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AI, machine learning and generative AI.

Automation.

Augmented reality.

RFID, QR codes and other smart store technologies.

Mobile technologies.

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What is a pop-up shop? Everything you need to know to try short-term retail > How to set up a pop-up shop in 6 stages. Set yourself up for success with this handy checklist > How To Market Your Pop-Up Store > 6 Pop-Up Shop Strategies And Marketing Tactics for Success

Whether your pop-up stores are around for one day or six months, it won't stay put for long. As the owner, you'll want to generate as much revenue and buzz as you can in a short amount of time.

To maximize both your investments and profit, your pop-up should turn heads. It should let your audience know that they need to snag your product right now, as the juicy offer will soon go away. Not to mention, it's a win-win - a low-risk option for you, and a one-time opportunity for them.

Businesses have been using pop-up shops as a marketing tactic for years. But what are pop-up shops? They are essentially temporary stores that are set up for a limited amount of time, usually to promote a new product, service, or brand. While pop-up shops can be a great marketing tool, they need to be executed properly in order to be successful. In this blog post, we will discuss some of the best pop-up shop strategies and marketing tactics to help ensure your success.

A successful pop-up store boils down to three pop-up shop strategies and marketing tactics: having empathy for your customer, making a great impression, and making lots of sales. Here are some pop-up shop strategies and marketing tactics and strategies that will help you achieve your goals.

Why pop-up shop strategy and marketing tactics important for success

A pop-up shop strategy is an effective way to market your products and services online. It is one of the best ways to increase traffic and sales. In addition, this type of marketing tactic will help you build relationships with potential customers, allowing them to get to know you better before they buy from you.

In order to be successful, any business needs to have a well-thought-out marketing strategy. This is especially true for pop-up shops, which are becoming an increasingly popular way to do business. By their very nature, pop-up shops are temporary, so it is even more important to make sure that your marketing strategy is on point. There are a few different things to keep in mind when it comes to marketing a pop-up shop.

First, you need to make sure that you are getting the word out about your shop in the right way. Second, you need to create a strong brand identity for your shop. And finally, you need to be sure to measure your success and adjust your strategy as needed.

Book the Right Space

A great event requires that you book a pop-up space that helps your branding pop. Location is one of the most important factors of a successful pop-up shop. Having a pop-up shop in a prime location will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to marketing to foot traffic and passerby's.

In the words of Stell, who booked her pop-up retail space from Storefront, "I envisioned a luxurious space in a prime location such as SoHo and this location more than exceeded my expectations. The space was well lit and elevated the look of the brand."

As for the team at Obey Clothing, Country Manager Nicolas Sere was happy that the pop-up location he booked was ready for move-in and quick to set up. And as for you, you can choose among 10,000+ well-located venues for rent.

The right venue will get you in front of the audience, but you'll still need to do some work to make sure that the venue pops out. When you have the right retail space booked, spend some time planning the appearance of the venue when looking at it from the street.

Leverage Influencers and Local Personalities

Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/smiling-woman-interviewing-black-female-guest-and-recording-video-6954174/

One great way to build buzz for your pop-up shop is by leveraging the network of others in the local community, and a great way to do this is by leveraging the power of local social media channels, influencers or local personalities.

If you've researched your audience well, you know which local social media influencers would resonate with them most. You can use the search functions on apps like Instagram or TikTok to find social media accounts, and influencers that would be a good fit for your event, there's also influencer search tools that offer more filtering capabilities when it comes to finding influencers in a specific retail location.

Your pop-up shop should offer amenities that make it appealing for influencers to come to the event. It should be an aesthetically pleasing, on-brand, and welcoming space where influencers can shoot selfies, talk about your brand, demo your product, and chat with their followers. Ultimately, the goal is to give them a comfortable environment where they can create content and indirectly build brand awareness for your pop-up.

Back in 2020, men's grooming company Beardbrand opened its first physical barbershop and retail store. Their shop is dedicated to the customer base and influencer-focused content creation, as well as to nurturing meaningful customer relationships.

Inviting influencers to your pop-up shop does not mean you need to spend an arm and a leg to acquire celebrity-level influencers. Hiring micro-influencers to attend the pop-up event can be just as impactful, and much more budget-friendly.

Local influencers have a lot of pull within the community, and the main goal of inviting these influencers to your event is to have them post content about the pop-up shop so that more locals become intrigued enough to pop in for a visit.

Consider leveraging tools like engagement calculators to dictate whether or not an influencer has enough engagement within the community before you send them an invite to attend your event.

Seize Those Seasonal Opportunities

Kowloon Dairy, Hong Kong's premier ice cream brand, is running a Christmas-themed Holiday pop-up store in Central to reach new customers and spread the festive spirit.

Jot down what Marlena Stell, influencer and CEO of Marsté Fashion, told us at Storefront about choosing 4 days for her pop-up shop in SoHo:

" Most people tend to visit the opening weekend anyways, so it was just the best decision for us starting out."

That's why seasonal sales are such huge hits: they end in a blink and everyone loves them. Kowloon Dairy, a Hong-Kong ice cream brand, dedicated a pop-up shop to offer pint-sized ice cream in festive flavors to light up the Christmas spirit. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The pop-up lasted until December 23, which is when the holiday thrills typically plateau.

Cultural holidays like Easter and Christmas might last only for a few days, but the anticipation is huge. You should ride the buzz of excitement to market your products, and match your potential customers' expectations once they're in-store.

Leverage Omnichannel

Image via PR Newswire

Even though 60% of consumers prefer to shop online, that doesn't mean brick-and-mortar stores are out of the question. Your goal is to increase anticipation and retail sales, which requires you to meet customers wherever they're at.

Fortunately, pop-up shops are an essential part of omnichannel retailing. This gives target customers the option to purchase both online and offline, via channels like scannable QR codes, mobile apps, and even instantly selecting home-delivery options.

Retailers can experiment with pop-ups to combine online and offline channels marketing strategies. Back in October 2018, Amazon opened a pop-up fashion shop in London for a week. Its purpose was to get honest feedback on a clothing range, customer experience, and general prices.

According to The Guardian, pop-up shoppers could "buy goods in the store and take them away in the traditional way or scan codes on product tags with Amazon's mobile phone app or use in-store tablets to order for home delivery."

This range certainly boosted the overall customer experience and the shop's first impression.

Offer More Payment Options

Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-payment-terminal-2988232/

Want more sales? Then avoid placing obstacles in the way of your customers' payment methods.

It's true that only 50% of Americans carry cash with them - but they still do, and may prefer to pay for products that way. It's not up to you. Conversely, the 83% who own at least 1 credit card may want to use it for every purchase.

Your investments (as well as your customers' motivation to buy) will be in vain if you don't accept multiple common payment methods. This is expected of your shop, and customers could easily go somewhere else if their expectations aren't met. Accepting a range of payment options such as debit/credit cards, cash, and contactless methods is key to handling a professional shop and avoiding friction.

Consider using payment processors like Square, they tend to have a much lower setup cost associated with them, which makes taking more payment methods much less of a nuisance for you and your team.

After Your Event Ends...

That first impression you've worked hard to create? You should make it last longer than your pop-up shop.

From the opening day to the last day of your event, it's a great idea to make your online presence all about it. It's the perfect time to encourage customers to share their photos and feedback, tagging and thanking them whenever possible.

You can also create an online album on Facebook on your company's website to share the best moments. Be sure to follow up on the pop-up shop's social media engagement - like hashtags, comments, and keywords - to measure its success. You can also use social media analytics tools to analyze the performance of your event so that you're able to calculate the impact and adjust your strategy for the next event.

And, even if it isn't a success, the pop-up experience will teach you what to do (and what to avoid) in your next event. This way, you'll create an unforgettable in-store experience, fortify your relationships with customers, and sell lots of products in just a few days.

Conclusion

In conclusion, pop-up shops are increasingly popular. The shopping experience helps businesses test products and identify new markets - both critical steps in building a business. Sales range from a couple of hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. If you own a small business, pop-up shops are an excellent way to test products and find new customers. They require no special equipment, just some creativity and a willingness to have a flexible schedule.

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6 Pop-Up Shop Strategies And Marketing Tactics for Success

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Whether your pop-up stores are around for one day or six months, it won't stay put for long. As the owner, you'll want to generate as much revenue and buzz as you can in a short amount of time. To maximize both your investments and profit, your pop-up should turn heads.

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As a small business owner, each day is an adventure filled with the excitement of introducing unique products to the world and the challenge of making them stand out in an ever-crowded marketplace.

