[Podcast] The Elephant in the Room: Site Speed

Audio file

episode 6 - site speed.mp3

Transcript

Hello and welcome to ecom stand up with Daria and Bel.

Happy Friday.

Hi everyone.

Are you drinking anything today, blonde or?

I am.

Face value the coffee.

I am. I'm drinking a caramel. I don't know how you say in America we call it a caramel macchiato.

Oh fancy, you make that at home.

Yeah, yeah.

What sort of like coffee machine do you have at home that looks?

Serious so we just like wizard up, whisk it up and froth the milk and output caramel syrup. Of course you know we have the best coffee in the world.

Do you? Is Brazil known for like the best coffee?

Absolutely, really well.

No, that I mean, I thought like Colombia had like the best coffee.

Oh, Brazilian coffee is phenomenal, phenomenal. I mean, I guess there are producers everywhere around the world, you know.

Wow, OK, good for now.

Yeah, that's fair.

Anyway, happy Friday. I'm just drinking water. I'm being really boring today. I had quite a few glasses of wine the past two nights, so I'm taking it easy on Friday.

Uhm, but today I'm pretty excited about today's episode. We are tackling. Probably the most talked about thing in ecommerce or or on.

In websites today and that is site speed and I think you know, Belinda and I might even disagree a little bit on this episode, but I think the main things we kind of want to cover are, you know what is site speed? Why is everybody so obsessed with it? Where did the kind of?

Need for sitespeed come from like where did the obsession come from and you know drill down into into our thoughts and also look into some really large brands.

See maybe run a couple of speed tests and see how these directing summer brands perform and see what all the.

Fuss is about.

There's no doubt that your site needs to be as fast as possible, right? But I was actually looking at some research done by Radware recently that actually shows the top 500 American retail stores are actually 16% slower than they were a year ago.

OK, interesting.

Wow, so and the average ecom sites load time has actually increased from about 7 1/2 seconds to nearly nine seconds so.

So we're getting information from from Google from all of the optimizers out there hammering site speed, site speed, site speed.

We also have this little widget on Shopify Dashboard which says you know your site has a score of I don't know like nine or two or 15 or something and we have clients.

You know, saying Shopify says I have a low, I mean a, you know a low score on my site speed what's what's going on?

How can we make it faster and I just don't?

Believe that it's.

A A question of.

Necessarily making it faster and B that it needs to be faster. And on that we agree, but I I think there are some.

Some things that users can do. Overall it is a hot topic though.

At the moment, right?

Yeah it is, and I think there's also a lot of.

You know, I don't know if it's speculation or what it is, but so Google I don't even know when Google Pagespeed.

Became popular, but recently I think in 2021 or maybe late 2020. Shopify released their widget which is really just Google Pagespeed but they put it right there on the theme page where like your site speed and you can click into it and see if you're performing on average, slower or faster than than stories in similar industries. So I think.

That what that is? What kind of drew up a lot of this conversation, and I think there's a couple of questions right?

When does you know how much does site speed actually affect conversion? And that is a very difficult question to answer overall because.

You know the variables are not one to one, right? If you test store a that has a speed of 90 and store B that has a speed of 10, how many different variables are there that you're testing right?

You'd need a one to one test in order to know, without a doubt, right? Am I wrong there?

No, yeah no, absolutely right. That absolutely right.

So it's hard to say right if you.

Take, you know.

What's a big brand? All birds right and I don't know what their site speed is. Maybe we'll look it up later, but it's it's very difficult to know if all birds like maybe Zappos, has a higher score than all birds, but it's not the same product, even though it's the same category of products. So it's really, really really hard to know the exact effect that side speed has.

Obviously you know and what we say to our clients. That is, you never want the site to appear broken.

It cannot take an aggressive amount of time, right? And that's when things like weird interactive elements that don't seem to function affect your site, and when?

And things like that affect your site, but if you're talking about you know 3 seconds to 1st content versus 2.5 seconds to 1st content.

Personally, I don't believe that that has a massive effect on your conversion rate. So what I do think has a massive effect on your conversion rate. Is what we always like to talk about. You know all those?

And we stopped it right there.

Extra whizbangs that tend to distract users and and make them frustrated and leave the page 'cause they don't know what to click on.

Right?

So I'm gonna stop you right there. And this is what I I think our listeners don't understand.

Uhm, So what they're doing is OK, so like all birds has a score of 12 for mobile.

Desktop is oh geez. OK desktop is 40 so we're still in the red hate because it's zero to 49.

But the key is first contentful paint.

What does that mean? I mean, content fault isn't even isn't even a word, so that that's where people get confused.

So again, I don't mind how long the site takes to load as long as there is something there within 2 1/2 to 3 seconds, right?

Yes, which is exactly.

What I was just saying in terms of.

The full page doesn't matter, but how long it takes for me to.

See, something does matter, right?

So for all birds it's one second.

That's great, OK, right?

But yet they still have an exceptionally low site speed score.

So this is where part of you know part of the audits that we do can really delve into that instead of scaring.

Entrepreneurs ecommerce site owners with this site. Speed hammer.

But let's face it, a lot of.

Optimizers and so called UX experts are just coming out and saying just like needs to be faster. Your site needs to be faster. It doesn't need to be faster, it needs to be organized and coded correctly, right?

Yeah, I think that's I think you make such a good point there and it's it's again. At this point it doesn't matter. Oh wow, this can't be right.

Sorry, I just tested Casper. Com to see what what the score was.

So Casper on Mobile has a score of 0.

There you go.

And on desktop has a score of 15 and I will say you know I think.

Kasper could there is maybe a little bit of room for improvement there first contentful.

Again, what is it's 3.6 seconds?

Make money.

Which is a little bit a little bit.

Slow and then on desktop it's 1.9.

Which is better? UM, so I do think there's kind of room for improvement there, but I think the point we're trying to make here is we're talking about some of the biggest brands out there. Some real disruptors in this space, Casper.

Has been copied how many Times Now in terms of their mattress model? Right all birds? I don't know how many times they've been copied, but I know I know Amazon tried to create a copy of their shoes so they could get in on some of those profits and both of the scores were under 20 on mobile, which is where most of their visitors are.

Uhm, so I think it's just it's it's important to get that that first load time up and I think under 3 seconds is reasonable. But this idea of scoring 100 on Google site speed I think is.

And an unrealistic obsession that people have been having, and I think it's a great way you know. Businesses have been created around it.

Business has been like oh I'll get your score up 10 points so I'll get your score to 100 and it's like well what effect and how much are you paying them to do that and what effect is that really having?

Yeah, versus working with, you know, an agency like ours and just getting you know, optimizing your other metrics and optimizing and organizing your site such that the people who are staying around and who aren't bouncing.

Are are staying and I think actually I just brought up bounce rate which I didn't even think I was going to talk about when we do our audits, we look at bounce rate. If your bounce rate is extraordinarily high.

80 percent, 75%. That may be a clue that you need to look at something like side speed.

I would say the two things that I would look out if bounce rate was really high are messaging between marketing. How people are getting onto the site, how people are finding out about the site messaging.

On the homepage in general, and then site speed, those would be the three things I would I would drill into if I had a significantly high bounce rate.

I would agree.

But I'm going to throw a spanner into the works now and say we don't always optimize.

Just to get a good score.

We're optimizing with the intent to impress Google to increase the rankings. OK, so yes, we want to have a speedy site for our customers. We also want them to check out.

But we also want to be adjudicated.

Bye bye Google.

And thought to be.

To be good.

Uh, or to you know, to improve the the kind of search engine rankings, but I want to make a point on that.

There are so many signals. OK, so there are there are a specific set of factors that Google judges as important in the overall user experience. Site speed is merely one of them.

OK, what are the other ones?

So well.

We can jump into it now, so.

And this this does relate to the kind of.

Largest contentful paint, which is not the same as first contentful paint. First input delay and cumulative layout shift. These are known as and again hot topic. At the moment everyone jumping on the bandwagon core web vitals.

Oh core web vitals. I feel like that's the buzziest buzzword now.

