Do you have a Magento site that looks awesome and has all the features you need, but there’s still something that’s holding you back in terms of page load speed? More often than not, images are to blame in such situations because they take up a considerable amount of your page size and consequently result in your site taking forever to load…
But if you think that I’ve asked the question because I have a workable, time-efficient and elegant solution for you, that’s most definitely the case and here’s my suggestion.
You Are Losing Customers and Revenue
As I mentioned above, slow load speed is usually the culprit that’s causing sites (including Magento-based ones) to load way slower than they otherwise could. The reality is, it’s just half of the problem. Since your site loads slowly, your prospects can just walk away even before your store gets loaded in their browsers. That means you’re losing customers and revenue … possibly right as we speak. So how much can you lose if your site is slow?
Well, it depends on how slow your site is, but let’s learn from an example. For instance, OneDollarOnly.com.sg (OneDollarOnly.com.sg – Case Study) was able to reduce their image payload by 41% (!). Other than that, they were able to accelerate their page load time by 78%. On top of that, their bounce rate improved by 80% and they boosted sales by over … wait for it … 10% during their peak sales season.
That boils down to the fact that you can start using ImageEngine and increase your sales at least by 10%. And that’s a big deal because we’re talking about something that you can implement within a day or so. How does that sound? 🙂 As you could see for yourself, it’s really well-worth the effort.
How to Fix it Fast
At this point, I’m totally sure that I’ve grabbed your attention because losing revenue is not just some fad that your web developer or SEO guy recently emailed you about. Losing potential customers and revenue is a whole different ball game. The good news about it is that you can just install the ImageEngine Image CDN extension on your Magento-based site and turn your issue with losing potential clients on its head. And here’s how.
Why is the Solution So Awesome?
Once you install the ImageEngine Image CDN extension and hook it up with your ImageEngine account, images on your site will maintain the same visual quality (you won’t be able to tell the difference), but their size will decrease drastically and as a result the loading speed of your site’s pages will reduce by 60-80%. That will ultimately increase revenue because research and multiple case studies show (see one above) that it’s exactly what happens on fast-loading ecommerce stores with amazing graphics.
The Benefits of ImageEngine Image CDN
So here are the benefits of ImageEngine for you to conveniently skim through:
- Built-in and real-time (on the fly) automatic image optimization
- Better key performance metrics, such as lower bounce rate, increased cart size, and time spent on-site, as well as pages per session.
- Drastically decreased image file size (especially crucial for mobile devices)
- Intact visual high-quality of images (look exactly the same but load way faster)
- Reduced page load time (at a much lower byte size)
- Built-in device detection at the edges
- Powerful management interface with customization options
- Crop, rotate, resize images using URL parameters
- No need to upload your images anywhere!
So How Does It Work In a Nutshell?
ImageEngine will on the fly rewrite the URLs of all the images on your Magento website, convert them in various image formats and sizes (5-15 different versions of the same original image), and cache them all at the edges of the CDN so that your images are ready for the user’s specific device and browser.
And one more thing 🙂 The most unique feature about ImageEngine is that it works really great for mobile devices. That means that your customers that visit your site on mobile devices will be able to seamlessly and painlessly browse your site and place their orders faster and more often. Simply because buttery smooth sites that load before you know it tend to instil trust like nothing else.
The mobile superiority of ImageEngine will also help you with SEO. Thing is, you’ll be able to rank easier, faster and higher for your target keywords because Google uses the so-called mobile-first approach for ranking sites in search results pages. Long story short, your site’s performance on mobile devices defines how well your site will rank for your keywords. And again, ImageEngine really shines when it comes to mobile performance!
How to Install the ImageEngine Image CDN extension
Before you go any further, you want to sign up for a 60-day free trial at imageengine.io (no credit card required) so that you can actually activate the extension once you install it.
There are two options to go about it and you can conveniently use the one that works best for you:
a) You can install it using Composer
(the ImageEngine Magento module is available on packagist.org)
b) Installation through Magento Marketplace
Advanced Control Panel
ImageEngine comes with an advanced control panel which allows you to tweak the extension to meet your needs. You’ll be able to define your domains and origins
Other than that, you’ll have the option to purge cache, view helpful tutorials and statistics. By the way, here’s a Quick Start tutorial that explains all the basics and gets you going with ImageEngine without further ado.
Now that you’ve installed the extension and configured your ImageEngine, you can easily see that your Magento store loads several seconds faster both on mobile as well as desktop devices. And those several seconds are a big deal when you have just a few before the visitor decides whether to stay or walk away to your competitor.
The Bottom Line
ImageEngine offers a no-brainer solution for your Magento-based site that will finally not just have all the vital features you need for your store but also ensure that everything works seamlessly and painlessly. Combining the robust versatility of your Magento store and ImageEngine will make your site both perform awesome and load blazingly fast. It’s high time to jumpstart your ImageEngine 🙂