Pop-up shops are a great way to showcase your products in a fresh, creative environment while driving buzz, awareness, and sales. But without a goodpop-up shop marketingstrategy you could spend a lot of time and money on the event without much success. That's why it's essential to understand the ins and outs of pop-up shop marketing.

Whether you're a seasoned retailer or a passionate entrepreneur dipping your toes into the retail space for the first time, use this article as your guide to learn what pop-up shop marketing is, why it's important, and ideas and strategies that you can use to increase foot traffic and sales at your next event.

What is pop-up shop marketing?

Pop-up shop marketing is a strategy that involves the temporary setup of a retail space. This isn't your traditional brick-and-mortar store that's open year-round. Instead, think of a pop-up shop as a unique, short-term event, designed to make a big splash in a short period of time. It's about creating a memorable, one-of-a-kind shopping experience that people will want to be part of.

Why is marketing your pop-up shop important?

Pop-up shop marketing, as a strategic tool, helps small retail business owners like you extend your brand's reach, tap into new markets, and offer an exclusive, urgency-driven shopping experience to your potential and existing customers.

A pop-up shop is more than just a sales platform; it's a brand-building channel that fosters customer loyalty and enhances brand visibility, leading to long-term sales growth. That's why using the right pop-up shop marketing strategy is crucial to ensuring that your unique ideas reach the right audience.

In order to maximize the impact of your pop-up shop, it's important to develop a strategy that builds anticipation, creates buzz, and amplifies brand awareness.

8 pop-up shop marketing ideas

Now that you know what pop-up shop marketing is and why it's an important growth strategy, let's look at some ideas and tips to help you spread the word about your next event:

1. Involve the media and influencers

2. Create buzz for your pop-up shop with social media

3. Don't forget visual signage and cues

4. Create a Facebook event

5. List your pop-up shop on Google Maps

6. Have wayfinding assistants

7. Employ local marketing and geo-targeting

8. Keep information consistent

1. Involve the media and influencers

Create a list of the key influencers, bloggers, and digital creatorsthat best represent your vertical and reach out to them, highlighting different incentives for them to get involved. Set aside some budget to offer free products in advance of your pop-up launch if they're not already familiar with your brand, and/or offer them an exclusive discount code to share with their audience.

Understand who you're pitching and what their needs are.There's nothing wrong with using a template, but you'll still have to customize it to elicit a good response rate.

Give the media enough advance warningabout your event to leave them time to do a story. Aim for two to three months before launch for local print, and two weeks for online media.

Keep your media pitch short and simple.Be considerate, and make sure all of the important information about your event is prominent and easy to find.

Open your pop-up shop on a high note. Consider throwing a launch party and inviting an exclusive list of who's who in your local region. For example, when apparel brandKithopened a pop-up in Paris, it had a fantastic turnout and received great coverage from influential local blogs read by its target demographic.

2. Create buzz for your pop-up shop with social media

Social media is a great tool for increasing awareness of your pop-up shop (and your brand). Let's look at how you can leverage this pop-up shop marketing tactic before, during, and after the event:

Pre-pop-up

Keep any buzz you established with your initial outreach going.Include a branded hashtag in your press materials and other collateral to help you find and curate content posted about your event online.

Look for co-marketing opportunities.Ask local businesses near your pop-up shop to mention you on their social media feeds and in their email newsletters (and offer to do the same for them).

Post behind-the-scenes content on your own social channelsshowing your pop-up being built and set up. Give users a sneak preview of the products they can expect to see. Host an online contest and announce the winner at your pop-up.

Send influencers, bloggers, and creators your productsand ask them to post about them. The more products they can touch and feel, the more likely they are to connect with one of the products and post about them.Note:Make sure to schedule this beforehand and get in contact with them three to four weeks before your launch.

At the pop-up

Music for the mood.What kind of mood are you trying to create in your pop-up shop? Make sure your playlist matches that. If you're a streetwear fashion brand, orchestra music may not be the right fit.

Encourage user-generated content.You have to create moments around your store that make customers want to take a picture or a video. In other words, you have tomake your store Instagrammable. This could mean a selfie wall, a personalization of the product, or funny signage that people want to share and remember. You want customers taking pictures around the store and posting them online-you benefit from the free advertising and positive word of mouth. You can even gamify it to incentivize sharing with contests.

Encourage influencers to create content.Taking it a step further, encourage Instagram influencers and TikTok creators to create and share content while at your pop-up. This will help you build a community around your brand-and bring their entire fanbase to your pop-up and/or website as well.

At one of its pop-up shops, florist brand Misflorismdid a flower wall installation for couples to take photos in front of-a concept quite literally born out of people's commitment to getting the perfect Instagram shot.

Couples from all over the San Francisco Bay Area came to The Dating Shop pop-up to take pictures in front of Misflorism's flower installation. Neyborly

Post-pop-up

Don't let the conversation stop once your pop-up is over.Keep up the buzz you worked so hard to build and continue engaging with people talking about your brand and the pop-up experience.

Leverage user-generated contenton your website, social feeds, product pages, and other online channels.Bazaarvoicefound that more than two-thirds of shoppers prefer real customer photos of brands, not just on display or professional shots. Interesting product page photos can increase conversions byas much as 24%.

Use your point-of-sale to collect email addressesand run targeted social media ads to drive shoppers to your online store. The lessons you learn from your pop-up can inform future digital campaigns.

Sending digital receipts via email is a great way to organically collect customer contact information at checkout and build an email list to fuel your retention marketing. Just make sure they've opted in to hearing from you before sending them anything.

3. Don't forget visual signage and cues

First and foremost, you'll want to make sure there are ample visual cues at your actual pop-up. This includes your storefront, window displays, signage, and sandwich boards. You can also create temporary chalk art leading pedestrians to your pop-up with messages and directional signage written in chalk (just make sure this is OK at your location from a legal perspective first).

Evelyn & Bobbiepainted the outside of the building for its pop-up with an eye-catching, branded design to help the pop-up stand out against the surrounding businesses.

Pop-up shop marketing can-and should-get more creative than traditional brick-and-mortar storestrategies. Remember, a pop-up is an event, not a typical retail experience. It should be presented as such, particularly if it is a holiday pop-up shop.

"Though at first blush it seems counter-intuitive, a pop-up should look exactly like a pop-up. It should feel temporary," says Christian Gilbert, senior account executive at brand experience agency MC2. "Passersby should know instantly that it's different from other shops-that it will go away, and they'd better check it out now."

Inflatable signage, cubes, marquees, and even logos can help shoppers spot your pop-up from afar.

"Brands with a healthy budget could take inspiration from Samsung at Americana in LA," Christian says. "Every car entering the parking garage was presented with a gigantic wall mural advertising the [pop-up]." This spread awareness about the event for individuals who parked at the garage for other reasons.
💡Looking for more ideas? Check out these two articles:
4. Create a Facebook event

Facebook events are a great way to not only keep the pop-up top of mind but also to share important updates and-you guessed it-the location of the pop-up.

When you create an event on Facebook, you can list the location of the event. If your pop-up is at an established business, landmark, or other location, you'll often be able to simply type that in as the location.

You can also enable the Message Host feature, if you're able to keep up with it. This way you can be available to help people find their way in case they're lost.

Not holding your pop-up at an established or well-known location? Or maybe the location is very large, making it hard to pinpoint where your pop-up shop is. With the coordinates, users can tap on the address and be taken to navigation assistance.

5. List your pop-up shop on Google Maps

Speaking of maps, these are crucial for helping people find your pop-up location. One of the biggest mistakes a brand can make, according to Christian, is "not including the address and ZIP code of the pop-up so shoppers can get smartphone directions."

You can list the pop-up address on your site, as well as embed a Google Map with a pin denoting the location.

1. Go toGoogle Maps.

2. Type in the address.

3. Click theShareicon.

4. Click theEmbed a maptab.

5. ClickCOPY HTML.

6. Paste it into the HTML of your website or blog.

Use Shopify's Google channel to manage your Google Merchant Center, Google Business Profile, and Google Ads accounts from Shopify's back office. Get all the perks of marketing your business on Google without jumping between accounts.

You can create your own Google Map and embed it on your site, as well as offer a direct link for users to navigate. Google has a guide to help walk you through this process.

You can also create your own map that has helpful landmarks and visual cues, similar to how tourist destinations often have free maps of the area to help visitors get around.

FURTHER READING:Increase your online and offline store traffic with Google's "Near Me" results.

6. Have wayfinding assistants

Sometimes, maps and signs just aren't enough and it's time to call in human reinforcements. Assigning employees, or even hiring temporary staff, to stand near the location of your pop-up to direct people where to go can help increase foot traffic. (Bonus if they can offer samples to lure in passersby!)

