Ten products or ten thousand, on the platform you are on now or the one you move to. That is the span an ecommerce agency Raleigh brands keep has to cover.
Every catalog starts small enough that browsing just works. Then one day yours does not, and nobody can say when it changed.
So we measured it. On 31 home and furniture stores we opened the page people browse a category on, and timed it. The middle one took 3.7 seconds. Fifteen sat in the band Google calls poor.
The surprising part was what did not explain it. The store loading the most pieces was faster than average, and the store loading the fewest was among the slowest. An ecommerce agency Raleigh brands hire should have checked that before recommending anything.
In short
Ecomm Wizards is an ecommerce agency Raleigh brands hire to design, build, move and grow online stores. We work on the platform you are on today. We say which parts are worth keeping before anything gets rebuilt.
Growing brands add products faster than they rebuild. Forty became four hundred one launch at a time, and no single launch was the moment to start again.
Your home page still looks right, because it never had to hold four hundred of anything. The damage is one level down, on the page where somebody is trying to narrow the field.
That is usually when brands go looking for help, and the point an ecommerce agency Raleigh brands hire should measure before proposing anything.
Everlast
Evie Lou
Candy Kittens
There is a published number for this. Google treats a page as good when its biggest element appears within two and a half seconds, and poor once it passes four. The reading is taken at the seventy-fifth percentile, so it is not your best visit that counts. It is close to your worst.
And the same number reaches search. Google states plainly that these measures are used by its ranking systems. Relevance still wins, so a slow page about the right thing beats a fast page about nearly the right thing. But where two are close, this is not nothing.
So the bill arrives twice. Once from the visitor who leaves before the grid fills, and once from a search engine that noticed. An ecommerce agency Raleigh brands trust should show you both numbers for your own store.
Nobody ranking for this work publishes a measurement, so here is ours. At 31 home and furniture stores we opened the page shoppers browse a category on and timed how long it took to show its largest element. It is the first thing an ecommerce agency Raleigh brands shortlist should do for your store.
| What we measured | Across the 31 stores |
|---|---|
| How long the middle store took | 3.7 seconds |
| Sat in the band Google calls poorPoor starts at four seconds. | 15 of 31 |
| Sat in the band Google calls good | 8 of 31 |
| Slowest store on the list | 25.5 seconds |
| Fastest store on the list | 1.4 seconds |
| Pieces the middle store loaded | 434 |
| The store that loaded the mostMore than any other store, and quicker than most of them. | 1,108 pieces, 2.9 seconds |
| The store that loaded the fewestThe lightest page we measured, and one of the five slowest. | 72 pieces, 8.6 seconds |
Read the last two lines together and the usual advice falls over. One store asks for fifteen times as much as the other and still shows up six seconds sooner.
So the problem is not how much a page loads. It is the order. A page that fetches its main picture first and its tracking last feels quick even when it is heavy. One that waits on a script before drawing anything feels slow with barely anything on it.
That is worth knowing before you pay anyone to strip things out, and a fair thing to ask any ecommerce agency Raleigh brands recommend.
The home page is the one everybody tests. It has the fewest things on it, and your team looks at it every day.
The category page is where the catalog shows up. Forty products or four hundred, this is the page that has to carry them. It is also where a shopper decides whether you have what they want.
And it gets worse as you grow. Every launch adds to it and nothing comes off, which is why an ecommerce agency Raleigh brands keep looks here first.
Want the same timing run on your own category page? Tell us the address and we will send what we find.
Get in touch with usWhat we do
Take one or take all four. Each links to the store it was done for, and none assumes you are starting again. This is the range an ecommerce agency Raleigh brands hire should cover.
Design and build
What an ecommerce website design company Raleigh brands shortlist should be judged on is the category page, not the home page.
Ecommerce development
Most ecommerce development Raleigh brands pay for is not a new store. It is the handful of things the old one cannot do.
Migration
Growth
What actually breaks in each. Ask any ecommerce agency Raleigh brands shortlist to be this specific about yours.
Large pieces and long lead times, where dimensions decide it.
What breaks first: Filters that cannot narrow by size, so your visitor just scrolls.
