website tool, has its own built-in CDN named Akamai. When you use it, your website becomes faster because Akamai spreads your website’s stuff to servers close to the people looking at it. You can easily turn on Akamai from your Bigcommerce dashboard, and it will make sure your website runs smoother for your visitors. It will increase your BigCommerce website loading speed.

Enable Browser Caching

Activate browser caching to enhance your website’s speed. Browser caching is a smart method that saves your website’s files on a user’s computer. This way, when the user revisits your site, these files don’t need to be re-downloaded, reducing the load times. This not only boosts your website’s performance but also reduces the number of requests it makes, improving overall performance. To enable browser caching, you can insert a simple code snippet into your website. Alternatively, platforms like Bigcommerce offer a convenient built-in feature called Stencil Caching that simplifies the process and further contributes to BigCommerce site speed optimization.

Utilize Preloading

Boost your BigCommerce website’s speed by using “preloading.” When your store sends a preload request to the browser, it helps load crucial elements faster, like the homepage’s navigation and hero image. Preloading organizes requests, ensuring key elements display smoothly as visitors explore your site.

To make your BigCommerce page faster, simplify by avoiding too many things at once. Also, speed it up by removing scripts that slow things down. Find them using CTRL+Shift+Refresh, then load resources in a way that doesn’t block other things. Put elements directly into the page so they’re not affected by these slowing scripts. These simple changes make sure your site is smooth and quick for users.

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Use Automatic Redirects

Make your BigCommerce site faster with automatic redirects, an important part of optimization. These redirects stop visitors from seeing error pages because of old or wrong website addresses. To set them up, go to server settings, choose “Add redirects” under “301 redirects,” and match the old URL with the new one. BigCommerce has manual and dynamic redirects. Manual ones need updates, while dynamic ones adjust to changes. Also, remove third-party stuff, like excessive Javascript or unoptimized pictures, to speed up loading.

Website Information Optimization

Effective content is vital for boosting sales, but unnecessary information can slow down your website. With BigCommerce, you have control over your store’s layout, ensuring optimal product display, with four products per page being optimal. Keep categories and subcategories clear for easy browsing. A skilled BigCommerce web designer or developer can enhance navigation. Regarding Google Tags, using both old and new tags can complicate Google Analytics, consuming time. Remove outdated tags promptly and ensure the conversion tracking code aligns with the tagging system for smoother operations. This technique will enhance website speed and overall user experience.

Conclusion

Therefore, in this blog, we have explained the basics of speed optimization and BigCommerce. By following the abovementioned BigCommerce site speed optimization techniques, you can enhance the loading speed of your site. Also, for improvement in the loading time, utilize page speed optimization tools like Website Speedy, a SaaS-based tool that increases your store loading speed by fixing all the speed-related issues. Website Speedy does render blocking and optimizes the BigCommerce site performance for enhanced results and efficiency.