Roody Originals, which sells ugly Christmas sweaters, has used this very tactic. The brand has successfully opened eight seasonal pop-up shops, timed for when its products are in demand. Promotional staff donning ugly sweaters stand outside and give away chocolates.

"While we didn't ask passersby for anything or even mention the shop unless they asked, we always got an uplift in customers when out on the street," says CEO and founder Ross Culliton.

One of Roody Originals' pop-ups was at an upstairs space, which had the potential to deter foot traffic. As a solution, Ross hired a band to play out the window.

"Crowds gathered on the street to look, and passersby came up to check out what was happening," he says. The band indirectly helped shoppers identify where the action was at.

7. Employ local marketing and geo-targeting

This next pop-up shop marketing idea is a bit more advanced, but it can yield great results when done well. Because your pop-up shop will be in a specific location and you'll ideally target a specific customer profile, you'll have extremely targeted advertising options.

Christian stresses the importance of knowing who you're selling to at your pop-up.

"Closely identify the target audience," he says. "This not only ties into the physical location of the pop-up, but also how to reach them. Use the medium your target demo uses."

Run geo-targeted paid social and display ad campaigns (again, depending on where your audience hangs out) to get the word out about your pop-up to a local audience.

"Be very specific about what is happening at the pop-up to heighten curiosity," advises Christian. "For St. Ives in Manhattan, a social media campaign to young women pushed a particular aspect of the pop-up experience: mixing your own cosmetics."
💡Check out these guides to get started with your own local marketing campaigns:
8. Keep information consistent

While there are many different pop-up shop marketing tactics to employ to help shoppers find your pop-up, it's even more imperative to keep the information consistent. It could be helpful to create a list of where you've advertised or published the location of your pop-up, so you can easily refer to it should the location change or you need to update it to something more specific.

Get started: pop-up shop marketing

Now that you know pop-up shop marketing offers a versatile and dynamic approach to retail that can help take your business to the next level, it's time to introduce your brand to a wider audience, test new markets, and create an unforgettable shopping experience for your customers.

Make sure you have a point of sale (like Shopify POS) equipped with useful features to accept in-person payments wherever you sell, track inventory across channels, and keep in touch with customers well after the pop-up shop has closed its doors.

Which tactics have you employed to increase awareness and attendance to your pop-up? How do you make sure shoppers don't get lost on the way?

Pop-up shop marketing FAQ

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Pop-Up Shop Marketing: 8 Must-Have Tips for Success (2023) - Shopify

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Pop-up shop marketing is crucial to the success of your next event. Get ideas and tips to help build buzz before, during, and after your next pop-up shop.

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1. nike

2. supreme

3. bape

4. amiri

5. vlone

6. cortiez

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Japanese street-wear brand BAPE aka A Bathing Ape are opening their very own Pirate pop up shop in East London’s Brick Lane, their first ever – YEEEE HAAAA!

The store opens on Jan 22nd for just 9 days. Expect limited edition, exclusive, one off pieces for a fraction of the usual costs.Jan 22nd – 31st 12pm – 6:30pm

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Ooooo what's this, what's this? Japanese street-wear brand BAPE aka A Bathing Ape are opening their very own Pirate pop up shop in East London's Brick Lane, their first ever - YEEEE HAAAA!

The store opens on Jan 22nd for just 9 days. Expect limited edition, exclusive, one off pieces for a fraction of the usual costs.

And if this isn't your thing, trust us these babies sell like hot cakes on eBay!

Jan 22nd - 31st 12pm - 6:30pm
Dray Walk Gallery, Brick Lane, E1

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A BATHING APE has become a streetwear powerhouse in the UK since its inception in 1993. Now, the brand is celebrating the British community that has supported its vibrant designs since the jump with an exclusive London-based sample sale.

The Japanese imprint will be taking over Bone Soda's DIJONSS, one of London's hottest "purposeful modular spaces" that allows like-minded people to learn new skills, connect with peers, and foster creative thinking.

DIJONSS is also a champion of fashion excellence too, with its soon-to-be-open BAPE installation housing over 3000 archival pieces and unseen samples at up to 40% off RPR.

Open from February 9 through to February 11, the BAPE sample sale will include styles from the brand's BAPE, BABY MILO, APEE, BAPY, and Mastermind umbrellas.

Take a closer look at the official opening dates and times below and be sure to head to the event at DIJONSS, Old Truman Brewery, London, E1 6QL.

Friday - 10:00-19:00
Saturday - 10:00-19:00
Sunday - 12:00-18:00

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DIJONSS to host A BATHING APE London Sample Sale

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DIJONSS to host A BATHING APE London Sample Sale: With the event being held at Shoreditch's DIJONSS from February 9.

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SDD24/14_05: The BAPE® pop-up at Guangzhou Taikoohui offers a captivating futuristic design experience, drawing inspiration from the concept of Noah's Ark and seamlessly blending modern science fiction aesthetics.

This remarkable space evokes the image of a colossal ship gracefully docking on the MU-covered bridge of the shopping destination, transporting visitors into a realm of mystery and distant futurism.

The store's elliptical arc-shaped outer wall, meticulously crafted from transparent glass and frosted high mirror stainless steel adorned with sleek white camouflage, infuses the environment with a luxurious yet street-inspired ambiance, perfectly marrying minimalist science fiction elements.

With the addition of bright, soft natural lighting effects facilitated by white track lights and transparent glass ceilings, the immersive journey through time and space is intensified, promising an unparalleled retail experience for all who step inside.

Pictures courtesy of A Bathing Ape.

SDD24/14_05: The BAPE® pop-up at Guangzhou Taikoohui offers a captivating futuristic design experience, drawing inspiration from the concept of Noah's Ark and seamlessly blending modern science fiction aesthetics.

This remarkable space evokes the image of a colossal ship gracefully docking on the MU-covered bridge of the shopping destination, transporting visitors into a realm of mystery and distant futurism.

The store's elliptical arc-shaped outer wall, meticulously crafted from transparent glass and frosted high mirror stainless steel adorned with sleek white camouflage, infuses the environment with a luxurious yet street-inspired ambiance, perfectly marrying minimalist science fiction elements.

With the addition of bright, soft natural lighting effects facilitated by white track lights and transparent glass ceilings, the immersive journey through time and space is intensified, promising an unparalleled retail experience for all who step inside.

Pictures courtesy of A Bathing Ape.

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A Bathing Ape Pop-Up Space, Taikoohui Guangzhou China.

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SDD24/14_05: The BAPE® pop-up at Guangzhou Taikoohui offers a captivating futuristic design experience, drawing inspiration from the concept of Noah's Ark and seamlessly blending modern science fiction aesthetics. This remarkable space evokes the image of a colossal ship gracefully docking on the MU-covered bridge of the shopping destination, transporting visitors into a realm of mystery and distant futurism.

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A Bathing Ape aka BAPE is a Japanese Streetwear fashion brand created and managed by fashion designer and music producer Nigo in 1993. The brand sells in their 19 stores, streetwear clothes for men, women, and children as well as lifestyle accessories. The brand logo is an ape that represents the focus of the brand, which is young people who lead complacent and privileged lives.

Their website role is transactional because BAPE provides some products for customers to purchase online and it can also be a brand-building site since not all products are available to purchase online. Additionally, the website provides a full experience to the customer through lookbooks, which gives the brand support and awareness.

Compared to BAPEs competitors websites such as Supreme and Palace, two skateboarding clothing brands. BAPE website is very organized and catchy throughout the website, especially with its use of ape logos and patterns in different colours. On the top, you can find either news, lookbooks, store list and the webstore. On the top right corner, there is the option to change currencies meanwhile in their competitor's websites it can be difficult to find. Also, they make it simple for the buyer to segment their purchases depending on the type, category, and price of the clothes. Neither Supreme or Palace websites have that option which can result in longer purchase process since the customer has to click on every item to check the size availability. It is highly recommended for them to offer the category-specific sorting for all products depending on the size and stock availability.

One thing in common the three brands have is that when the buyer is looking for the item, all the pictures are just portraits of the item itself but there is not a picture of someone actually wearing it. By doing this it could convince and attract more people to purchase online as you can tell and imagine how a specific item will look on you. However, they all still have the lookbook option where you can find all the photoshoots with models and celebrities wearing all their clothing, thus, it makes all the shopping process longer and the majority of the people would not have always the time to go through the lookbook option.