Right and and there there are actually three varies, but you don't have to pay to get them. You can run any of these reports. We use Semrush Mars, any of your standard SEO optimization kind of of.

Automated software are starting to bring in these core web vitals so they Google says these are the things they consider important.

Made up of three specific page speed and user interaction measurements, so it's your largest contentful. Paint your first input delay, which is kind of page speed and then this cumulative layout shift.

I'm impressed with how well you can say first contentful paint and largest contentful paint without like. It sounds normal when you say when I say it, it doesn't sound like words. I sound like an alien.

First, contentful paint content is it contentful contentful?

Right?

Or content I guess would be happy content contentful.

Contentful paint

Contentful it's not a good word. Google come on, you couldn't think of something better. They come up with this term or did it exist before them?

Right?

So well, they.

No, they came up with this I think. Basically think of LCP or your largest contentful paint as loading loading speed.

OK, what is the load speed to get the largest item to to load on the page and your first input delay is interactivity and then of course your cumulative layout shift and you kind of see this like you'll be swapping pages and it's sort of. It's almost like.

There's a glitch in the matrix, right? It kind of hangs a bit a little bit, and it's that swap.

Visual stability

Hmm OK.

Do you glitch?

And then of course there are other web vitals, right? Is it mobile friendly?

Well, what if you? What if you do glitch? What does that mean? What does that do?

Do I see glitches a lot? Like for example, probably the most common glitch I see is like a font.

Switch, it'll load like.

Basic Arial 1st and then it'll load your custom font. That's probably the most common thing that I see.

There you go. So if you can reduce that, perhaps not by having you know fancy fonts.

Well yeah, tell our clients that.

Then yeah, so that that all goes into your core web vitals and they change date.

It's not like you get a score and then you have to use that as a baseline to act against.

There are some things that we when you add something to a site your your call where vital score will go right up or kind of bump right down and then come up again. So other web vitals that Google considers important or is it mobile friendly?

Is it safe, right?

So this also with mobile friendly Google will actually send you emails if it detects that items are too close together on mobile.

So it does give you some tools to kind of help fix these problems, and it does ultimately want you to be. You know very mobile friendly. Yep I.

I think the most important thing to note about these, and of course reach out to us if you want us to run a core web vital test.

Again, mobile friendly is so important.

And that's that you can reach out to us at ecom standup at Dot NYC. Yep.

Yeah, it's your browser.

We'll put the notes and we'll put that in the episode notes.

Is is it safe? Do you have you know? Do you have SSL? Do you have an SSL certificate?

Uhm, simple things. And also something that we don't do.

Hardly any of our clients do, and it's something that I'd like to introduce in the coming weeks. It's connecting all of our client sites to their Google Search Console account.

We connect to Google Analytics but very seldom connect to search console and that's where we will be able to get on every single URL. We will be able to get.

On on mobile and desktop they are the three.

The coweb rifles.

OK, that's great and I think so there's one thing. So I just found a a quote that I've heard everywhere and it's a.

According to Google, which I think is funny that Google is kind of at the core of all of these things, it just leads me to believe there's some sort of conspiracy led by Google.

But it's like according to Google, who happens to run all of the web vitals and ranking and all of this. Uh, one second site speed improvement can increase mobile conversion by up to 20.

7%.

So that's what Google is saying. I hear this term thrown around all the time and I think one thing that's really, really, really important is that Google, like so. We talk about conversion rate in as it pertains to ecommerce, which means making a purchase.

Conversion rate across the board can mean a lot of different things, and there is different ways to convert with every different kind of website.

So Google for example in theory, depending on which page of theirs you're on, converting could be searching for something.

If you're on the New York Times, converting could be signing up. It could be subscribing, it could be staying on the New York Times and just reading more articles. I don't know exactly what.

They're set up to convert for, you know, for any number of websites, converting could be signing up, downloading something, et cetera, so I think it's really, really, really, really important when you're looking at this statistic from Google or one second site. Speed improvement can increase mobile conversion by up to 27.

Percent that you're thinking about the breadth of websites that Google is considering when it's saying the statistic and what converting means across the entire Internet, right there is.

Ecommerce conversion and then there is.

Converting anywhere else, signing up, et cetera. All the things I was just mentioning and ecommerce. I don't know what percent of the Internet it is, but it's not that much.

What if you actually wonder what percent of the Internet ecommerce sites are?

I'm gonna look at that Belinda. While you rip onto my comment.

I would agree.

And also OK, so corner vitals was actually released. You know, as an official.

That you know they announce it on Twitter and really what they're saying. Is that? OK, so it's it's one of about 200 factors.

That Google will be considering in terms of your page experience store.

But it will be an official Google ranking factor. I think maybe next year, maybe this year.

Uhm, but they you know they're giving you chance to improve.

So I I I would take it seriously, but I would exactly overlay it with what you're trying to.

To to achieve so to to fix things or not really, it's just what is the time from clicking on the link to seeing the content on screen.

If you've got widgets and video, and these are all mobile ranking factors, right? If you have these whizbangs that I absolutely loathe or.

Yeah for sure.

Yep, absolutely.

WAVY lines in between your sections that have had to be designed by a branding firm, and then you know hard coded into your site and they gotta wiggle when they walk.

It's going to slow down your largest content for paint.

Well, I think I want to talk about that really quickly, but before I want to, I want to jump back to my question before about what percentage of sites are on the Internet or ecommerce site so I don't have exact numbers.

It's hard to get that exactly, but what I did find is that it's estimated that there's 12 to 24 million.

Ecommerce sites on the Internet and then there is well over a billion websites total.

So I don't know what 12 million let's go in the middle, let's say 18 million / a billion.

What is that 18?

1,000,000 divided by.

A billion.

What is a billion?

It's ability, so it's one point 8% of the Internet is made up of ecommerce websites and then people are taking this statistic from Google of like Oh my God.

There you go.

That means my conversion rate for every second of site speed that I have. That means my conversion rate is 27% less, which is just like not what that means so, so just.

Take that, run with it whatever you want to think about it, I think, but I want to go back to what you were just saying about Whizbangs.

With third party scripts.

The other thing is.

Well, that's what I was going to say. We deal with this all the time. People say hey, I want my site faster.

OK, let's look at your apps like what actually, what actually contributes to making your site slow right? Sometimes we say Oh well, you're on a platform, you know there is only so fast that Shopify can make your site.

That's actually not the case, right? I've been reading about this a little bit. It's not natively Shopify that's causing the problem.

It is the apps that you have. It is the scripts that you're running, the pixels that you have integrated. I mean, we're doing a. Not to mention the fact that the majority of the majority.

Of clients don't even know what apps they use. I was looking at one of our clients today to set up some products.

They have three different meta field apps. I ask them if they know which one they're using. They don't. They have over 35 apps that are installed somewhere on their site that are affecting site speed.

Right?

Wraps your scripts. Lucky orange hot jar.

Facebook Pixel, Google Pixel advertising pixel. All of these things are affecting your site speed and then on top of that you have your image, images and videos that you were touching on before, right? So your images need to be perfectly optimized, which is very difficult to do across.

Website sizes, mobile devices etc. And then you have your video right, should you host it on Shopify? Should you host it on Vimeo?

What will be faster? Should you host it on YouTube like what is the optimal thing to do there and then?

I think the last thing is you know your whizbangs right? 'cause your whizbangs are always JavaScript and JavaScript.

Is inherently slow.

The fastest way to have a website.

Is to build something like.

Craigslist where it's black and white.

With text links and no images and no whizbangs read it isn't it won't read it even has more whizbangs now with its little like graffiti and awards and all of that.

But if you want to Foss site, you have to give up your whizbangs. If you want a fun interactive site like 'cause, that's the other question, right?

There is an element of some whizbangs that are good to have. You want a site to have to be creative.

You want it to be a good experience. You want people to be like, oh, this is really cool.

Right, so there's an element of what is too much and kind of just finding that that Goldilocks approach of like not being over the top but not being so bare and then sacrificing a little bit of site speed because you kind of have a little bit of.

