If you have an ecommerce website, it’s not uncommon to have thousands of products. All of which will most likely have a thumbnail on your various product list pages. This means that page load times can go downhill fast. Test the number of products listed per page works best for your website. Set the default number that showcases a nice amount of products without sacrificing load time. You can always leave it as a customisable option for users to a certain extent, once it doesn’t hinder performance too much.
Web developers, marketers and business owners have a tendency to use large high resolution images across websites. While it can make the site visually appealing, it can dramatically increase load times. The same effect can often be garnered by simply compressing the image. Some sites that I have seen have images that are 4mb or even 5mb, their load times suffer and they end up losing potential customers because they don’t want to wait around for the page. Keep your image file sizes as small as you can, under 100kb wherever possible. You can adjust image resolution and scale by using a programme like Photoshop.
The three main file types you will come across on your website are JPEG, PNG and GIF. GIF files are only suitable for smaller images like icons. PNG files should be used sparingly as their file size can sometimes be several times that of a JPEG. JPEG images offer great quality and tiny file sizes. They are suitable for most websites, especially image heavy ecommerce sites.
Speed up your website and improve user experience by testing and finding the optimal number of products to display per page, always look at your image file sizes and keep them below 100kb whenever possible and choose the correct file type for the job to avoid adding on load time for larger files. Book your web design consultation with 3B1 Media & Marketing by visiting us online today.