The brand uses a mix of demographic, geographic and psychographic segmentation strategies including people all around the world, but, mostly people living in urban highly populated areas with a high art culture as Tokyo, Shanghai and New York. Mostly the brand targets high income, upper middle class Asian and American from kids to elder men/women who are interested in streetwear fashion or follow the streetwear social group. Constant BAPE buyers are segmented in a member's only group system called BAPE Mania, optimizing their experience by rewarding them with points for every purchase they make and also there are some products only available for those members. The behaviour and psychographics of their customers are mostly related to exclusive people who do not like wearing what everyone else is as they consider streetwear an art movement. Therefore, BAPE doesn't produce large quantities, consequently, people resell items at a high price in the secondary market.

It is important to emphasize that these brands target almost the same customers but BAPE is inspired by Japanese lifestyle and culture (Hip-Hop) meanwhile Supreme is inspired by the European one (skateboarding) regardless it is an American brand, similar to Palace which is a more culture-oriented brand. Ultimately, the personal, cultural trend preference of the customer it is very important when customers are picking a product.

In conclusion, this website is very unique and captivating because of all the colours and graphics they use which generate emotion and empathy. It is also clear that BAPE knows how to segment their market in order to keep being exclusive and boosting their social media through lookbooks and exclusive luxurious style for the youth. It is important to keep up to date with the trend and changes not only clothing wise but media and how the website is created in order to attract and maintain clients. Ideally, meet the customer needs.

Here are some Personas of Bape:

And their Customer journeys:

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A Bathing Ape aka BAPE is a Japanese Streetwear fashion brand created and managed by fashion designer and music producer Nigo in 1993. The brand sells i...

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A Bathing Ape (BAPE): The Rise, Fall, and Rescue of a Fashion Icon - The Case Centre

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At its height, the Japanese luxury street brand BAPE was the must-have item for anyone that mattered in street culture. Rappers used the brand heavily and its iconic camouflage print made frequent appearances in hip-hop videos and concerts. BAPE was also profitable, combining the designs of founder Nigo with an exclusivity strategy based on scarcity: supply was carefully limited and prices were high. But when Nigo abandoned exclusivity to go mainstream, the BAPE brand lost its ‘cool’ and profit turned to red, forcing Nigo to sell his company to Chinese fashion conglomerate I.T Apparels for a shockingly low price. The BAPE case illustrates what can happen when artistic talent and ambition is not accompanied by sound business skills. (The bankruptcy of Osamu Tezuka’s anime studio Mushi Production is another example.) Can I.T turn the BAPE brand around after its dramatic rise and fall in the hands of its founder?

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I mean, his week's article is about BAPE. That brand is what it is today in large part because of the Clipse, so who better to talk about this week than Pusha T & No Malice?

Produced by The Neptunes, of course...

BAPE is one the greatest streetwear brands in history.

In the early 2000s it was highly coveted and worn by the fashionistas (and regular fans who could afford it, of course).

I remember In middle school how rare it was to see someone with a pair of them on - the Bapesta's, BAPE's iconic shoe, which retailed for over $300.
Getting a pair back then was definitely not happening for the kid, but it is what it is.
"You could pay 3 and buy ya self some Bapestas /Bulletproof under T-Shirts because they hate us" - Pharrell, Mr. Me Too

As the times change, so do streetwear trends, and as the streetwear movement matured, BAPE began to fade into obscurity.
That is... until now.
BAPE just turned 30 this year and has been on a mission to re-establish itself in the market - so much so that Gen Z is re-discovering this iconic brand.

But what exactly is BAPE doing to bring itself back into the mix? Let's talk about it.

Japanese designer and DJ Tomoaki Nagao better known as Nigo was looking to get into the fashion scene.

Tomaoki always had an affinity for streetwear and eventually decided to attend fashion school he met two people who would change his life forever.

1. His soon to be business partner Jun Takahashi.

2. Acclaimed designer Hiroshi Fujiwara, who made him an apprentice

Together those three created a perfect storm of sorts.

After working with Fujiwara for a bit, he encouraged Nigo and Takahashi to create their own boutique, which became the home of Jun Takahasi's clothing brand, "Undercover."

Takahashi's brand would soon become a mainstay at their boutique, and it inspired Nigo to create his own line.

He would soon link up with another acclaimed Japanese designer named Sk8thing, and both had an affinity for American culture.

So much so that while watching "Planet of the Apes," the idea struck them for a streetwear brand.

Which is short for "A Bathing Ape" - a play on the Planet of the Apes movie, and the Japanese phrase around "Bathing in lukewarm in water" - someone who's a bit lazy.

BAPE gained massive popularity in Japan & Nigo eventually borrowed 4million yen ($35k) to open BAPE's flagship store in Japan.

That was the turning point for the brand before it eventually expanded into the U.S.

As with many streetwear brands, BAPE was gaining its popularity in underground scenes and started to experience its version of the Hip-hop effect soon after.

According to sources, Biggie was the first rapper to wear BAPE, having seen it on his stylist before a photoshoot.

That eventually led to him getting custom pieces from Nigo, and you know what happened from there: Everybody caught the wave.

In the early 2000s, as new faces in Hip-hop started to emerge, like The Neptunes and Kanye West, different styles of fashion made their way to the forefront.

It was less throwback jerseys and more Polo and Louis Vuitton.

Nigo's brand continued to grow in the U.S., and he was a fan of Pharrell from The Neptunes.

In fact, he used to go to the same jeweler, Jacob, asking him to remake Pharrell's chains for him.

Jacob ,The Jeweler, eventually told Pharrell about Nigo & arranged an introduction. Shortly after that, Nigo brought him to his design studio.

The two hit it off, and Nigo would eventually go on to help Pharrell launch his own streetwear brands BUT the foundation of their relationship led to Pharrell championing BAPE.

And, it just so happens that at time Pharrell was also working closely with other Virginia natives, The Clipse, and they too began to sport BAPE apparel (most notably in the album booklet for their classic album "Hell Hath No Fury").

The combined cultural influence of Pharrell, and The Clipse and a few other rappers led to surge in BAPE's popularity in the U.S.

Nigo decided that it was time to sell BAPE.

Two years later, he would step away from his duties as its creative director in an effort to focus on new ventures, including his next brand, Human Made (a very dope brand btw).

After Nigo left, the brand experienced some level of success, but once fashion trends began to shift in the 2010s, BAPE started to fade from relevancy.

And now BAPE's new investors have been busy and doing all that they can to -re-establish its presence in the market.

Let's talk about it...

BAPE has made a concerted effort to regain its place in culture via co-branded collabs with brands near and dear to Millennials and Gen Z.

They're not just focusing on brands in Hip-hop. BAPE is also exploring other verticals like sports to capture the attention streetwear enthusiasts & casual fans whose interests include things outside of fashion.

In essence, they are acting very much like a challenger brand. Peep a few of our favorite collabs below:

At first glance, it appears that Coke is hoping to make inroads with a younger audience - perhaps to protect itself against any potential slip in market share.

What better place to start than in the world of fashion, and with an iconic streetwear brand no less?

BAPE partnered with Coca-Cola to release a capsule collection this year. it featured 6 pieces in total with co-branded logos in the iconic coca-cola red & BAPE camo.

In 2022, BAPE partnered with Drake's OVO brand (a fashion juggernaut itself) for two capsule collections so far.

Both collections feature a mix of the BAPE camo colorways, the Bathing Ape logo, and the OVO owl.

See below for a sneak peak of the most recent collection between the two brands.

It was huge news in the sports world when Lionel Messi revealed that he was signing with Inter Miami & the marketing team over there is keeping their foot on the gas by capturing the attention of Gen Z with a capsule collection.

The BAPE collab was introduced in August of this year and featured a lookbook with several Inter-Miami players, the iconic BAPE camo in their signature pink colorway, and an abundance options to choose from.

The Adidas collab has many of the features from the other collections mentioned, including more camo colorways & BAPE's spin on the iconic Stan Smith silhouette.

In a true act of co-creation the shoes feature key identifiers from each brand - one side has 3 stripes, and the other has the BAPE star.

However, what truly makes this partnership standout is that it highlights the breadth of BAPE's strategy in the world of sports.

On top of basketball & soccer, they've released golf shoes with their Adidas partners (seen below).

Yes. You read that correctly. BAPE partnered with Squid Game.

The collab featured a line up of tees that included callbacks to both shows. Some featured the contestant number 456, and others featuring the BAPE character "Baby Milo"

Mainly calling this one out because of the recent Squid Game reality show that premiered on Netflix (it's worth watching btw).

BAPE is likely going to continue working with other iconic brands to keep fueling cultural conversation around its resurgence.

Although Nigo isn't a part of the brand anymore, the new generation may not be as concerned, so if the capsule collections are dope they'll undoubtedly latch on.