Interaction on your site, I would say.

We again and perhaps designers are my bugbear or my my nemesis. I would say yes. OK, I'll give you. I'll give you 6 whizbangs but.

Do they have to load all at once?

And when you're designing for an ecommerce site, can you make it clear that they perhaps are lower down on the page?

Each right so we don't. We just I don't know how you feel about the kind of lazy loading, but a lot of designers don't take this into consideration.

That's a good point.

They're like, so everythings up there.

And I just want to.

Jump straight ahead because the second core web vital is this first input delay.

Google measures how long it takes, right?

For a user to interact with your page.

What if you just had an informational site and actually the conversion is just that at the end of five, like medium at the end of five minutes of reading reading you have a clap, so that's a super long first input delay.

It is.

And an example of this could be like clicking an item on a menu, or NAV subscribing or opening up an accordion on the page For more information so.

Very subjective.

But it is an indication.

That perhaps you know, I, I don't know. It's how users interact with your page now we look at that from a UX perspective anyway, because you want them to take that next step as fast as possible. Find something to something, get more information, and to cut.

So yeah, it's it's kind of.

I I just think that's extremely dumb.

Subjective, so yeah, minimize JavaScript right or defer it.

Remove those third party scripts.

And I don't know how to do this with Shopify so directly. If you can jump in here browser caching.

I don't know how how that would even.

Be achieved with.

With Shopify or if it would be another app that I had.

To see you.

What do you mean specifically well?

You know you get some services I know particularly not necessarily ecommerce sites. But in like WordPress.

Where it kind of caches the browser for the user, so it's just serving up the content you know, as it's basically serving up a cached version of off the page so it loads super fast and then it kind of settles into itself.

Check it.

I don't think Shopify does that and I think.

You know, I? I mean, maybe it does, because there are times, at least when we're testing that we need to test in a private window because it's cashed or it's not working. But I don't know if that's the same thing that you're talking about.

Yeah, I think it is.

I would also encourage people to set attribute dimensions for media.

Yeah, so your browser then knows exactly how much space that that video is going to be taking up on the page, so it won't change as the page loads. It won't continue, and that's when you don't have that glitching, right?

When it kind of goes big and then small.

Uhm, as it seeks so.

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, I think in general I think in general right, we're looking at the balance between having the features you want and having the features that are going to get people to convert versus having you know, 'cause. I think if everybody optimized.

For speed, the Internet would be a very boring place unfortunately, and I think that the fact that we're not always considering speed and that we are often.

Considering the experience of the customer and the unique experience is why we have such a fun Internet, and I think ultimately what's most important is that you kind of find that balance.

You can't have a broken site like we've said. You cannot have something where it takes 5 seconds 10 seconds.

For the first thing to load, you cannot make it a laborious process laborious.

Is that right? You can't make it a laborious process for your customer, but I think there are reasonable levels and I think you know if we go back to what we looked at before only one point. 8% of websites are ecommerce sites and you know when Google released its conversion rate thing. I don't know if it was considering like.

I haven't seen.

Data or anything specific about how site speed affects ecommerce conversion rate? I think that's something that we need to look into a little bit more and find, but I think ultimately just to wrap up, it's about the balance. It's about.

Making sure you still have a good experience but not making it so crazy that it's hard to use. I think ultimately usability is more important than sites.

If your site is usable, if your site is is generally converting and if the information is easy to find, it is a pleasant experience.

You will have people converting those are those are my two cents and I think kind of fighting this battle of trying to get to 100 on site speed is personally a.

A fruitless

Is that right fruitless? Can't be the right word.

May be fruitless.

Fitness fitness.

I was like fruit fall fruitless.

I'm just thinking.

What is your kind of last thoughts?

Uhm, check your links.

I know it sounds crazy. Do all of the above get dead in an expert to check your core web vitals?

Actually check your core work vitals yourself. You can go to there's a Chrome extension called Lighthouse and that's what powers all of the core web vitals that you see on on platforms like semrush.

So it's free, but then fix fix those you know, fix your what's the first load, but also check your links.

You know, every time Google crawls your site, right?

And tries to access a link.

That is broken. It's still requiring an HTTP request. Google still trying to go there, it's just that's a waste of your page load time.

So if you have links to press articles that are no longer working, or they're serving up 40 fours or even internal links that are broken, just fix.

Something as small as that.

And then and then start from there.

Awesome, well I think that's all the time that we have for today. So thank you everybody for listening and we will chat soon.

Audio file

episode 6 - site speed.mp3

Transcript

Daria Rose

Hello and welcome to ecom stand up with Dorian Bell.

Daria Rose

Happy Friday.

Belinda Anderton

Hi everyone.

Daria Rose

Are you drinking anything today, blonde or?

I am.

Daria Rose

Face value the coffee.

Belinda Anderton

I am. I'm drinking a caramel. I don't know how you say in America we call it a caramel macchiato.

Daria Rose

Oh fancy, you make that at home.

Belinda Anderton

Yeah, yeah.

Daria Rose

What sort of like coffee machine do you have at home that looks?

Belinda Anderton

Serious so we just like wizard up, whisk it up and froth the milk and output caramel syrup. Of course you know we have the best coffee in the world.

Daria Rose

Do you? Is Brazil known for like the best coffee?

Belinda Anderton

Absolutely, really well.

Daria Rose

No, that I mean, I thought like Colombia had like the best coffee.

Belinda Anderton

Oh, Brazilian coffee is phenomenal, phenomenal. I mean, I guess there are producers everywhere around the world, you know.

Daria Rose

Wow, OK, good for now.

Daria Rose

Yeah, that's fair.

Daria Rose

Anyway, happy Friday. I'm just drinking water. I'm being really boring today. I had quite a few glasses of wine the past two nights, so I'm taking it easy on Friday.

Daria Rose

Uhm, but today I'm pretty excited about today's episode. We are tackling. Probably the most talked about thing in ecommerce or or on.

Daria Rose

Need for sitespeed come from like where did the obsession come from and you know drill down into into our thoughts and also look into some really large brands.

Daria Rose

See maybe run a couple of speed tests and see how these directing summer brands perform and see what all the.

Daria Rose

Fuss is about.

Belinda Anderton

Daria Rose

OK, interesting.

Belinda Anderton

Wow, so and the average ecom sites load time has actually increased from about 7 1/2 seconds to nearly nine seconds so.

Belinda Anderton

So we're getting information from from Google from all of the optimizers out there hammering site speed, site speed, site speed.

Belinda Anderton

We also have this little widget on Shopify Dashboard which says you know your site has a score of I don't know like nine or two or 15 or something and we have clients.

Belinda Anderton

You know, saying Shopify says I have a low, I mean a, you know a low score on my site speed what's what's going on?

Belinda Anderton

How can we make it faster and I just don't?

Belinda Anderton

Believe that it's.

Belinda Anderton

A A question of.

Belinda Anderton

Necessarily making it faster and B that it needs to be faster. And on that we agree, but I I think there are some.

Belinda Anderton

Some things that users can do. Overall it is a hot topic though.

Belinda Anderton

At the moment, right?

Daria Rose

Yeah it is, and I think there's also a lot of.

Daria Rose

You know, I don't know if it's speculation or what it is, but so Google I don't even know when Google Pagespeed.

Daria Rose

That what that is? What kind of drew up a lot of this conversation, and I think there's a couple of questions right?

Daria Rose

When does you know how much does site speed actually affect conversion? And that is a very difficult question to answer overall because.

Daria Rose

You know the variables are not one to one, right? If you test store a that has a speed of 90 and store B that has a speed of 10, how many different variables are there that you're testing right?

Daria Rose

You'd need a one to one test in order to know, without a doubt, right? Am I wrong there?

Belinda Anderton

No, yeah no, absolutely right. That absolutely right.

Daria Rose

So it's hard to say right if you.

Daria Rose

Take, you know.

Daria Rose

Obviously you know and what we say to our clients. That is, you never want the site to appear broken.

Daria Rose

It cannot take an aggressive amount of time, right? And that's when things like weird interactive elements that don't seem to function affect your site, and when?

