With services spanning ecommerce platform expertise, digital marketing, and support, digital agency Visualsoft aims to empower retailers to give their customers the ultimate online shopping experience. Ensuring that retailers’ sites perform consistently – and consistently fast – across channels is a key focus, so Visualsoft partnered with Google to tackle site speed, making improvements to a test group of 13 clients.
About Visualsoft
Ecommerce platform software and tailored digital marketing solutions for retailers
Founded in 1998
Headquarters in Stockton-on-Tees, UK
Goals
Reduce site load times
Enhance user experience on all devices
Increase conversion rates to provide greater retailer revenue
Approach
R&D used an agile approach to optimise an array of technical site elements within their latest responsive wireframes
Results
64% reduction in average site speed
39% improvement in time to interactive
64% lower average homepage weight
Estimated $2 million annual revenue impact
Working with Google’s site speed experts, Visualsoft’s developers identified a list of site improvements to minimise site load times and enhance user experience. The team optimised a variety of elements, including sliders, images, fonts, and payments.
After two months, Visualsoft produced exciting performance wins across the 13 clients. Overall the average site speed fell by 64%, with one client’s speed improving by 93%. The test group’s average homepage weight also went down, falling by 64%. Time to interactive – a metric that shows how long it takes for a page to become interactive – improved by 39% on average. Visualsoft estimates the annual revenue impact of the changes for the 13 clients at over $2 million.
The results of the test prompted the Visualsoft team to not only change the way they onboard clients, but also to implement the winning framework as a core update for their enterprise clients.
With the sites running faster, Visualsoft has also been able to produce tangible upticks in clients’ Mobile Ads performance.
“An increasing use of Mobile Ads paired with a faster mobile site has generated fantastic results over the last 12 months.”
– Gavin Lowther, Head Of Digital, Visualsoft
For instance, one account experienced significant uplifts in mobile performance after migrating to Visualsoft’s platform. Site speed improvements combined with a mobile-first Google Ads strategy helped the account gain 62% more traffic, 95% more conversions, and 8% lower cost per acquisition year over year.
Looking ahead, Visualsoft is continuing to make use of the latest tools and tactics to deliver outstanding outcomes for clients. Its R&D team is currently working on its next-generation of responsive stores, and is looking to utilise both Progressive Web App and AMP technologies to deliver content quickly and offer excellent user experiences to its clients' customers. Visualsoft has also already moved away from last-click attribution within Google Ads and is taking advantage of Store Visits reporting for some clients.
“It’s now time to ensure we are at the forefront by supporting our clients in understanding the user journey and the lifetime value, so attribution is one of our top priorities for the coming year.”
– Gavin Lowther, Head Of Digital, Visualsoft