Deep size and color grids, where one style becomes forty rows.
What breaks first: A page that loads every variant image before your first product shows.
Small baskets, repeat buyers, and gifting that peaks for six weeks.
What breaks first: Seasonal ranges bolted on as pages your buyers never find in January.
Technical specs that decide the sale, across sizes and grades.
What breaks first: Kit priced like a commodity, with nothing for you to compare.
Not sure which of the four you need? Describe the store and we will say where we would start.
Get in touch with usFour things that hold whatever you buy. Hold every ecommerce agency Raleigh brands talk to against the same four.
The checks run on your current store, on whatever it is built on. If it does not need replacing, we will tell you that and say what does.
We time the pages we are asked to fix, and time them again when done. You see both numbers, not a description.
The code, the accounts and the licenses are in your name. If you leave there is nothing to ask us for.
If it has to change, you see it and agree first.
That is fine, and it is not the first question we would ask. The timing above runs the same way whatever a store is built on, because it measures the page rather than the platform.
Any ecommerce agency Raleigh brands trust should be able to work on what you already have. If moving would help we will say so, and if it would not we will say that too.
They may be right, and the way to settle it is a number rather than an opinion.
Time your category page cold on a phone, on mobile data. That is the visit that decides it, and the one an office machine never reproduces.
Plenty of good reasons to, and we will not pretend otherwise. Someone in the room for a workshop is worth having.
Just ask both of us the same thing first. Have them time your category page and say what loads first. Distance does not decide that answer, and it is the one you are buying.
Then this should be quick to settle.
A recent build with a slow category page usually has an order problem rather than a weight problem. That is a far smaller job than the one you already paid for, and any ecommerce agency Raleigh brands shortlist should spot it in an afternoon.
With the page you have the most of. Whichever category holds the biggest share of your catalog carries the most weight, and nobody has opened it on a phone in a year.
We time it cold on mobile data and watch the order things arrive in. That tells us whether you have a weight problem or an order problem, and they need opposite fixes.
Then you get the list, worst first. Hand it to us or to anyone else. Any ecommerce agency Raleigh brands hire should start that way.
The first conversation is about what is actually slow and why. It costs you nothing, including when the answer is that we would change very little.
Get in touch with usGoogle counts your page good when the biggest thing on screen appears within two and a half seconds, and poor after four. When we timed 31 home and furniture stores, the middle one took 3.7 seconds and fifteen were over four.
Usually one of two things, and they need opposite fixes. Either the page carries too much, or it carries a normal amount in the wrong order. Timing it cold on a phone tells you which, and guessing wrong wastes the work.
Yes. We work on whatever your store runs on now. The first job is finding out whether the platform is the problem or something sitting on top of it. Often it is not the platform.
Yes, though not as much as people hope. Google says these measures are used by its ranking systems, and also that the most relevant page still wins. So speed rarely beats a better answer, but it can separate your page from one that is otherwise close.
There is no number. The store loading the most pieces in our scan was quicker than most. What matters is what loads first, not how much there is, which is why cutting your catalog rarely fixes it.
Yes, and the usual ask is a custom ecommerce website Raleigh NC brands can run themselves: something the team can change without calling anyone. We work remotely, and there is no office in the city to visit. Where you sit does not change how the work is scoped or delivered.
Four things, usually. An ecommerce agency Raleigh brands hire designs how your store looks and how people move through it. It builds what a theme cannot. It moves the store when it stops fitting. And it keeps testing what makes people buy.
Usually, and often the quickest route. We can scope and hand over, or take the parts nobody on your team has time for. We will not quietly replace somebody doing a decent job.
Rarely. Most of what we find on a slow category page is fixable without touching the rest of the site. We will tell you when a rebuild really is the answer, and it is less often than you would think.
A focused fix is usually weeks. Full ecommerce website development Raleigh brands take on runs to months. Most of that time goes on parts nobody shows you. Your product data, your other systems, and whatever has to still work on launch day.
Next step
The same timing we ran on 31 stores, run on yours.
Send one address and we will come back with:
It stops at the findings, and you can hand them to anyone.
No charge, and no follow-up sequence.
A developer replies within one working day. Not a salesperson.