Personally, I've always thought BAPE was dope, so it's cool to see them make their way back into the limelight.

Who knows, it might be time get a hoodie, or at least some Bapesta's.

Peace.

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The Resurgence of BAPE: A Case Study in Reviving a beloved Brand

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BAPE is one the greatest streetwear brands in history. In the early 2000s it was highly coveted and worn by the fashionistas (and regular fans who could afford it, of course). I remember In middle school how rare it was to see someone with a pair of them on - the Bapesta's, BAPE's iconic shoe, which retailed for over $300.

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Bape Store Harajuku, Tokyo

BAPE store deployed in Hong Kong (2006-2011)

A Bathing Ape (or BAPE) is a Japanese fashion brand founded by Nigo (Tomoaki Nagao) in Ura-Harajuku in 1993. The brand specializes in men's, women's and children's lifestyle and street wear, running 19 stores in Japan, including Bape Stores, Bape Pirate Stores, Bape Kids Stores, Bapexclusive Aoyama, and Bapexclusive Kyoto. The Kyoto store also includes Bape Gallery, a space used for various events and art shows sponsored by Bape. There are also stores located in Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Qingdao, Shenyang, Seoul, Jakarta, Dubai, New York City, Kuala Lumpur, London, Paris, Miami and Los Angeles.

The company previously operated (Busy Work Shop), Bape Cuts hair salon, Bape Café, BABY MILO and The cay Soldier. Nigo also founded the secondary lines AAPE (by A Bathing Ape) and BAPY (Busy Working Lady). In 2011, the company was sold to Hong Kong fashion conglomerate I.T Group for about $2.8 Million. Nigo left the brand in 2013.

Nigo, founder, former owner, and Teriyaki Boyz member cites his mother and father, who were a nurse and a billboard maker respectively, as major influences in the development of his character, though because they both worked, he spent a lot of time alone with toys. He also credits DJ/fashion guru Hiroshi Fujiwara as his business model. His nickname means "number two" in Japanese; the MD of Astoarobot, the fashion store, coined the moniker when he noted the physical resemblance to Fujiwara. Nigo cites his early influences as Elvis, The Beatles and hip-hop acts such as Beastie Boys and Run-DMC.

After studying fashion editing at Bunka Fashion college, he worked as an editor and a stylist for Popeye magazine. After borrowing four million yen from an acquaintance, who also let him use his shop, he opened "Nowhere", his first store, along with Jun Takahashi of Undercover, on April 1, 1993, in Ura-Harajuku. Deciding to start his own brand, he named it after the 1968 film Planet of the Apes. According to Nigo, the name "BAPE" is a reference to "A Bathing Ape in Lukewarm Water". Japanese people typically have daily baths in water at temperatures above 40 °C (104 °F). As such, to bathe in lukewarm water is to complacently overindulge as it implies you have stayed in the bath for so long the water has become cold. This is an ironic reference to the lazy opulence of the younger generation of Japanese, the brand's own customers. To expose the brand he gave T-shirts to the musician Cornelius and Japanese hip-hop group Scha Dara Parr who wore them when performing. For two years he produced 30 to 50 shirts a week, selling half and giving half to friends. In 1997, Nigo released his debut album Ape Sounds under Mo'Wax, with DJ/Producer James Lavelle of UNKLE. Nigo is also co-owner and head designer of Pharrell Williams' clothes brands Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream.

On February 1, 2011, it was announced that A Bathing Ape had been sold to Hong Kong fashion conglomerate I.T Group. I.T purchased a 90.27% stake in A Bathing Ape. In a transaction encompassing HK$21,850,000 (approx. US$ 2.8 million), I.T purchased a total of 668 shares. Exact details regarding the creative future and expansion of A Bathing Ape are unknown; however, A Bathing Ape founder Nigo remained on board as the Creative Director for the next two years.

Bape is a popular Japanese street fashion brand and with many celebrities appearing in magazines and catalogs wearing Bape's clothing.

Bape frequently collaborates with other brands and features characters from popular media such as SpongeBob SquarePants, Marvel comics characters, Nintendo, DC Comics, and Hello Kitty and the Sanrio Family. These designs are used throughout the Bathing Ape range, on goodies, accessories, hoodies, jackets, T-shirts and shoes. A Bathing Ape has also collaborated with many other famous brands such as Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Rimowa, M*A*C, Comme des Garçons, mastermind Japan, Undercover, Supreme, Stüssy, Carhartt, Casio, Havaianas, Adidas, Timberland, Coach, MCM. And artists such as Biggie Smalls, Wiz Khalifa, Beastie Boys, The Weeknd, Soulja Boy, Pharrell, UNKLE, Kanye West, A$AP Rocky, A$AP Ferg, Westside Gunn, Kid Cudi, Juelz Santana, Pusha T, KAWS, Kreayshawn, Linkin Park, Gary Panter, Big Sean, Josip On Deck, Lil' Wayne, Chris Brown, Flatbush Zombies, Travis Scott, Domo Genesis, Damian Lillard, and Keith Ape.

In late 2018, the firm announced that it will produce a tie-in fashion line based on the Disney animated film Ralph Breaks the Internet, marking this as the first time BAPE has directly partnered with Disney.

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A Bathing Ape (or BAPE) is a Japanese fashion brand founded by Nigo (Tomoaki Nagao) in Ura-Harajuku in 1993. The brand specializes in men's, women's and children's lifestyle and street wear, running 19 stores in Japan, including Bape Stores, Bape Pirate Stores, Bape Kids Stores, Bapexclusive Aoyama, and Bapexclusive Kyoto.

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Studio Spaces - Modern Warehouse Conversion - Book on Togather

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Studio Spaces provides a dramatic backdrop for impactful shoots and events. The former factory is a vast 743  sqm spectacular warehouse space set on a traditional cobbled street located in the vibrant St Katherine's Dock area of East London.

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OptiMonk - Popups, Website Personalization & A/B Testing In One Toolset

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18 Popup Statistics You Must Know in 2024

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By analyzing popups created by OptiMonk users, we’ve found some insights into what works. Read on for some surprising popup statistics.

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Microsoft speed specialist and computer scientist Harry Shum believes 0.25 seconds of difference in page load time - faster or slower - is the magic number dictating competitive advantages for online businesses.

Chapter 2: Website Performance Impacts Business Success

Performance Impacts Sales

Website performance is user experience - the power of page speed, translating into attractive online shopping experience inspires sales figures and eventually determines online business success. The industry kingpin Google began factoring page speed into its proprietary search algorithms ever since it experienced the compelling repercussions of website performance lapses impacting sales. The search engine giant once experienced a 20 percent slump in traffic resulting from half a second delay in page load times.

While Google was quick to resolve the issue that barely crippled its market share, the same is not always the case with online businesses yet to establish their presence in the competitive online marketplace.

Q: So how does website performance affects sales for an average online business?

A: Dramatically, is the only answer!

Forrester consulting firm recently studied the state of consumer online shopping expectations and evaluated how underperforming websites kill business bottom line whereas high-level website performance rapidly boosts sales.

The research finds 88 percent of internet users choose online retailers delivering high-performance and user-friendly website experience, and almost 50 percent abandon websites that fail to load within 3 seconds.

These actions consequently impact sales. 79 percent of dissatisfied customers no longer revisit underperforming websites - except when you're Google or Amazon. 46 percent of dissatisfied customers develop a lasting negative impression and 44 percent share their shopping experiences with the rest of the world. The implications go well beyond the cyber world as 87 percent of customers shop in online as well as brick-and-mortar retail stores.

While service and product quality apparently has the biggest impact on business sales, converting website visitors into purchasing customers in the cyber world largely depends on developing a positive customer impression. And this is where ecommerce website performance parameters such as ultra-fast page speed and rapid check-out processes come into play, ultimately giving customers a positive psychological impression encouraging sales and customer loyalty.

Performance Impacts Conversion

As the most important and powerful internet metric for online businesses, conversion rates holistically depend on website KPIs in establishing competitive advantages for online retail platforms.

In the cyber world, traditional marketing campaigns alone do not boost conversion rates without improvements in website user experience - comprising of page speed and website responsiveness.

Obama's fundraising campaign during the 2011 Presidential Elections raised an additional $34 million when the Obama for America website shrunk page load time from 5 seconds to 2 seconds - that's 14 percent increase in donation conversion with mere 3 seconds of website performance improvement!

Bringing potential customers to the doorstep of brick-and-mortar retail stores often requires a thoroughly planned marketing and advertisement campaign. And once customers enter the shop, they usually don't leave without a purchase.