Daria Rose

And things like that affect your site, but if you're talking about you know 3 seconds to 1st content versus 2.5 seconds to 1st content.

Daria Rose

Belinda Anderton

And we stopped it right there.

Daria Rose

Extra whizbangs that tend to distract users and and make them frustrated and leave the page 'cause they don't know what to click on.

Right?

Belinda Anderton

So I'm gonna stop you right there. And this is what I I think our listeners don't understand.

Belinda Anderton

Uhm, So what they're doing is OK, so like all birds has a score of 12 for mobile.

Belinda Anderton

Desktop is oh geez. OK desktop is 40 so we're still in the red hate because it's zero to 49.

Daria Rose

Belinda Anderton

But the key is first contentful paint.

Belinda Anderton

What does that mean? I mean, content fault isn't even isn't even a word, so that that's where people get confused.

Belinda Anderton

So again, I don't mind how long the site takes to load as long as there is something there within 2 1/2 to 3 seconds, right?

Daria Rose

Yes, which is exactly.

Daria Rose

What I was just saying in terms of.

Daria Rose

The full page doesn't matter, but how long it takes for me to.

Daria Rose

See, something does matter, right?

Belinda Anderton

So for all birds it's one second.

Daria Rose

That's great, OK, right?

Belinda Anderton

But yet they still have an exceptionally low site speed score.

Belinda Anderton

So this is where part of you know part of the audits that we do can really delve into that instead of scaring.

Belinda Anderton

Entrepreneurs ecommerce site owners with this site. Speed hammer.

Belinda Anderton

But let's face it, a lot of.

Belinda Anderton

Daria Rose

Yeah, I think that's I think you make such a good point there and it's it's again. At this point it doesn't matter. Oh wow, this can't be right.

Daria Rose

Sorry, I just tested Casper. Com to see what what the score was.

Daria Rose

So Casper on Mobile has a score of 0.

Belinda Anderton

There you go.

Daria Rose

And on desktop has a score of 15 and I will say you know I think.

Daria Rose

Kasper could there is maybe a little bit of room for improvement there first contentful.

Daria Rose

Again, what is it's 3.6 seconds?

Make money.

Daria Rose

Which is a little bit a little bit.

Daria Rose

Slow and then on desktop it's 1.9.

Daria Rose

Uhm, so I think it's just it's it's important to get that that first load time up and I think under 3 seconds is reasonable. But this idea of scoring 100 on Google site speed I think is.

Daria Rose

And an unrealistic obsession that people have been having, and I think it's a great way you know. Businesses have been created around it.

Daria Rose

80 percent, 75%. That may be a clue that you need to look at something like side speed.

Daria Rose

On the homepage in general, and then site speed, those would be the three things I would I would drill into if I had a significantly high bounce rate.

Belinda Anderton

I would agree.

Belinda Anderton

But I'm going to throw a spanner into the works now and say we don't always optimize.

Belinda Anderton

Just to get a good score.

Belinda Anderton

We're optimizing with the intent to impress Google to increase the rankings. OK, so yes, we want to have a speedy site for our customers. We also want them to check out.

Belinda Anderton

But we also want to be adjudicated.

Belinda Anderton

Bye bye Google.

Belinda Anderton

And thought to be.

Belinda Anderton

To be good.

Belinda Anderton

Uh, or to you know, to improve the the kind of search engine rankings, but I want to make a point on that.

Belinda Anderton

There are so many signals. OK, so there are there are a specific set of factors that Google judges as important in the overall user experience. Site speed is merely one of them.

Daria Rose

OK, what are the other ones?

Belinda Anderton

So well.

Belinda Anderton

We can jump into it now, so.

Belinda Anderton

And this this does relate to the kind of.

Belinda Anderton

Daria Rose

Oh core web vitals. I feel like that's the buzziest buzzword now.

Belinda Anderton

Right and and there there are actually three varies, but you don't have to pay to get them. You can run any of these reports. We use Semrush Mars, any of your standard SEO optimization kind of of.

Belinda Anderton

Automated software are starting to bring in these core web vitals so they Google says these are the things they consider important.

Belinda Anderton

Daria Rose

First, contentful paint content is it contentful contentful?

Right?

Belinda Anderton

Or content I guess would be happy content contentful.

Daria Rose

Contentful paint

Daria Rose

Contentful it's not a good word. Google come on, you couldn't think of something better. They come up with this term or did it exist before them?

Belinda Anderton

Right?

Belinda Anderton

So well, they.

Belinda Anderton

No, they came up with this I think. Basically think of LCP or your largest contentful paint as loading loading speed.

Belinda Anderton

There's a glitch in the matrix, right? It kind of hangs a bit a little bit, and it's that swap.

Belinda Anderton

Visual stability

Daria Rose

Hmm OK.

Belinda Anderton

Do you glitch?

Belinda Anderton

And then of course there are other web vitals, right? Is it mobile friendly?

Daria Rose

Well, what if you? What if you do glitch? What does that mean? What does that do?

Daria Rose

Do I see glitches a lot? Like for example, probably the most common glitch I see is like a font.

Daria Rose

Switch, it'll load like.

Daria Rose

Basic Arial 1st and then it'll load your custom font. That's probably the most common thing that I see.

Belinda Anderton

There you go. So if you can reduce that, perhaps not by having you know fancy fonts.

Daria Rose

Well yeah, tell our clients that.

Belinda Anderton

Then yeah, so that that all goes into your core web vitals and they change date.

Belinda Anderton

It's not like you get a score and then you have to use that as a baseline to act against.

Belinda Anderton

Is it safe, right?

Daria Rose

So this also with mobile friendly Google will actually send you emails if it detects that items are too close together on mobile.

Daria Rose

So it does give you some tools to kind of help fix these problems, and it does ultimately want you to be. You know very mobile friendly. Yep I.

Belinda Anderton

I think the most important thing to note about these, and of course reach out to us if you want us to run a core web vital test.

Belinda Anderton

Again, mobile friendly is so important.

Daria Rose

And that's that you can reach out to us at ecom standup at Dot NYC. Yep.

Yeah, it's your browser.

Daria Rose

We'll put the notes and we'll put that in the episode notes.

Belinda Anderton

Is is it safe? Do you have you know? Do you have SSL? Do you have an SSL certificate?

Belinda Anderton

Uhm, simple things. And also something that we don't do.

Belinda Anderton

Hardly any of our clients do, and it's something that I'd like to introduce in the coming weeks. It's connecting all of our client sites to their Google Search Console account.

Belinda Anderton

We connect to Google Analytics but very seldom connect to search console and that's where we will be able to get on every single URL. We will be able to get.

Belinda Anderton

On on mobile and desktop they are the three.

Belinda Anderton

The coweb rifles.

Daria Rose

OK, that's great and I think so there's one thing. So I just found a a quote that I've heard everywhere and it's a.

Daria Rose

According to Google, which I think is funny that Google is kind of at the core of all of these things, it just leads me to believe there's some sort of conspiracy led by Google.

Daria Rose

But it's like according to Google, who happens to run all of the web vitals and ranking and all of this. Uh, one second site speed improvement can increase mobile conversion by up to 20.

Daria Rose

7%.

Daria Rose

Conversion rate across the board can mean a lot of different things, and there is different ways to convert with every different kind of website.

Daria Rose

So Google for example in theory, depending on which page of theirs you're on, converting could be searching for something.

Daria Rose

If you're on the New York Times, converting could be signing up. It could be subscribing, it could be staying on the New York Times and just reading more articles. I don't know exactly what.

Daria Rose

Percent that you're thinking about the breadth of websites that Google is considering when it's saying the statistic and what converting means across the entire Internet, right there is.

Daria Rose

Ecommerce conversion and then there is.

Daria Rose

Converting anywhere else, signing up, et cetera. All the things I was just mentioning and ecommerce. I don't know what percent of the Internet it is, but it's not that much.

Daria Rose

What if you actually wonder what percent of the Internet ecommerce sites are?

