You can literally win and lose on the speed of your site
By now, you are most likely crystal clear on the critical importance of a quick-loading webpage for your customers’ experience and your site’s conversion rate.
Consumers have high demand when it comes to site performance and load speed. In case you’re not sure what all the hype is about, here are some particularly compelling data points:
- 47% of consumers expect a webpage to load in 2 seconds or less.
- 79% of users experiencing slow load times won’t make a purchase from that website again.
- A 1-second delay means an 11% loss in page views and a 7% decrease in conversion.
- A 1-second delay in load time would cost Amazon $1.6 billion each year.
As you can see, consumers don’t have the patience for slow-loading sites. And with an endless aisle of options, they don’t need to.
Why PowerReviews wins
When it comes to displaying UGC on your site, it’s important to know if your reviews are slowing down your website and ultimately hurting conversion rates.
We know how important this is to the success of your business. This is why our ratings and reviews code is 2.5 times lighter than our competitors, leading to way faster page load times.
How we do this
One of the most important aspects impacting site load speed metrics is Javascript size.
And it’s for this reason that PowerReviews has consistently made reducing Javascript size one of our primary goals.
The updates we have made over the past 18 months have reduced Javascript size throughout every touchpoint on our customers’ product pages.
Here’s a breakdown of content types and their size reduction:
| Page Type | Percent Size Reduction |
| Product Listing Page (Category Pages) | 61% |
| Product Details Pages | 20-26% |
| Write a Review & Review Your Purchases | 40% |
What changed?
In order to reduce the size of our Javascript, we added logic to the code to analyze configuration in real-time. Now, PowerReviews only loads the components of pages that are absolutely necessary. This basically means our Javascript is working smarter, not harder. Although this may seem obvious, driving these valuable efficiencies requires a lot of sophisticated technical background work.
We are also constantly iterating and improving. On top of this, PowerReviews has added sophisticated measurement capabilities to monitor the size of our Javascript code each time we make enhancements and updates. If we are increasing the size we are alerted during the development phase so we can proactively make any necessary adjustments prior to release.
This is how we will keep your page load speeds fast.
How do you compare to Bazaarvoice?
One thing we get asked a lot is: how do you compare on site speed to your main competitor?
We can state with complete confidence that the PowerReviews solution is significantly lighter than Bazaarvoice. For example, the most recent data shows that Bazaarvoice loads at least ten javascript files for a total of 385.31KB whereas PowerReviews loads only two javascript files amounting to 204.62KB.
When it comes specifically to PDPs (Product Detail Pages), BazaarVoice needs to render seven urls on all its customers’ PDPs before the Javascript appears. PowerReviews needs to render two. Big difference resulting in way quicker load speeds.
Bazaarvoice
PowerReviews
Another component that affects load time is DNS resolution. DNS resolution can add significant latency to requests. And for websites with open connections to many third parties, this latency can significantly reduce loading performance. Bazaarvoice’s network requests span over six different DNS names, but PowerReviews is limited to three.
All well and good. But what does this mean when applied to actual site speed? Well, the 2019 eCommerce Third Party Technology Index shows Bazaarvoice technology consistently in the “red zone” when validating code – which consistently negatively impacts site performance time and time again.
The experts agree
Site speed experts YOTTAA analyze this sort of stuff everyday. They are constantly evaluating and advising which third party applications most slow down ecommerce websites in order to drive overall optimization.
As Beth Moriarty, VP of Product & Corporate Marketing, YOTTAA, explains: “Because YOTTAA accelerates over 1,500 ecommerce sites, we have the unique visibility to analyze detailed information on the performance of almost 1,000 third parties. We also understand the importance of working with third parties that are always pushing themselves to be better — and faster.”
Content + Speed = More Sales
UGC is meant to help not hinder. So the absolute last thing your UGC provider should be doing is negatively impacting the performance of your site. What’s the point of even bothering with UGC if your customers don’t even see it?
Our streamlined Javascript code – optimized to strike the perfect balance between product page speed and content – is available as a standard part of our core solution. It has been developed to deliver the best possible customer experience to drive conversions and sales.
If you want to understand how we enable faster load times with optimal customization, speak to one of our experts.