It takes far fewer efforts in bringing online customers to visit an online retail store - internet users don't mind a few wayward clicks to open the Web pages they've never visited before. Search engine optimization and social media adverts often do the trick.

Equally convenient for visitors is to leave the site if the required information is not made available within a bearable few seconds - for unimpressed visitors, that doesn't take a lot more than a few wayward clicks either!

User experience in terms of website performance and responsiveness, therefore, becomes the ultimate factor impacting conversion rates in online marketplaces. Ecommerce is first and foremost all about customer convenience and reaching potential customers efficiently with the right information, products, and services at the right time.

Neither of which is possible without page speeds faster than users abandoning visits due to website performance concerns. Not aware about your website performance impacting conversion rates? Tools like Google's Test My Site tool can help answer that question (see example below).

Performance Impacts User Engagement

User engagement statistics feed the cauldron of website analytics in developing the best strategies to optimize online sales. Online businesses established in the competitive cyberspace well understand the importance of website performance and tools that analyze and predict next-best actions correlating page speed and revenue.

Enhanced user engagement information with responsive and fast-loading websites is often seen as a proxy for online business success. User engagement is highly dependent upon human limitations in storing short-term memory beyond a few seconds, and human aspirations of feeling in control over the machine under all circumstances.

For underperforming websites - notice underperformance being a relative term - page load times exceed human limitations, whereas failure to process user requests gives the false impression of ignorance or incompetence in delivering the desired response efficiently and accurately.

High-performing websites on the other hand - notice high-performing being a relative term as well - impact three parameters that determine user engagement: user feelings, user mental states, and user interactions. These three aspects create an emotional, cognitive and behavioral connection between human visitors (can't say much about bots!) and the website.

With this connection in place, online businesses can exploit user engagement characters such as focused attention, motivation and trust in converting visitors into customers, repeat customers and even brand ambassadors generating leads across the social media and outside of the internet world.

Performance Impacts OpEx and Revenue

While investing in website performance optimization adds to the CapEx in favor of shaving off a few seconds in page load times, the return is inevitably seen in the shape of rising revenues and shrinking operational cost and hardware investments.

Ecommerce giant Shopzilla saw a 50 percent reduction in its operational budget by shrinking page load times from 7 seconds to 2 seconds. Performance improvements with a website design overhaul enabled the company to utilize the same hardware resources to efficiently in processing the same amount of website user requests. The improved website responsiveness also increased revenues by 12 percent as the retail store accommodated expanding web traffic without prompting additional investments in consequently expanding hardware resources.

Improvements in website KPI also lead to a better Google AdWords Quality Score and therefore reduce the Cost per Click (CPC). Online businesses with a high-quality score and page speed are able to spend advertisement budget efficiently and effectively, thereby maximizing reach and attracting customers without necessitating additional OpEx.

A slowdown, on the other hand, minimizes resource utilization. Bing conducted an independent study on its website performance affecting revenue and found a 2 seconds delay in delivering search query incurred a revenue loss of 4.3 percent per user.

And customer behavior doesn't alter drastically when the delays are removed. When Google removed a delay of 0.4 seconds in providing search results, users still made 0.21 percent fewer searches even with the web page performing optimally.

Additional efforts in enhancing website performance may stretch CapEx temporarily, but the tradeoff is ultimately justified as the extra investments translate into higher bottom line, increased revenue streams and minimum operational expenses.

Performance Impacts Usability

Websites with the steepest learning curve achieve the highest customer lock-in. Internet users consider the time taken in learning to use alternate websites as a significant switching cost, which acts as a mechanism to lock them into online services offered via high-performance websites.

The relationship elements between website usability and customer loyalty are tied down to website KPIs, including page speed, load time and website responsiveness to user requests. A hypothetical model of website speed optimization puts these elements into consideration, with characteristics such as Site Trust, Interactivity and Information relevance considered as a subset of website usability by end-users.

Similarly, web crawlers and search engines measure website performance in terms of page speed, navigability, user experience, responsiveness and reachability to a global audience as a subset of search engine optimization impacting search rankings.

End-users expect the following traits affecting the usability of websites:

Easy to operate, navigate and understand.

Directly deliver relevant information and controls being sought.

Accessible across all device form factors, machines, operating systems, browsers and geographic locations.

Delivering legitimate, credible and high-quality information, products and services with minimal clicks and browser requests.

Fulfilling these intents is vital to maximizing website performance, usability and customer loyalty, all of which are the overlapping elements of the single system that works as a channel to online business success.

Chapter 3: Speed Optimized Mobile Website Overshadows Desktop

Mobile is the future of everything wired. Adoption is skyrocketing as the mobile device onslaught looks to encompass the entire human race - 2.32 billion smartphone subscriptions, around thirty percent of the global population in 2017. And the booming tides of stimulating repercussions continue to disturb online businesses barely making inroads into the mobile internet marketing segment.

Success in the cyber world depends on the ability to embrace a mobile-first approach in reaching the exploding population of mobile subscribers. And for organizations pushing to reach the massive mobile population effectively, the unimaginable awards emerge just around the corner.

Desktop internet marketing, on the other hand, is so last decade-ish. Google the terms "Post PC Era", "freefall of PC sales" and the "death of desktop machines", and what returns is a myriad of journalistic fodder portraying a bleak future for organizations still lingering around the desktop internet user-base only.

For such industry laggards, it's not too late to embrace a mobile-first strategy, yet. However, this approach doesn't always pay off for forward-looking online businesses either when they fail to optimize their reach to a mobile user-base.

That's not as much for taking a false direction in going mobile than missing a few vital steps and not filling the void in reaching mobile customers efficiently and effectively. These gaps center on the lack of responsive and high performing mobile websites.

Mobile vs. Desktop - Why does it Matter?

Because everyone else is doing it, to start with. Competition for the mobile space is intense and back in 2014, the Yahoo CEO labeled it as the "tipping point" for the internet. And she was right! Stone Temple pulled some statistics from Similar Web in 2017 and not to our surprise, but mobile accounted for over 50% of the traffic based on 77 billion website visits.

Here are a few additional statistics:

87% of U.S. citizens own mobile devices.

45% of these own smartphones.

90% of these go online via mobile.

These mobile users average 1.4 hours of mobile internet browsing every day.

74% would abandon mobile websites that don't load within 5 seconds.

The entire focus should lie on treating the two entities - mobile and desktop - separately, at least from a website design standpoint. Without this strategy, mobile user experience in accessing desktop versions of websites is usually compromised in terms of page load times, usability and functionality. Compromising these core aspects of mobile websites can force online businesses into facing the obvious negative implications including:

Low Mobile Purchases: Mobile internet shoppers have a shorter attention span and lower patience than desktop internet users.

Losing Competition: According to a survey of over a thousand U.S. adult smartphone users, almost 75 percent of the respondents said they prefer revisiting mobile ecommerce sites that deliver high-end mobile user experience.

Losing Brand Value: Poorly designed mobile websites that simply shrink the HTML of full desktop website version for visitors to zoom in and out in navigating through mobile Web pages makes users less likely to engage with the company in the future.

These consequences negate the following primary objectives of reaching customers via mobile internet:

Expanding customer-base.

New advertisement options.

Offering quality services efficiently at user convenience.

And most concerning, the inevitability in productively embracing mobile web for business development.

Desktop and mobile differ in technology resources, form factor and user interface - all aspects governing website performance optimization implementations. Without optimizing mobile websites separately to deliver the best mobile website performance, several website KPIs degrade and negatively impact mobile user-experience.

And since mobile technologies give users the ability to search the web on-the-go, while standing, walking or even lying comfortably on the couch, the hunger to feel in control of website operations drives user expectations beyond conventional standards applicable only in the desktop arena. The ability to deliver mobile website content within this short attention span of around 2 seconds makes all the difference in winning customer loyalty and long-term business relationship with mobile internet users.

High-Performance Mobile Website and the Competitive Space of High Conversions

Considering the high volume of internet traffic using mobile devices for ecommerce purchases, high-performing mobile websites is an evident priority for ecommerce organizations. A recent research study reveals ecommerce businesses could miss out on millions of mobile shoppers with the potential aggregate revenue per conversion of mobile shoppers averaging around 80 percent of the same among desktop users purchasing online.

The conversion rate among small ecommerce businesses operating on low-performance mobile websites is typically 0.6 percent in comparison with the 1.6 percent conversion rate of desktop ecommerce providers in the same size segment.

Tablet users, on the other hand, spend 20 percent more than desktop users. By capturing this audience, online businesses making inroads into the mobile internet marketing segment can expect high revenue streams that could potentially replace desktop audience one day - although that day currently seems to be a bit too far into the future.