Daria Rose

I'm gonna look at that Belinda. While you rip onto my comment.

Belinda Anderton

I would agree.

Belinda Anderton

And also OK, so corner vitals was actually released. You know, as an official.

Belinda Anderton

That you know they announce it on Twitter and really what they're saying. Is that? OK, so it's it's one of about 200 factors.

Belinda Anderton

That Google will be considering in terms of your page experience store.

Belinda Anderton

But it will be an official Google ranking factor. I think maybe next year, maybe this year.

Belinda Anderton

Uhm, but they you know they're giving you chance to improve.

Belinda Anderton

So I I I would take it seriously, but I would exactly overlay it with what you're trying to.

Belinda Anderton

To to achieve so to to fix things or not really, it's just what is the time from clicking on the link to seeing the content on screen.

Belinda Anderton

If you've got widgets and video, and these are all mobile ranking factors, right? If you have these whizbangs that I absolutely loathe or.

Daria Rose

Yeah for sure.

Daria Rose

Yep, absolutely.

Belinda Anderton

WAVY lines in between your sections that have had to be designed by a branding firm, and then you know hard coded into your site and they gotta wiggle when they walk.

Belinda Anderton

It's going to slow down your largest content for paint.

Daria Rose

It's hard to get that exactly, but what I did find is that it's estimated that there's 12 to 24 million.

Daria Rose

Ecommerce sites on the Internet and then there is well over a billion websites total.

Daria Rose

So I don't know what 12 million let's go in the middle, let's say 18 million / a billion.

Daria Rose

What is that 18?

Daria Rose

1,000,000 divided by.

Daria Rose

A billion.

Belinda Anderton

What is a billion?

Daria Rose

It's ability, so it's one point 8% of the Internet is made up of ecommerce websites and then people are taking this statistic from Google of like Oh my God.

There you go.

Daria Rose

That means my conversion rate for every second of site speed that I have. That means my conversion rate is 27% less, which is just like not what that means so, so just.

Daria Rose

Take that, run with it whatever you want to think about it, I think, but I want to go back to what you were just saying about Whizbangs.

Belinda Anderton

With third party scripts.

Daria Rose

The other thing is.

Daria Rose

Well, that's what I was going to say. We deal with this all the time. People say hey, I want my site faster.

Daria Rose

That's actually not the case, right? I've been reading about this a little bit. It's not natively Shopify that's causing the problem.

Daria Rose

It is the apps that you have. It is the scripts that you're running, the pixels that you have integrated. I mean, we're doing a. Not to mention the fact that the majority of the majority.

Daria Rose

Of clients don't even know what apps they use. I was looking at one of our clients today to set up some products.

Daria Rose

Right?

Daria Rose

Wraps your scripts. Lucky orange hot jar.

Daria Rose

Website sizes, mobile devices etc. And then you have your video right, should you host it on Shopify? Should you host it on Vimeo?

Daria Rose

What will be faster? Should you host it on YouTube like what is the optimal thing to do there and then?

Daria Rose

I think the last thing is you know your whizbangs right? 'cause your whizbangs are always JavaScript and JavaScript.

Daria Rose

Is inherently slow.

Daria Rose

The fastest way to have a website.

Daria Rose

Is to build something like.

Daria Rose

Craigslist where it's black and white.

Daria Rose

With text links and no images and no whizbangs read it isn't it won't read it even has more whizbangs now with its little like graffiti and awards and all of that.

Daria Rose

But if you want to Foss site, you have to give up your whizbangs. If you want a fun interactive site like 'cause, that's the other question, right?

Daria Rose

There is an element of some whizbangs that are good to have. You want a site to have to be creative.

Daria Rose

You want it to be a good experience. You want people to be like, oh, this is really cool.

Daria Rose

Interaction on your site, I would say.

Belinda Anderton

We again and perhaps designers are my bugbear or my my nemesis. I would say yes. OK, I'll give you. I'll give you 6 whizbangs but.

Daria Rose

Belinda Anderton

Do they have to load all at once?

Belinda Anderton

And when you're designing for an ecommerce site, can you make it clear that they perhaps are lower down on the page?

Belinda Anderton

Each right so we don't. We just I don't know how you feel about the kind of lazy loading, but a lot of designers don't take this into consideration.

Daria Rose

That's a good point.

Belinda Anderton

They're like, so everythings up there.

Belinda Anderton

And I just want to.

Belinda Anderton

Jump straight ahead because the second core web vital is this first input delay.

Belinda Anderton

Google measures how long it takes, right?

Belinda Anderton

For a user to interact with your page.

Belinda Anderton

It is.

Belinda Anderton

And an example of this could be like clicking an item on a menu, or NAV subscribing or opening up an accordion on the page For more information so.

Belinda Anderton

Very subjective.

Belinda Anderton

But it is an indication.

Belinda Anderton

So yeah, it's it's kind of.

Belinda Anderton

I I just think that's extremely dumb.

Belinda Anderton

Subjective, so yeah, minimize JavaScript right or defer it.

Belinda Anderton

Remove those third party scripts.

Belinda Anderton

And I don't know how to do this with Shopify so directly. If you can jump in here browser caching.

Belinda Anderton

I don't know how how that would even.

Belinda Anderton

Be achieved with.

Belinda Anderton

With Shopify or if it would be another app that I had.

Belinda Anderton

To see you.

Daria Rose

What do you mean specifically well?

Belinda Anderton

You know you get some services I know particularly not necessarily ecommerce sites. But in like WordPress.

Belinda Anderton

Check it.

Daria Rose

I don't think Shopify does that and I think.

Daria Rose

Belinda Anderton

Yeah, I think it is.

Belinda Anderton

I would also encourage people to set attribute dimensions for media.

Belinda Anderton

When it kind of goes big and then small.

Belinda Anderton

Uhm, as it seeks so.

Daria Rose

For speed, the Internet would be a very boring place unfortunately, and I think that the fact that we're not always considering speed and that we are often.

Daria Rose

Considering the experience of the customer and the unique experience is why we have such a fun Internet, and I think ultimately what's most important is that you kind of find that balance.

Daria Rose

You can't have a broken site like we've said. You cannot have something where it takes 5 seconds 10 seconds.

Daria Rose

For the first thing to load, you cannot make it a laborious process laborious.

Daria Rose

I haven't seen.

Daria Rose

Making sure you still have a good experience but not making it so crazy that it's hard to use. I think ultimately usability is more important than sites.

Daria Rose

If your site is usable, if your site is is generally converting and if the information is easy to find, it is a pleasant experience.

Daria Rose

You will have people converting those are those are my two cents and I think kind of fighting this battle of trying to get to 100 on site speed is personally a.

Daria Rose

A fruitless

Daria Rose

Is that right fruitless? Can't be the right word.

Daria Rose

May be fruitless.

Belinda Anderton

Fitness fitness.

Daria Rose

I was like fruit fall fruitless.

Belinda Anderton

I'm just thinking.

Daria Rose

What is your kind of last thoughts?

Belinda Anderton

Uhm, check your links.

Belinda Anderton

I know it sounds crazy. Do all of the above get dead in an expert to check your core web vitals?

Belinda Anderton

Actually check your core work vitals yourself. You can go to there's a Chrome extension called Lighthouse and that's what powers all of the core web vitals that you see on on platforms like semrush.

Belinda Anderton

So it's free, but then fix fix those you know, fix your what's the first load, but also check your links.

Belinda Anderton

You know, every time Google crawls your site, right?

Belinda Anderton

And tries to access a link.

Belinda Anderton

That is broken. It's still requiring an HTTP request. Google still trying to go there, it's just that's a waste of your page load time.

Belinda Anderton

So if you have links to press articles that are no longer working, or they're serving up 40 fours or even internal links that are broken, just fix.

Belinda Anderton

Something as small as that.

Belinda Anderton

And then and then start from there.

Daria Rose

Awesome, well I think that's all the time that we have for today. So thank you everybody for listening and we will chat soon.

Audio file

episode 6 - site speed.mp3

Transcript

00:00:00 Daria Rose

Hello and welcome to ecom stand up with Dorian Bell.

