Site Speed

A detailed dive into the tools and methods you can use to increase the page load speed of your free online store by Freewebstore.

How can I increase the speed my home page takes to load on my online store?

There are many methods in which you can action to reduce the time it takes for your homepage to load. The most effective methods are based on your images, how many of them there are on your home page and how big they are in size. Reducing these numbers can significantly reduce the time it takes for your homepage to load for your customers.

Studies have shown that making sure your site loads between 0-9 seconds can lead to a higher conversion rate. Every additional second after that, your conversion rate drops by an average of 2.11% (Portent, 2019).

"Nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer." (Unbounce, 2019)

Spending the time to ensure your store is fast is proven to increase sales making the time it takes, time well spent.

So how do I optimize/reduce the images on my site?

Below is a link to one of our help articles that provides you with just a few online tools to optimize images that we use on a daily basis.

Optimizing Images

"By compressing images and text, 25% of pages could save more than 250KB and 10% can save more than 1MB (which contributes to page load times)." (Google, 2018)

The next action to take would be to reduce the number of images displayed on the page that your customers will land on, your home page. Each one of your products comes equipped with an image, therefore, the smaller the number of products that your page has to load, the faster your home page will load.

In your Freewebstore Control Panel, there are numerous ways to reduce the number of products you display when your home page loads.

To reduce the number of products on your page:

1. Log in to your Freewebstore Control Panel.

2. Go to Design > Theme Editor.

3. Once you are faced with the theme editor, you will see your homepage. Simply hover over any section that holds your products, eg Popular Products, Featured Products and click Edit.

4. You will then notice a side panel open and you will be able to set the number of products shown.