Nevertheless, the demand to satisfy the needs of mobile users will continue to rise exponentially. Search Engine Optimization of mobile websites is now a separate trade - and so is mobile website speed optimization, which constitutes of:

High page speed

Low page load times

Efficient delivery of media-rich content

Download speed

Optimal site format

Easy navigation and usability across the website

And a fully functional website requiring minimal user-input in performing an otherwise complex task of mobile internet usage.

By addressing these issues, micro-sites in the mobile internet sector can hope to compete with their larger counterparts enjoying up to 1.2 percent conversion rates (that's twice as much as desktop-site conversion rates!), and well over 80 percent of revenue per conversion achieved with the desktop versions of their sites.

Fastest to the Finish Line Stand Tallest on the Podium

It, therefore, is no surprise that Fortune 100 companies average 5 seconds in page load times for their mobile websites - that's two seconds faster than the average acceptable standards (7 seconds max).

For ecommerce merchants, however, 5 seconds of page load time is perhaps sufficient to put visitors off toward a faster alternative. And in the retail segment, some websites load as fast as Google - page load times as low as 1 second!
Strikingly fast, perhaps a bit Google-like focus on page speed and website responsiveness. That, however, is the average page load time of 16 of the top 100 multichannel retailers reaping the rewards of an insanely-fast mobile website and thereby yielding multi-billion dollar revenue figures from mobile customers.

Google describes a number of changes ( here and here) in mobile website design to render Web pages on mobile screens well within 1 second - that's even if you're not a Fortune 100 company or a Top 100 ecommerce retailer!
For those uber-geeks taking mobile Web development matters into their own hands, the non-profit World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) provides a handful of best practices ( here and here). It's a long read, demonstrating how important and intensive mobile website optimization really is!

And for business owners employing Web developers to design highly responsive and speed-optimized mobile websites (here are 60 Awesome Web Development Tools that may help you), the improvements should be sought in the following three ingredients of mobile website anatomy:

And a design focus on the following mobile website elements:

Customers appreciate fast responding websites and ultra-low page load times. Mobile technology and the innovation coming along with increasing reliance on smartphones and tablets are showing no signs of slowing down. Top online retailers understand the need to deliver website content efficiently from Web servers to the tiny real estate of mobile screens. Getting it right with thoroughly designed websites dedicated to mobile platforms enables customers to make quick and educated purchase decisions that ultimately create never-ending revenue streams for online businesses.

60 percent of consumers use mobile devices exclusively to make quick purchase decisions. Mobile devices and desktop computers or laptops are considered equally important as the media source of information - 42 percent of internet users favor of mobile as opposed to 43 percent for PC/laptop - but the convenience in accessing the Web via mobile devices is driving mobile internet usage and business opportunities.

And if you still plan to overlook mobile website performance, you might want to reconsider the opportunities and success otherwise achievable mostly with a dedicated, speed-optimized mobile website.

Chapter 4: Common Business Mistakes that Kill Website Performance

Online marketplaces - like battlegrounds of the ancient Greeks - are high-stake competitive platforms where only the most diligent survive. And as with all high-stakes battles, human factors (decision errors, blunders, and ignorance) contribute significantly toward the outcome of online business competitions.

Yet, online businesses and webmasters responsible for maintaining high-performance and fully-optimized websites tend to overlook crucial web design elements that cripple site load times. And the consequences are usually as hazardous as the Trojan Horse penetrating through fortified defenses and taking full control over the City of Troy, despite the size and dominion of the Trojan Army.

Competition for online business success is just as intense if only a bit less violent. The fight for customer attention boils down to delivering the requested content most efficiently and accurately, irrespective of the company size and past laurels. And just like human blunders and ignorance dictating the outcome of the Trojan War, common mistakes killing website performance tend to determine the outcome of online business competition - fastest to the finish line wins the race!

The aptly named Gap of Death, the interval between expected page load time of under 2 seconds and average site load time of 5 seconds expands or contracts due to surprisingly neglected website optimization tactics and business decisions. Contrary to the popular sentiment, speed optimization is ideally implemented across all stages of website development, and not just after building the entire site, which is only when website owners realize the need to push for website performance optimization.

Final tweaks and speed optimization add-ons implemented after developing websites does improve page speed though, bringing down the load time to at least reach the Gap of Death. But even within this performance zone, conversion rates go down by 7 percent for each second of delay after the expected page load time of 2 seconds.

On the other hand, website owners wary of speed optimization tactics can aim for higher website performance by avoiding the following deadly mistakes as well:

Mediocre Web Hosting Service

The mistake of opting for a mediocre Web hosting service can live forever. With over 1.8 billion websites online as of 2020, the web hosting space is both crowded and fractured. Global availability of a vast array of hosting options is pushing businesses and hobbyists to establish their presence in the cyber world. The demand for cost-effective web hosting services is rising exponentially, and hosting providers are more than willing to compromise service quality in accumulating market share with low-cost tiers.

Mediocre web hosts selling cost-effective services continue to maximize profitability by hosting thousands of websites on single instances of bloated Apache stacks. Un-optimized servers running thousands of public websites on a single server stack is particularly harmful to ecommerce websites characterized by uncontrollable web traffic spikes, multimedia content and large website files.

Web hosting and development companies with a common response to speed optimization concerns that "everyone's got broadband these days" translates directly into financial losses and damaged brand reputation for online businesses. Attractive website performance is critical to the success of ecommerce businesses since websites taking more than 3 seconds to load immediately lose 40 percent of the traffic. 79 percent of dissatisfied visitors almost never return to slow ecommerce sites!

Perhaps then, investing time and money in pursuing the highest quality web hosting services is key to maintaining high-performance websites generating vast revenue streams by attracting visitor attention efficiently and accurately.

Giving Way to Bandwidth Thieves

Website speed optimization is an ongoing and evolving process and goes well beyond subscribing to the best web hosting services in the world. Some business decisions intended to maximize revenue by altering website design and features adversely affect website performance by stealing size-able chunks from the bandwidth allotted to each individual visitor.

Too Many Widgets or Plugins

Additional features and functionality always pleases website owners and developers. Widgets and plugins enable convenient changes to existing websites along with a slight burden on website performance. Even with the smallest of widgets such as the Google+ button box, the burden to website performance in terms of page load time can increase by as much as 2 seconds in some instances.

The Facebook like box is another common slow down as it has been known to easily add 40+ HTTP requests (as seen below). On a clients site, we saw that it added 700 KB to the overall page weight, which is not good!

Keeping add-ons limited to a bare minimum is essential to maintaining optimum website performance - even plugins installed to the same website core compete in delivering the quickest response to browser requests, ultimately draining bandwidth.

Sometimes the quality and functionality of plugins installed matters far more than the number itself. Plugins that query large streams of data to perform complex operations should do this off-server, and not within website hosting environments such as WordPress.

Too Many Ads and External Services

Tempting as it may seem, selling too much real estate to third-party advertisers drastically degrades website performance. Too many ads or slow loading ads drive bounce rates and negatively impact online marketability. The financial losses that come with high bounce rates outweigh the monetary benefits of handing over vast website spaces to advertisers.

External services typically bring with them two problems. One is brought about by sheer volume, the other has to do with waiting until they load.

If you have a lot of external services, you need to load all of them and wait for information from them on each page load. The more calls you have, the more you wait, the higher the load on your own server and the higher chance you have of bumping into the second issue.

In some cases, the page load will wait until the data transfer is completed between your site and the external service. If the service is called in the header and there is a service interruption your page will simply refuse to load.

According to one research study, the cost of generating revenue with a banner advertisement is almost 33 percent of additional latency. Intrusive pop-up ads further aggravate visitors into abandoning websites at even higher rates.
Affiliate code, even just those few additional lines of script take up valuable memory space on the hosting environment and require additional processing cycles in delivering the content to end-users.

Nevertheless, online advertisement is the primary source of income for many online businesses (think Google and Facebook!), and an optimal website advertisement model goes a long way in increasing website revenue while minimizing the cost of latency and page load delays.

Bloated Design Theme and Incompatible Multimedia

Tempting website design themes and multimedia content are head turners for online traffic. That is if the content even reaches the eyes of impatient visitors fast enough. High-quality images and videos (large pixels, large file size) take longer in downloading onto requesting browsers, whereas low quality, lightweight graphics barely capture user attention despite their lower load times.

However, graphics intensive content is not always the deciding factor in driving conversions and sales. This is especially true for ecommerce websites that must contain fast-loading product images and videos describing the value of products, and not necessarily their visual beauty.