00:00:04 Daria Rose

Happy Friday.

00:00:05 Belinda Anderton

Hi everyone.

00:00:07 Daria Rose

Are you drinking anything today, blonde or?

00:00:09

I am.

00:00:09 Daria Rose

Face value the coffee.

00:00:11 Belinda Anderton

I am. I'm drinking a caramel. I don't know how you say in America we call it a caramel macchiato.

00:00:17 Daria Rose

Oh fancy, you make that at home.

00:00:19 Belinda Anderton

Yeah, yeah.

00:00:22 Daria Rose

What sort of like coffee machine do you have at home that looks?

00:00:25 Belinda Anderton

Serious so we just like wizard up, whisk it up and froth the milk and output caramel syrup. Of course you know we have the best coffee in the world.

00:00:35 Daria Rose

Do you? Is Brazil known for like the best coffee?

00:00:40 Belinda Anderton

Absolutely, really well.

00:00:41 Daria Rose

No, that I mean, I thought like Colombia had like the best coffee.

00:00:45 Belinda Anderton

Oh, Brazilian coffee is phenomenal, phenomenal. I mean, I guess there are producers everywhere around the world, you know.

00:00:49 Daria Rose

Wow, OK, good for now.

00:00:54 Daria Rose

Yeah, that's fair.

00:00:56 Daria Rose

Anyway, happy Friday. I'm just drinking water. I'm being really boring today. I had quite a few glasses of wine the past two nights, so I'm taking it easy on Friday.

00:01:07 Daria Rose

Uhm, but today I'm pretty excited about today's episode. We are tackling. Probably the most talked about thing in ecommerce or or on.

00:01:20 Daria Rose

00:01:41 Daria Rose

Need for sitespeed come from like where did the obsession come from and you know drill down into into our thoughts and also look into some really large brands.

00:01:53 Daria Rose

See maybe run a couple of speed tests and see how these directing summer brands perform and see what all the.

00:01:59 Daria Rose

Fuss is about.

00:02:02 Belinda Anderton

00:02:22 Daria Rose

OK, interesting.

00:02:22 Belinda Anderton

Wow, so and the average ecom sites load time has actually increased from about 7 1/2 seconds to nearly nine seconds so.

00:02:35 Belinda Anderton

So we're getting information from from Google from all of the optimizers out there hammering site speed, site speed, site speed.

00:02:46 Belinda Anderton

We also have this little widget on Shopify Dashboard which says you know your site has a score of I don't know like nine or two or 15 or something and we have clients.

00:02:58 Belinda Anderton

You know, saying Shopify says I have a low, I mean a, you know a low score on my site speed what's what's going on?

00:03:05 Belinda Anderton

How can we make it faster and I just don't?

00:03:08 Belinda Anderton

Believe that it's.

00:03:10 Belinda Anderton

A A question of.

00:03:11 Belinda Anderton

Necessarily making it faster and B that it needs to be faster. And on that we agree, but I I think there are some.

00:03:20 Belinda Anderton

Some things that users can do. Overall it is a hot topic though.

00:03:27 Belinda Anderton

At the moment, right?

00:03:29 Daria Rose

Yeah it is, and I think there's also a lot of.

00:03:32 Daria Rose

You know, I don't know if it's speculation or what it is, but so Google I don't even know when Google Pagespeed.

00:03:39 Daria Rose

00:04:01 Daria Rose

That what that is? What kind of drew up a lot of this conversation, and I think there's a couple of questions right?

00:04:08 Daria Rose

When does you know how much does site speed actually affect conversion? And that is a very difficult question to answer overall because.

00:04:20 Daria Rose

You know the variables are not one to one, right? If you test store a that has a speed of 90 and store B that has a speed of 10, how many different variables are there that you're testing right?

00:04:31 Daria Rose

You'd need a one to one test in order to know, without a doubt, right? Am I wrong there?

00:04:36 Belinda Anderton

No, yeah no, absolutely right. That absolutely right.

00:04:40 Daria Rose

So it's hard to say right if you.

00:04:42 Daria Rose

Take, you know.

00:04:44 Daria Rose

00:05:04 Daria Rose

Obviously you know and what we say to our clients. That is, you never want the site to appear broken.

00:05:09 Daria Rose

It cannot take an aggressive amount of time, right? And that's when things like weird interactive elements that don't seem to function affect your site, and when?

00:05:19 Daria Rose

And things like that affect your site, but if you're talking about you know 3 seconds to 1st content versus 2.5 seconds to 1st content.

00:05:29 Daria Rose

00:05:35 Belinda Anderton

And we stopped it right there.

00:05:39 Daria Rose

Extra whizbangs that tend to distract users and and make them frustrated and leave the page 'cause they don't know what to click on.

00:05:45

Right?

00:05:47 Belinda Anderton

So I'm gonna stop you right there. And this is what I I think our listeners don't understand.

00:05:51 Belinda Anderton

Uhm, So what they're doing is OK, so like all birds has a score of 12 for mobile.

00:05:57

00:05:58 Belinda Anderton

Desktop is oh geez. OK desktop is 40 so we're still in the red hate because it's zero to 49.

00:06:05 Daria Rose

00:06:06 Belinda Anderton

But the key is first contentful paint.

00:06:12 Belinda Anderton

What does that mean? I mean, content fault isn't even isn't even a word, so that that's where people get confused.

00:06:20 Belinda Anderton

So again, I don't mind how long the site takes to load as long as there is something there within 2 1/2 to 3 seconds, right?

00:06:30 Daria Rose

Yes, which is exactly.

00:06:32 Daria Rose

What I was just saying in terms of.

00:06:34 Daria Rose

The full page doesn't matter, but how long it takes for me to.

00:06:39 Daria Rose

See, something does matter, right?

00:06:41 Belinda Anderton

So for all birds it's one second.

00:06:45 Daria Rose

That's great, OK, right?

00:06:47 Belinda Anderton

But yet they still have an exceptionally low site speed score.

00:06:53 Belinda Anderton

So this is where part of you know part of the audits that we do can really delve into that instead of scaring.

00:07:01 Belinda Anderton

Entrepreneurs ecommerce site owners with this site. Speed hammer.

00:07:08 Belinda Anderton

But let's face it, a lot of.

00:07:11 Belinda Anderton

00:07:25 Daria Rose

Yeah, I think that's I think you make such a good point there and it's it's again. At this point it doesn't matter. Oh wow, this can't be right.

00:07:35 Daria Rose

Sorry, I just tested Casper. Com to see what what the score was.

00:07:42 Daria Rose

So Casper on Mobile has a score of 0.

00:07:46 Belinda Anderton

There you go.

00:07:48 Daria Rose

And on desktop has a score of 15 and I will say you know I think.

00:07:55 Daria Rose

Kasper could there is maybe a little bit of room for improvement there first contentful.

00:08:01 Daria Rose

Again, what is it's 3.6 seconds?

00:08:02

Make money.

00:08:04 Daria Rose

Which is a little bit a little bit.

00:08:06 Daria Rose

Slow and then on desktop it's 1.9.

00:08:08 Daria Rose

00:08:21 Daria Rose

00:08:39 Daria Rose

Uhm, so I think it's just it's it's important to get that that first load time up and I think under 3 seconds is reasonable. But this idea of scoring 100 on Google site speed I think is.

00:08:56 Daria Rose

And an unrealistic obsession that people have been having, and I think it's a great way you know. Businesses have been created around it.

00:09:05 Daria Rose

00:09:14 Daria Rose

00:09:28 Daria Rose

00:09:41 Daria Rose

80 percent, 75%. That may be a clue that you need to look at something like side speed.

00:09:48 Daria Rose

00:10:01 Daria Rose

On the homepage in general, and then site speed, those would be the three things I would I would drill into if I had a significantly high bounce rate.

00:10:09 Belinda Anderton

I would agree.

00:10:11 Belinda Anderton

But I'm going to throw a spanner into the works now and say we don't always optimize.

00:10:19 Belinda Anderton

Just to get a good score.

