Business owners often press the panic button when conversions start running below the industry average given their site traffic. After digging a little deeper, they often realise that their low conversions stem from slow page-load times and the resulting page abandonment. When it comes to user attrition in the conversion funnel, this is an all too common problem for ecommerce businesses. Slow page loading not only affects customer loyalty and sales, but can also be detrimental in search engine rankings; with load times being a key metric used by Google and other search engines in their algorithms.

A study conducted by gomez.com and akamai.com found that 40% of users abandon a website if they have to wait more than 3 seconds for a page to load. Moreover, 52% of respondents stated that quick load times are crucial in their loyalty for a particular site. These outcomes point to the critical value of optimized page loading times and the impact it can have on your bottom line.

When a Convert Digital client has a website suffering from a speed stutter the solution usually starts and ends with a Full Page Cache (FPC) implementation. If a site is not fully optimized with Full Page Caching, Magento must read all configuration files to uncover the blocks that need to be displayed before generating each one. This process takes time. By installing a Full Page Cache extension, pages are stored and ready to serve up immediately to site users, saving up to 1-3 seconds on each page request. An FPC extension can also automatically refresh the page cache when content gets modified to ensure dynamic pages remain up-to-date. This simple, low cost solution has enabled many Convert Digital clients to halve their page load times and increase conversions by as much as 1.5% in the process.

Benefits of FPC extension include:

Ease and low cost of implementation

Improved SEO

Potential to improve user conversion rates

Potential to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty

FPC’s affordability and ease of implementation puts the power of caching in the hands of all merchants, not just the large players. If your site has a need for speed then look no further.