Google's June 2021 Update to the PageSpeed Algorithm is going to change the e-commerce game

Are you ready?

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Google's June 2021 update will now account for user experience along with technical performance

What is Google Page Speed?

Google Page Speed is one of the fundamental metrics Google uses as a part of its Page Rank algorithm to list sites during searches – a low Page Speed score has two huge impacts –

1. Decrease in Google search ranking.
2. Reduced organic traffic

They are introducing 3 new metrics to algorithmically measure the user experience of any web page.

Interactivity First Input Delay (FID)
Loading Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Visual Stability Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Making your site ready for June 2021 and beyond

Google suggests optimizations to bump up your score during their assessment. Performing these optimizations is the best way to be prepared for this and future ranking updates.

Here’s a list of the most common performance inhibitors

Not minifying CSS and JS

Minifying is the process of removing redundant and unnecessary data & code and can make pages load quicker.

Using JPEG and Gif

Image formats like JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP often provide better compression than PNG or JPEG, which means faster downloads and less data consumption.

Not using PNG, MPE4

These next-gen image formats help you reduce image size.

No image size optimization

Using the optimal image size ensures you are balancing image resolution and experience with an image that is not too large and inhibiting performance.

No Lazy Loading of images

Lazy loading is a technique in which you do not load a resource until it’s needed. This means the page loads and is responsive quicker than having to wait for all resources to load.

No AMP for mobile pages

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are lightweight pages designed to give mobile users a fast and more engaging experience. AMP isn’t a ranking factor, but speed is, and AMP pages are much faster.

Loading of GTM Container during page load

Google Tag Manager, or GTM, is a tool used to manage third party tracking scripts across your site, which can then be analysed. Loading all the tracking elements is resource and time intensive. Instead, implementing a listener and only loading them when required makes the site quicker and more seamless.

Loading all Shopify apps

Loading all installed Shopify applications at once can drastically slow down the load time of a page. Loading them as they are needed can make the page faster and reduce time to interaction.

Loading all third-party apps

Third party integrations can be time consuming as your site has to connect to the tools. Loading them as they are needed can make sure your page is ready and apps are loaded on demand.

Not adding alt text to images links

Alt text is text attributed to an image that describes its contents. This helps with image SEO from a crawlability perspective and experience in case an image fails to load – the alt text will load instead.