00:10:21 Belinda Anderton

We're optimizing with the intent to impress Google to increase the rankings. OK, so yes, we want to have a speedy site for our customers. We also want them to check out.

00:10:34 Belinda Anderton

But we also want to be adjudicated.

00:10:40 Belinda Anderton

Bye bye Google.

00:10:43 Belinda Anderton

And thought to be.

00:10:46 Belinda Anderton

To be good.

00:10:47 Belinda Anderton

Uh, or to you know, to improve the the kind of search engine rankings, but I want to make a point on that.

00:10:57 Belinda Anderton

There are so many signals. OK, so there are there are a specific set of factors that Google judges as important in the overall user experience. Site speed is merely one of them.

00:11:11 Daria Rose

OK, what are the other ones?

00:11:11 Belinda Anderton

So well.

00:11:15 Belinda Anderton

We can jump into it now, so.

00:11:19 Belinda Anderton

And this this does relate to the kind of.

00:11:23 Belinda Anderton

00:11:40 Daria Rose

Oh core web vitals. I feel like that's the buzziest buzzword now.

00:11:43 Belinda Anderton

Right and and there there are actually three varies, but you don't have to pay to get them. You can run any of these reports. We use Semrush Mars, any of your standard SEO optimization kind of of.

00:11:59 Belinda Anderton

Automated software are starting to bring in these core web vitals so they Google says these are the things they consider important.

00:12:09 Belinda Anderton

00:12:24 Daria Rose

00:12:34 Daria Rose

First, contentful paint content is it contentful contentful?

00:12:37

Right?

00:12:40 Belinda Anderton

Or content I guess would be happy content contentful.

00:12:42 Daria Rose

Contentful paint

00:12:45 Daria Rose

Contentful it's not a good word. Google come on, you couldn't think of something better. They come up with this term or did it exist before them?

00:12:46 Belinda Anderton

Right?

00:12:50 Belinda Anderton

So well, they.

00:12:53 Belinda Anderton

No, they came up with this I think. Basically think of LCP or your largest contentful paint as loading loading speed.

00:13:03 Belinda Anderton

00:13:23 Belinda Anderton

There's a glitch in the matrix, right? It kind of hangs a bit a little bit, and it's that swap.

00:13:30 Belinda Anderton

Visual stability

00:13:32 Daria Rose

Hmm OK.

00:13:33 Belinda Anderton

Do you glitch?

00:13:35 Belinda Anderton

And then of course there are other web vitals, right? Is it mobile friendly?

00:13:38 Daria Rose

Well, what if you? What if you do glitch? What does that mean? What does that do?

00:13:41 Daria Rose

Do I see glitches a lot? Like for example, probably the most common glitch I see is like a font.

00:13:47 Daria Rose

Switch, it'll load like.

00:13:49 Daria Rose

Basic Arial 1st and then it'll load your custom font. That's probably the most common thing that I see.

00:13:54 Belinda Anderton

There you go. So if you can reduce that, perhaps not by having you know fancy fonts.

00:14:02 Daria Rose

Well yeah, tell our clients that.

00:14:05 Belinda Anderton

Then yeah, so that that all goes into your core web vitals and they change date.

00:14:08

00:14:10 Belinda Anderton

It's not like you get a score and then you have to use that as a baseline to act against.

00:14:15 Belinda Anderton

00:14:31 Belinda Anderton

Is it safe, right?

00:14:33 Daria Rose

So this also with mobile friendly Google will actually send you emails if it detects that items are too close together on mobile.

00:14:40 Daria Rose

So it does give you some tools to kind of help fix these problems, and it does ultimately want you to be. You know very mobile friendly. Yep I.

00:14:50 Belinda Anderton

I think the most important thing to note about these, and of course reach out to us if you want us to run a core web vital test.

00:15:01 Belinda Anderton

Again, mobile friendly is so important.

00:15:03 Daria Rose

And that's that you can reach out to us at ecom standup at Dot NYC. Yep.

00:15:08

Yeah, it's your browser.

00:15:09 Daria Rose

We'll put the notes and we'll put that in the episode notes.

00:15:13 Belinda Anderton

Is is it safe? Do you have you know? Do you have SSL? Do you have an SSL certificate?

00:15:20 Belinda Anderton

Uhm, simple things. And also something that we don't do.

00:15:26 Belinda Anderton

Hardly any of our clients do, and it's something that I'd like to introduce in the coming weeks. It's connecting all of our client sites to their Google Search Console account.

00:15:35 Belinda Anderton

We connect to Google Analytics but very seldom connect to search console and that's where we will be able to get on every single URL. We will be able to get.

00:15:47 Belinda Anderton

On on mobile and desktop they are the three.

00:15:52 Belinda Anderton

The coweb rifles.

00:15:53 Daria Rose

OK, that's great and I think so there's one thing. So I just found a a quote that I've heard everywhere and it's a.

00:16:02 Daria Rose

According to Google, which I think is funny that Google is kind of at the core of all of these things, it just leads me to believe there's some sort of conspiracy led by Google.

00:16:11 Daria Rose

But it's like according to Google, who happens to run all of the web vitals and ranking and all of this. Uh, one second site speed improvement can increase mobile conversion by up to 20.

00:16:22 Daria Rose

7%.

00:16:24 Daria Rose

00:16:39 Daria Rose

Conversion rate across the board can mean a lot of different things, and there is different ways to convert with every different kind of website.

00:16:49 Daria Rose

So Google for example in theory, depending on which page of theirs you're on, converting could be searching for something.

00:16:58 Daria Rose

If you're on the New York Times, converting could be signing up. It could be subscribing, it could be staying on the New York Times and just reading more articles. I don't know exactly what.

00:17:10 Daria Rose

00:17:28 Daria Rose

Percent that you're thinking about the breadth of websites that Google is considering when it's saying the statistic and what converting means across the entire Internet, right there is.

00:17:42 Daria Rose

Ecommerce conversion and then there is.

00:17:45 Daria Rose

Converting anywhere else, signing up, et cetera. All the things I was just mentioning and ecommerce. I don't know what percent of the Internet it is, but it's not that much.

00:17:57 Daria Rose

What if you actually wonder what percent of the Internet ecommerce sites are?

00:18:02 Daria Rose

I'm gonna look at that Belinda. While you rip onto my comment.

00:18:05 Belinda Anderton

I would agree.

00:18:06 Belinda Anderton

And also OK, so corner vitals was actually released. You know, as an official.

00:18:14 Belinda Anderton

That you know they announce it on Twitter and really what they're saying. Is that? OK, so it's it's one of about 200 factors.

00:18:24 Belinda Anderton

That Google will be considering in terms of your page experience store.

00:18:29 Belinda Anderton

But it will be an official Google ranking factor. I think maybe next year, maybe this year.

00:18:36 Belinda Anderton

Uhm, but they you know they're giving you chance to improve.

00:18:42 Belinda Anderton

So I I I would take it seriously, but I would exactly overlay it with what you're trying to.

00:18:51 Belinda Anderton

To to achieve so to to fix things or not really, it's just what is the time from clicking on the link to seeing the content on screen.

00:19:01 Belinda Anderton

If you've got widgets and video, and these are all mobile ranking factors, right? If you have these whizbangs that I absolutely loathe or.

00:19:01 Daria Rose

Yeah for sure.

00:19:06 Daria Rose

Yep, absolutely.

00:19:12 Belinda Anderton

WAVY lines in between your sections that have had to be designed by a branding firm, and then you know hard coded into your site and they gotta wiggle when they walk.

00:19:23 Belinda Anderton

It's going to slow down your largest content for paint.

00:19:26 Daria Rose

00:19:37 Daria Rose

It's hard to get that exactly, but what I did find is that it's estimated that there's 12 to 24 million.

00:19:44 Daria Rose

Ecommerce sites on the Internet and then there is well over a billion websites total.

00:19:50 Daria Rose

So I don't know what 12 million let's go in the middle, let's say 18 million / a billion.

00:19:58 Daria Rose

What is that 18?

00:20:01 Daria Rose

1,000,000 divided by.

