As realms of business go, eCommerce is one of the fastest – and is populated by some very impatient people. You can have the greatest product in the world, but it won’t matter one bit if your pages load so slowly that interested parties leave, searching for faster waters. And as the speed of  the internet continues to increase, the patience of online shoppers will continue to decrease, leaving the savvy eCommerce owner no choice but to make sure his sleek, well designed website loads fast.

Thankfully, this isn’t as hard as one might think. Thanks to the proliferation of programs that let you build your own website without knowing code, many eBusiness owners are building websites that may look nice, but load slowly. All it takes is a businessperson with the willingness to spend some time familiarizing themselves with the basics of website performance to optimize their site and make it load faster than those competitors relying on computers to put their sites code together. And so, since you are one of those willing business owners, lets talk about -

Things to remember when making your website faster:

• Simplify, simplify
• Learn the Technology, and keep up with it
• Appearances count

Keeping It Simple.

It is an unassailable fact that websites take time to load, especially the first time someone visits it, before it has been cached in their system. And since some security-concerned consumers won’t even cache their websites, it make sense for an eBusiness owner to be sure their website loads fast, while still getting all the necessary information into their front end. While there are many ways to optimize your website, one of the simplest ways any owner can make their site load faster is to make sure that your page is simple, but effective.

I know you’ve spent a lot of time designing that alluring front end – after all, we already discussed the importance of User Experience, but a good business owner should remember that its easy to clutter up the storefront windows with too much stuff. If consumers have to wait to window shop, it won’t matter how nice the experience is. If you find your website is loading too slowly, consider cutting some big images, or just combining several image requests into one big image. Or, even better, remember to keep it simple when you design the user experience itself.

Keeping Up With Technology

“Once you’ve been coding for a while, you begin to take something for granted.”

-Jeffrey Way

Sadly, even those of us who don’t mind mucking about in coding can find ourselves falling prey to a much more difficult problem than keeping it simple. We can slip into patterns and habits that mean we lose track of how the world is moving around us, and therefore fall behind. This complacency can be costly in the world of technology, and even if you’re a small business owner who has hired someone to do your coding for you, it makes sense for you to know the technology, just to make sure your website is as fast as it could be. After all, there’s no guarantee that this business will be as important to your webmaster as it is to you, so you should make sure that you have a practical knowledge of things like HTML5 and CSS scripts (or even useful add ons), even if it isn’t a working knowledge, so that when you ask your webmaster why the page is loading slowly, your eyes won’t glaze over under an assault of technobabble. Knowledge is power, and while learning code may be too much to pile upon your other responsibilities, you should know when there are better ways to make nice windows for your storefront, since better windows give a better view of your product, which is what you want, right?

Keeping Up Appearances

And speaking of windows, there’s an important fact to remember about the internet – one that can’t be stressed enough. Appearances matter, and a page that looks like it’s loading faster can sometimes be every bit as effective as one that actually does load quickly. Clean windows are as good as really advanced windows when properly presented, and a consumer that feels like the site has improved will feel catered to. It shows them that you really care, which is good for business/consumer relations. So remember, if you really can’t part with your new, hard won UX design, a little reorganization of the HTML can make it appear to load faster without cutting anything. And be careful using automated webpage designers, as they rarely use efficient code.

All in all, it’s important to remember that, as a small business owner, your website is your responsibility. Having one that loads fast reflects well on you. Whether you code it yourself, hire a webmaster, or use an off the shelf program, you should know enough about emerging trends to keep up with the technology. Knowledge is power and will keep you from falling behind, getting fooled, or just having a slow website (no matter how well designed). So make sure to keep the windows clean, sweep the floors, and we’ll see you next time!