Are you ready for the Page Speed Wars?
With ambitious new page loading targets coming into effect in May 2021, page speed should be at the top of the development list for every brand with a stake in web performance.
Why Does Page Speed Matter?
Google have announced the move to mobile-first indexing in March 2021, and with it comes ambitious new targets for page loading speeds of sub-one second.
Brands that don’t meet the target and are slower than their competitors are likely to drop out of the top three in place of their competition. Similarly, brands that are fighting to achieve top rankings but have a slower page speed than current top results will see a negligible impact from their efforts.
In short, page speed should now be at the top of the development list for every brand with a stake in website performance.
How Fast are the UK’s Top 10 Fashion Retailers?
Now more than ever, online channels are an essential sales platform for fashion retailers. We analysed the page speed performance of the top 10 online fashion retailers in the UK to see how they compare to Google’s current benchmarks for page speed performance.
Our results revealed that;
- None of the UK top 10 online fashion retailers come close to meeting Google’s current Speed Index benchmark of 3 seconds. The closest is New Look at 7.6 seconds.
- Only one retailer comes close to meeting Google’s page ‘size’ benchmark of 500KBs, with Marks & Spencer’s website weighing in at 634KBs.
- 50% of the retailers come close to meeting Google’s Time to First Byte benchmark of 1.3 seconds, with the other 50% taking more than 1.9 seconds.
What’s Slowing Page Speed?
We identified six common issues that are compromising fashion retailers’ ability to meet Google’s speed benchmarks and having a detrimental effect on page speed performance.
1.
Render Blocking JavaScript: Large JavaScript files are increasing the time it takes for your web page to become ‘interactive’ to users after loading.
2.
Unused JavaScript: Web pages are spending time loading JavaScript files that are largely unused when serving critical ‘above the fold’ content.
3.
Redirects: Page redirects are slowing down the time it takes to load a page. This is especially prevalent with desktop websites redirecting to mobile ‘m.’ domains.
4.
Unused CSS: Web pages are spending time loading unused CCS files that have little to no impact on critical visual content served ‘above the fold’.
5.
Un-deferred Images: Images are not being deferred to prioritise loading critical visual content above the fold.
6.
Preloading Key Requests: Certain resources loading could benefit from being preloaded to reduce milliseconds of load times.
In the first 8 months of working together QueryClick drove a 40% YoY uplift in non-brand organic revenue, focusing on improving visibility through on-page optimisations and technical improvements.
Haroun Saleemi, Head of E-Commerce, Quiz Clothing
Get your mobile page speed audit
For a chat about your mobile page speed, or any aspects of SEO or performance marketing, sign up for a Mobile Page Speed Audit*.
What you’ll get:
• Consultation with one of our SEO experts
• Page speed metrics benchmark against Google
• Top level insights into areas of optimisation
• Expected ROI calculation from recommended changes to page speed performance
*QueryClick Mobile Page Speed Audit is priced at £1500.