00:20:04 Daria Rose

A billion.

00:20:06 Belinda Anderton

What is a billion?

00:20:07 Daria Rose

It's ability, so it's one point 8% of the Internet is made up of ecommerce websites and then people are taking this statistic from Google of like Oh my God.

00:20:13

There you go.

00:20:17 Daria Rose

That means my conversion rate for every second of site speed that I have. That means my conversion rate is 27% less, which is just like not what that means so, so just.

00:20:26 Daria Rose

Take that, run with it whatever you want to think about it, I think, but I want to go back to what you were just saying about Whizbangs.

00:20:33 Belinda Anderton

With third party scripts.

00:20:34 Daria Rose

The other thing is.

00:20:36 Daria Rose

Well, that's what I was going to say. We deal with this all the time. People say hey, I want my site faster.

00:20:41 Daria Rose

00:20:54 Daria Rose

That's actually not the case, right? I've been reading about this a little bit. It's not natively Shopify that's causing the problem.

00:21:01 Daria Rose

It is the apps that you have. It is the scripts that you're running, the pixels that you have integrated. I mean, we're doing a. Not to mention the fact that the majority of the majority.

00:21:14 Daria Rose

Of clients don't even know what apps they use. I was looking at one of our clients today to set up some products.

00:21:21 Daria Rose

00:21:31

Right?

00:21:32 Daria Rose

Wraps your scripts. Lucky orange hot jar.

00:21:37 Daria Rose

00:21:56 Daria Rose

Website sizes, mobile devices etc. And then you have your video right, should you host it on Shopify? Should you host it on Vimeo?

00:22:02 Daria Rose

What will be faster? Should you host it on YouTube like what is the optimal thing to do there and then?

00:22:07 Daria Rose

I think the last thing is you know your whizbangs right? 'cause your whizbangs are always JavaScript and JavaScript.

00:22:15 Daria Rose

Is inherently slow.

00:22:17 Daria Rose

The fastest way to have a website.

00:22:20 Daria Rose

Is to build something like.

00:22:21 Daria Rose

Craigslist where it's black and white.

00:22:24 Daria Rose

With text links and no images and no whizbangs read it isn't it won't read it even has more whizbangs now with its little like graffiti and awards and all of that.

00:22:34 Daria Rose

But if you want to Foss site, you have to give up your whizbangs. If you want a fun interactive site like 'cause, that's the other question, right?

00:22:44 Daria Rose

There is an element of some whizbangs that are good to have. You want a site to have to be creative.

00:22:49 Daria Rose

You want it to be a good experience. You want people to be like, oh, this is really cool.

00:22:52 Daria Rose

00:23:07 Daria Rose

Interaction on your site, I would say.

00:23:09 Belinda Anderton

We again and perhaps designers are my bugbear or my my nemesis. I would say yes. OK, I'll give you. I'll give you 6 whizbangs but.

00:23:17 Daria Rose

00:23:22 Belinda Anderton

Do they have to load all at once?

00:23:25 Belinda Anderton

And when you're designing for an ecommerce site, can you make it clear that they perhaps are lower down on the page?

00:23:32 Belinda Anderton

Each right so we don't. We just I don't know how you feel about the kind of lazy loading, but a lot of designers don't take this into consideration.

00:23:34 Daria Rose

That's a good point.

00:23:43 Belinda Anderton

They're like, so everythings up there.

00:23:46 Belinda Anderton

And I just want to.

00:23:47 Belinda Anderton

Jump straight ahead because the second core web vital is this first input delay.

00:23:53 Belinda Anderton

Google measures how long it takes, right?

00:23:57 Belinda Anderton

For a user to interact with your page.

00:24:03 Belinda Anderton

00:24:04

It is.

00:24:18 Belinda Anderton

And an example of this could be like clicking an item on a menu, or NAV subscribing or opening up an accordion on the page For more information so.

00:24:32 Belinda Anderton

Very subjective.

00:24:38 Belinda Anderton

But it is an indication.

00:24:41 Belinda Anderton

00:25:01 Belinda Anderton

So yeah, it's it's kind of.

00:25:05 Belinda Anderton

I I just think that's extremely dumb.

00:25:10 Belinda Anderton

Subjective, so yeah, minimize JavaScript right or defer it.

00:25:17 Belinda Anderton

Remove those third party scripts.

00:25:20 Belinda Anderton

And I don't know how to do this with Shopify so directly. If you can jump in here browser caching.

00:25:30 Belinda Anderton

I don't know how how that would even.

00:25:31 Belinda Anderton

Be achieved with.

00:25:34 Belinda Anderton

With Shopify or if it would be another app that I had.

00:25:37 Belinda Anderton

To see you.

00:25:37 Daria Rose

What do you mean specifically well?

00:25:40 Belinda Anderton

You know you get some services I know particularly not necessarily ecommerce sites. But in like WordPress.

00:25:48 Belinda Anderton

00:26:00

Check it.

00:26:05 Daria Rose

I don't think Shopify does that and I think.

00:26:10 Daria Rose

00:26:23 Belinda Anderton

Yeah, I think it is.

00:26:25 Belinda Anderton

I would also encourage people to set attribute dimensions for media.

00:26:31 Belinda Anderton

00:26:45 Belinda Anderton

When it kind of goes big and then small.

00:26:48 Belinda Anderton

Uhm, as it seeks so.

00:26:53 Daria Rose

00:27:12 Daria Rose

For speed, the Internet would be a very boring place unfortunately, and I think that the fact that we're not always considering speed and that we are often.

00:27:22 Daria Rose

Considering the experience of the customer and the unique experience is why we have such a fun Internet, and I think ultimately what's most important is that you kind of find that balance.

00:27:36 Daria Rose

You can't have a broken site like we've said. You cannot have something where it takes 5 seconds 10 seconds.

00:27:43 Daria Rose

For the first thing to load, you cannot make it a laborious process laborious.

00:27:50 Daria Rose

00:28:10 Daria Rose

I haven't seen.

00:28:13 Daria Rose

00:28:29 Daria Rose

Making sure you still have a good experience but not making it so crazy that it's hard to use. I think ultimately usability is more important than sites.

00:28:39 Daria Rose

If your site is usable, if your site is is generally converting and if the information is easy to find, it is a pleasant experience.

00:28:47 Daria Rose

You will have people converting those are those are my two cents and I think kind of fighting this battle of trying to get to 100 on site speed is personally a.

00:28:59 Daria Rose

A fruitless

00:29:01 Daria Rose

Is that right fruitless? Can't be the right word.

00:29:05 Daria Rose

May be fruitless.

00:29:06 Belinda Anderton

Fitness fitness.

00:29:07 Daria Rose

I was like fruit fall fruitless.

00:29:11 Belinda Anderton

I'm just thinking.

00:29:11 Daria Rose

What is your kind of last thoughts?

00:29:13 Belinda Anderton

Uhm, check your links.

00:29:16 Belinda Anderton

I know it sounds crazy. Do all of the above get dead in an expert to check your core web vitals?

00:29:22 Belinda Anderton

Actually check your core work vitals yourself. You can go to there's a Chrome extension called Lighthouse and that's what powers all of the core web vitals that you see on on platforms like semrush.

00:29:33 Belinda Anderton

So it's free, but then fix fix those you know, fix your what's the first load, but also check your links.

00:29:42 Belinda Anderton

You know, every time Google crawls your site, right?

00:29:46 Belinda Anderton

And tries to access a link.

00:29:49 Belinda Anderton

That is broken. It's still requiring an HTTP request. Google still trying to go there, it's just that's a waste of your page load time.

00:29:59 Belinda Anderton

So if you have links to press articles that are no longer working, or they're serving up 40 fours or even internal links that are broken, just fix.

00:30:08 Belinda Anderton

Something as small as that.

00:30:10 Belinda Anderton

And then and then start from there.

00:30:14 Daria Rose

Awesome, well I think that's all the time that we have for today. So thank you everybody for listening and we will chat soon.

[Podcast] The Elephant in the Room: Site Speed

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