A fast ecommerce site is one of the top ways that retailers can offer a great customer experience, says Eric Elggren, co-founder of web-only leather accessories brand Andar.  

And a few seconds make all the difference to the shopper. This is especially true when a shopper doesn’t know the brand and is trying to learn more about it.  

“If something takes a long time to load, people think, ‘Oh it wasn’t that interesting to begin with,’” Elggren says. 

Andar.com’s average load time was between three to six seconds, and the merchant knew it needed a faster site to keep shoppers engaged. Its goal was to load each page in less than three seconds, he says.  

“When it comes down to the gifting season and you’re thinking, ‘Should I get them a wallet?’ or something else that we don’t even sell, to be competitive we have an opportunity to have a flawless experience, to load up different pages with no hiccups, no slow times,” Elggren says. “It’s important to have that quick and snappy site.” 

Right before the holiday season in 2020, Andar decided to use site performance vendor Edgemesh to improve its site speed. After implementing the technology, the average load time dropped to 1.9 seconds on average, which was about 61% faster than the average load time the previous month.  

And Andar.com’s conversion has steadily improved since then, reaching 4.5% in 2021 up from 3.6% on average in 2020. Elggren says site speed is part of the conversion rate increase. 

Many retailers and shoppers believe that a fast site is a top way to have a good online shopping experience. 29% of consumers say a fast-loading site will lead them to placing an online order, according to a Digital Cmmerce 360 survey of 1,108 online shoppers in January 2022. But it’s not the only way. Top retailers share how listening to customer feedback and working with technology vendors allowed them to improve the customer experience for their shoppers.