As of February 2025, there were 5.56 billion internet users worldwide, which amounted to 67.9 percent of the global population. 1 With such a huge number of internet users, digital marketing for brands has become a necessity.
More than online presence, website speed optimization for e-commerce businesses is crucial. Image and video optimization allows your audience to enjoy premium user experience, meanwhile you gain traction and rank higher.
But image or video optimization isn’t a one man show; it requires skilled individuals in the field of digital marketing to make your website stand out. For your business in the UAE, a reliable digital marketing company in Dubai can help you with not only media optimization but also offer the best SEO services in Dubai.
While you search for the best SEO consultant in Dubai, let’s look at 16 efficient ways for image and website optimization so you can wrap your head around the factors.
16 Ways You Can Work on Website Speed Optimization for E-commerce
You can’t make one tweak and expect instant difference; it takes time to see the result of website speed optimization for e-commerce. There are, however, a few tried-and-tested practices to help boost site speed and reliability:
1- Optimize images and videos
Images usually load the slowest on a webpage because image files are larger compared to HTML and CSS files. Fortunately, load time for images can be cut down through image optimization, which usually means lessening its resolution and size, and compressing the image file itself.
Uncompressed videos can noticeably decelerate your site by virtue of their enormous file size and high definition, resulting in longer load times and possible visitor loss. To maximize performance, compressing videos without losing quality, choosing efficient video formats such as MP4 (H.264), and lazy loading are key.
Take the help of a digital marketing agency to ensure proper media optimization on your website.
2-Limit the number of HTTP requests
Most webpages make browsers send more than one HTTP request for different assets on the page, such as images, scripts, and CSS files. Due to these possible problems, the number of assets per page to be loaded should be minimal.
3-Use browser HTTP caching
The browser cache is a temporary storage area where browsers store copies of static files so that they can load recently viewed webpages more efficiently. This significantly decreases the volume of data that the server must transfer to the browser, reducing load times for users who repeatedly visit some pages.
4-Remove unnecessary render-blocking JavaScript
Web pages can contain unwanted code that must be loaded ahead of more vital page content, which slows down the overall loading time.
5-Limit the use of external scripts
Any scripted webpage features that are loaded from elsewhere — like comment systems — must be loaded whenever a page loads.
6-Limit redirect usage
A redirect is where users of one page are redirected to another page instead. Redirects take a few fractions of a second, or even whole seconds, to load pages. Website owners should implement strict policies regarding the use of redirects and regularly scan major web pages for unwanted redirects. If your content is top notch, users will come back to your website no matter what. Let a content marketing agency in Dubai create excellent content so you get to be on top of your game.
7-Use the right formats
To simplify things, Google developed WebP — a format that is compatible with all sorts of images and typically compresses images better than the rest. At the same quality, it’s 26% smaller than PNGs and 25-34% smaller than similar JPEG images.
8-Leverage image compression
Compressing an image reduces the image size without impacting the overall quality. Generally, your image’s size should be between 70-500 KB. You can compress images through web tools, create your own script that will apply compression to the entire website, or employ an image CDN (we’ll discuss image CDNs a bit more later). There are two ways to compress images:
- Lossless compression compresses the file but does not eliminate any of the information, ensuring no loss in quality.
- Lossy compression offers high compression, but perhaps at the cost of overall quality.
Utilize lossless compression for logos and product pictures but lossy compression for large background pictures.
9-Apply precise image dimensions
The world is now filled with lots of different kinds of devices with various screen sizes and abilities. The ideal solution, thus, is to store a number of different versions of each image on the server so that the right size can be served instantly to the user.
10-Enable lazy loading images and videos
Another effective way is to change the way images are loaded on your website. Lazy loading is one of the most effective ways to reduce initial load time and enhance the overall site performance.
Lazy loading delays the loading of videos and embedded content, say YouTube videos or Google Maps, until scrolled to by the user, enhancing the initial page load times. This approach reduces unnecessary server calls, as such resources are only loaded when needed, hence enhancing the site’s performance.
Google factors in page speed when determining Quality Score. A higher Quality Score can lead to lower cost-per-click (CPC) and better ad placements. With a PPC Agency in Dubai, you can share relevant ads on your website and also pop up on other platforms.
11-Disable hotlinking to images
Hotlinking occurs when certain third-party sites place an image of your website based on the web link of that image hosted at your server. This implies they are utilizing your web server for hosting resources in their site. To prevent hotlinking, you must install proper HTTP headers for your images.
12- Enable Caching
Browser caching stores webpage resource files locally on a machine when someone visits a webpage. Caching enables the browser not to need to re-download the entire page when somebody revisits your website, something which can tremendously enhance loading time. You may enable caching by introducing specific directives within your site file or under settings for a content management system.
Faster-loading pages keep visitors engaged. If a page loads slowly, users might leave (high bounce rate), which negatively affects SEO. Search engine bots crawl cached content faster, optimizing crawl budgets for larger websites. For this, you can get the help of SEO services in Dubai to grow your brand virtually.
13-Minify Code
Code minifying consists of stripping extra characters from your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript codes without modifying the functionality of such files. One can obtain specialized tools for auto-minification so that code will be tightened, and files shrink.
14- Use CDN
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a system of servers spread around the world that serve web content depending on the location of the user. Hosting your site’s static assets on a CDN ensures that users are served data from the nearest server, minimizing latency and load times.
15-Reduce Server Response Time
Optimize your server speed by opting for a stable host, better server hardware with faster speeds or database optimization.
16- Adopt HTTP/2
HTTP/2 provides features such as multiplexing and server push that can enhance page loading speed compared to HTTP/1.1. Make sure your server and website are HTTP/2 compatible.
