Yahoo! Store Page Load Optimization

Does download speed matter?

These days almost everyone seems to have high speed Internet access. Yet, instead of making web site performance less and less relevant, this trend appears to make web site users more impatient. Because of fast internet connections, Internet users today expect web sites to respond (load) under 2 or 3 seconds.

Weak performance (i.e. slow loading sites) directly translates into lost business. According to recent studies by Yahoo!, a mere 500 milliseconds longer page download resulted in a 20% drop in traffic at Google. 400 milliseconds slower downloads equals to 5 to 9% drop in full-page traffic on Yahoo!. And 100 milliseconds extra download time on Amazon results in 1% drop in sales.

In addition, slow performance can affect your site even before visitors hit your pages. Google introduced site speed as one of their signals to determine ranking in April of 2010. Although relevance is still king, the rate at which your web site responds to HTTP requests now has a direct affect on how your site ranks on Google - and possibly on other search engines.

What about the cache?

You may say, "Ok, but once my first page loads, all other pages will be fast because of caching." This is true, if your visitor keeps browsing and does not click the back button after the initial hesitation of your store page. That initial page load is essential, especially if you consider that about 80% of all web site visitors are typically first time visitors or visitors who come with an empty cache (you can check your Yahoo! store's first time visitor index using Yahoo! Web Analytics.)

Make a change today and see your Yahoo! store perform better. Hire Y-Times to review and optimize your Yahoo! Store for faster download time. Using Yahoo!'s "YSlow" tool's grading system and Google's Page Speed as a baseline, we go through the performance reports and make changes to your store to improve on the weak areas as indicated by those reports. The cost of this service is very low compared to the lost revenue you may have month after month if your Yahoo! store is not performing at its fullest potential.

How does this optimization process work?

After you grant us Yahoo! Store Consultant Access to your store, we go in and optimize your store's HTML source, CSS, JavaScript, and layout images to ensure that your web pages download and respond faster. Using Yahoo!'s YSlow tool and Google Page Speed, we take a snapshot of your Yahoo! store's performance before and after the work is complete.

Order your Yahoo! Store Page Load Optimization service today!

Small Print - Please read

• If your store is not making any money right now, try looking into other possible problems first. Page load optimization is best for merchants that already are turning a profit but want to increase the performance of their store.
• If your store already got an A from YSlow, we obviously cannot improve it to the next grade. In that case we'll take a look at your store to see if there is in fact anything else that can be done to further increase its performance and only charge you if there is any possibility for improvement. If your store is getting an A though, you should definitely congratulate yourself (or your IT team!)
• The before and after snapshot is taken of the the home page, a typical section, and a typical item page.
• While the entire store benefits from the optimization, there may be pages in your store that will perform badly no matter what. For example, if you have a category page with hundreds of items, that page will never download fast.
• There are certain problem spots YSlow points out that are outside of anyone's reach when working with Yahoo! stores. Server-related issues, in particular, cannot be addressed, so those will most likely be listed with a low grade on the YSlow report.
• Similarly, certain areas are marked by YSlow as problems, when in fact, they are not. For instance, it incorrectly lists all or most Yahoo! Store-generated images (product images, for example) as not being served from a Content Delivery Network, however, those images ARE delivered from such a network. The Yahoo! image servers take advantage of geographical information to deliver images from servers closest to the web site's visitor geographically.