Page speed is crucial for providing a good user experience and boosting conversions on your BigCommerce store. Slow page loads frustrate customers, increase bounce rates, and hurt your search engine rankings. Fortunately, there are several ways to optimize page speed in BigCommerce.
In this article, we’ll explore steps you can take to accelerate your BigCommerce site including:
● Enabling caching
● Compressing images
● Minifying CSS, JavaScript and HTML
● Using a CDN
● Optimizing server response times
● Reducing redirects
● Eliminating render-blocking resources
● Minimizing plugins
Follow these tips to maximize speed for a faster, more effective BigCommerce store.
Understand Why Page Speed Matters
Before diving into optimization techniques, it’s important to understand why fast page loads are crucial for ecommerce sites.
Quickly loading pages enhance user experience by:
● Keeping customers engaged rather than impatient
● Reducing bounce rates so fewer visitors leave
● Building trust and credibility for your store
● Boosting conversions and sales revenue
Speed also impacts search engine rankings. Pages that load faster perform better in Google search results. Landing pages should load in under 2–3 seconds, while product and category pages can take a bit longer before affecting conversion rates.
By making your BigCommerce store faster, you’ll provide a smoother shopping experience, earn customer loyalty, and improve organic traffic. Page speed should be an ongoing priority.
Audit Speed with BigCommerce and Google Tools
The first step is running audits to find ways your site can be quicker. BigCommerce offers Page Performance under Advanced Settings where you can view page load times.
BigCommerce also partners with Google PageSpeed Insights, where you can enter a URL and test mobile and desktop speeds. The report grades performance and highlights opportunities for improvement by analyzing:
● Server response time
● HTML/text compression
● Browser caching
● Render-blocking JavaScript/CSS
● Effective image compression
● Minified resources
● Redirection chains
This information pinpoints areas to focus your optimization efforts for the biggest speed gains.
Enable Full-Page Caching
One of the most impactful optimizations is enabling full-page caching. This stores rendered web pages so identical requests can be served the cached copy rather than rendering the page from scratch each time.
BigCommerce allows enabling full-page caching in Performance Settings. This includes caching product, category, and account pages.
Caveats:
● Personalized content won’t appear in cached pages
● Needs to be disabled if testing website changes
● Requires clearing the cache when new products/content is added
Even with these requirements, full-page caching can significantly accelerate BigCommerce sites.
Compress Images
Large, unoptimized images often hog resources and dominate page sizes. Compressing photographs without excessively reducing quality is key for speedier loading.
In BigCommerce, go to Image Settings > Options and set:
● Image Quality around 70–80%
● Maximum Image File Size
Additional Tactics:
● Use formats like WebP instead of JPEG/PNG
● Serve differently sized images based on device
● Lazy load offscreen images
● Add CSS width/heights for faster rendering
● Use product thumbnails with zoom functionality
You can also process images through tools like TinyPNG or ShortPixel before uploading.
Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML
Minification removes unnecessary characters like whitespace and comments from code to reduce file size.
In BigCommerce, navigate to Advanced Settings > Asset Optimization, then:
● Toggle Minify Storefront Assets ON
● Toggle Remove development features from JS/CSS ON
To minify HTML, use the free HTML Minifier app. These tools reduce file size and load time, especially when paired with caching.
Serve Files from a CDN
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) caches static assets like images, videos, CSS, and JS across servers worldwide to reduce latency.
BigCommerce has built-in support from providers like Akamai and Fastly. Enable and configure CDN under Advanced Settings > Hosting.
For advanced control, consider add-ons like Amazon CloudFront. Serving files from a CDN significantly improves global load performance.
Optimize Web Server Response Time
Your server’s ability to quickly generate and deliver dynamic content affects page speed. For self-hosted setups:
Optimizations:
● Upgrade to latest PHP version
● Enable opcode caching
● Increase memory limits
● Implement server-side caching
● Resolve bloated code and inefficient SQL queries
While BigCommerce handles most of this if fully hosted, custom storefronts or apps may need additional tuning.
Reduce Redirect Chains
Redirects increase load time. Aim to limit unnecessary 301 and 302 redirects.
Use Page Performance in BigCommerce to:
● Detect redirect chains
● Identify excessive redirect hops
Best Practices:
● Set a primary domain to avoid HTTPS/WWW redirects
● Use consistent URL structure (lowercase, no trailing slashes)
● Prefer 301 (permanent) over 302 (temporary) redirects
Tools like Screaming Frog can audit and consolidate redirects across large product catalogs.
Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources
JavaScript, CSS, and web fonts can block rendering. Audit and defer non-critical scripts to improve perceived load speed.
Tips:
● Defer secondary scripts
● Inline critical CSS
● Minimize font files
● Load async where possible
BigCommerce themes apply default optimizations, but further gains can be achieved with custom development.
Reduce Number of Plugins
Each plugin adds scripts and requests that can slow your store. Assess installed apps:
● Remove unnecessary tools
● Use built-in features over third-party plugins
● Test performance impact of each app
Too many plugins can bloat your storefront. Be intentional about what you install.
Why Choose Anchor Group for BigCommerce Implementation
Anchor Group is a top BigCommerce implementation partner that helps ecommerce companies maximize ROI from their ecommerce investment. With deep expertise optimizing BigCommerce performance, Anchor Group offers strategic guidance for tackling pain points like slow page speed.
BigCommerce Performance Services:
● Speed audits to identify bottlenecks
● Customization to reduce UI complexity and backend queries
● Caching frequently accessed data
● Improving filtering and search indexing
● Integrating CDNs and edge caching
Anchor Group also offers 24/7 managed services to maintain peak BigCommerce performance. Their holistic approach improves catalog load times, order processing speed, and global scalability.
Don’t settle for sluggish ecommerce performance. Partner with Anchor Group to diagnose slow spots and implement high-velocity solutions tailored to your business.
Reach out today to explore custom acceleration services that power scalable ecommerce success.