Compatibility issues also affect multimedia and application performance for certain browsers and geographic locations. Take Google Chrome and Shockwave Flash as an example. The two rarely play nice to each other. Similarly, government restrictions can also prevent specific multimedia content from reaching local visitors.

Websites with non-functional multimedia content take excessive client-server communication cycles to reach requesting browsers, ultimately deteriorating website performance. It is, however, up to website owners to ensure streamlined serviceability across all browser platforms, device form factors and geographic locations as government policies and browser compatibility potentially changes over time, and most often, unpredictability as well.

Fast loading and fully functional multimedia content is necessary for ecommerce merchants to keep hold of website visitors. Every second of delay in page load time leads to frustrated visitors abandoning slow websites, and drawing along 7 percent loss in conversion rates, 11 percent fewer page views and 16 percent decrease in customer satisfaction.

And a Bit More of that Code - Sign Up Forms and Analytics

Sign up forms and analytics code add only a few lines to website core files. But when too many single-lines of code take space on the website back-end, web content assets and plugins with lengthy code end up competing for tiny memory spaces in short processing cycles. As a result, the popular physics phenomenon of non-linearity kicks in, and each component performs unpredictably, usually consuming more processing cycles than expected.

From the perspective of end users, excessive services are often unnecessary or at most, considered secondary to the actual content portrayed by the website. Many websites host more than 80 assets (images, plugins, add-ons and other multimedia content), and all of this content is not necessarily delivered to requesting browsers as per user preferences. Additional investments in developing media-rich websites ultimately backfire when the information actually requested to reach end-users is held by irrelevant sign-up forms, analytics code and other content adding unnecessary weight to the website.

Mobile Mistakes and Misguided Redirects

Global smartphone subscription is expected to surpass the 2.7 billion mark by 2019, when 83 percent of internet users will access the internet via mobile devices. 30 percent of ecommerce website traffic in 2016 came from mobile, and this number continues to rise exponentially with the exploding smartphone user-base.

The competition to capture the attention of mobile users is even more intense due to slow loading mobile websites and lower visitor patience levels. 60 percent of mobile users expect mobile websites to load within 3 seconds. And on average, 3 in 4 people will abandon a mobile website if it takes any longer than 5 seconds to load, whereas an average mobile takes even longer periods of 6-10 seconds to load.

Excessive delays in mobile page load time occur mostly when websites are not specifically optimized and designed to deliver high performance on a mobile device interface. Even with dedicated smartphone-optimized pages, mobile users are not always redirected to the intended mobile-versions of desktop website pages requested from mobile browsers.

Redirects are instructions that send users seeking one website URL to another one that (supposedly) contains the exact information requested by users. Redirects are most effective for mobile users searching for desktop versions of website pages that must be mapped well to equivalent mobile versions in delivering the best mobile website experience.

Doing so inaccurately keeps users from switching between unwanted website files until they reach the right one. This causes unnecessary delays in loading the information actually sought by end-users.

This is analogous to finding an empty parking spot in a large, crowded parking lot, and reaching the apparently empty space only to find out it's occupied by a small vehicle that wasn't visible from the distance. The process continues until a free space is finally reached - that is if the driver even continues searching for the empty space and isn't frustrated enough to leave the parking lot altogether.

Website owners are eventually responsible for losing competitive advantages in the mobile space when the mobile web traffic is simply redirected toward irrelevant desktop website version, instead of delivering a speed-optimized mobile solution for mobile visitors.

Websites not speed-optimized for mobile devices suffer from common issues hampering mobile user experience. Issues such as faulty redirects, unplayable videos, bloated images and graphics, irrelevant cross-linking and unnecessary assets delivered to mobile visitors degrade website performance and ultimately drive bounce rates.

Only 10 percent of the waiting period is defined by the HTML response to browser requests, and the remaining 90 percent of the delay is caused in rendering pages, parsing HTML, executing code scripts and retrieving embedded assets. Website performance overhaul with optimization tools and script tweaks can scrape off sizeable chunks from page load times, but perhaps not as effectively as developing a speed optimized website from scratch. And the latter is more of a marketing strategy, a business decision and slight awareness in avoiding the most common mistakes that can potentially ruin online businesses by killing website performance.

Chapter 5: Website Speed Testing - Identify Performance Bottlenecks!

Web traffic and search engine ranking is primarily a vanity metric for website performance. Important as they are, neither is more indicative of online business success than sales figures and conversion rates. Putting things into perspective, ecommerce websites with (almost) zero percent bounce rate, 15 percent conversion rates and 10,000 unique website visitors from low search engine rankings fare far better than high ranking sites enjoying 100,000 unique visits with only 0.01 percent conversion rate.

The debate of conversion rate optimization can carry on for encyclopedic lengths, and implementing business best-practices on Frankensteinish websites can take tons of investments with efforts of patient execution spanning across months before any significant conversion rate improvement is yielded.

And there's more to convincing impatient citizens of the cyber world into purchasing online products and services than implementing passive business strategies to enhance marketability. Online businesses focusing on improving website performance experience immediate results in the form of higher conversion rates and sky-rocketing sales.

Page speed, in particular, fills the void in enhancing marketability by improving website user experience to keep impatient online customers engaged and satisfied. A recent research report published by O'Reilly concludes improvements in website end-user experience by reducing page load time boost sales and conversion rates significantly. The staggering statistics are as follows:

+3% conversions per second with page load time improvement from 15 seconds to 7 seconds.

+2% conversions per second with page load time improvement from 7 seconds to 5 seconds.

+1% conversions per second with page load time improvement from 4 seconds to 2 seconds.

These statistics only describe how page speed impacts business success in the competitive cyberspace. Complicated as it seems, slicing off large chunks of page load time from slow loading websites is a relatively low-hanging fruit IF speed optimization tactics are implemented in the right direction - that's a huge IF when performance bottlenecks are unknown, too complex or simply too vast and diverse to identify.

The pursuit for speed optimized website begins with identifying critical front-end issues most apparent under standard website performance testing processes. Google's Head Performance Engineer Steve Souders advises on this matter, saying "80-90% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end. Start here".

What to Test?

Before the exploration for page speed bumps begins, understanding the behavior of the most impactful website speed performance indicators helps to accurately identify performance loopholes in websites.

Initial Page Speed

Downloading tons of memory hogging website content within milliseconds of initiating browser requests is not entirely possible without a thorough revamp and speed optimization of slow websites. In many cases, visitors only seek the primary information in the form of content or product information portrayed by Web pages. Add a lot of complementary graphics and website features, and page rendering times rise beyond measure.

Keeping the initial page speed high keeps visitors engaged even when the entire website content including bulky graphics take ages to render completely. Monitoring high initial page speed by tracking parameters such as Time to First Byte (TTFB) or performing ping requests from website servers accurately describe initial page load times and page speed statistics. If these take too long, work needs to be done at the back-end in the form of server-side and website core optimization.

Full Page Load Time

Monitoring the time consumed in rendering entire page content onto requesting browsers is an integral element of end-user website experience testing. This information drives strategic IT decisions in deploying and optimizing hardware infrastructure to maximize website performance.

Regularly monitoring this performance indicator enables website owners to realize how the website performs as it scales in terms of size and content type. With this information, webmasters can cache static content in separate locations such as Content Delivery Network (CDN) while maintaining dedicated back-end servers to efficiently deliver dynamically-loaded content.

Geographic Performance

One of the perks of operating an online business is the ever-expanding global market reach. But this reach is not always equally efficient - and hence effective - across the globe due to the very factors that limit client-server communication. Government policies, bandwidth and technology limitations prevent optimum website performance around the world, so website speed and availability tests should be conducted across disparate locations to determine global website performance results impacting world-wide business reach.

Load Tolerance

Website performance varies with fluctuations in web traffic. Hosting servers handling the normal load at peak performance may lose page speed under excessive loads. Conducting stress tests, ramp tests, load tests and other performance tests on websites creates an accurate picture of how much web traffic the website can handle before losing performance or going down altogether. Compare the results with the website's actual usage patterns to determine whether the website needs hardware upgrades to handle peak load as efficiently as possible.

Web Server CPU Load

Shared hosting providers running thousands of websites on single Apache servers fail to deliver high performance even when the website is well-designed with a clean and speed-optimized code. Performance issues intensify during peak load times when insufficient server computing power fails to process website download requests efficiently. Monitoring server CPU load enables hosting companies and IT staff running locally hosted websites to keep a check on back-end hardware capabilities in handling unpredictable web traffic deluge.

Website Database Performance

Database performance is critical for websites maintaining dynamic content pulled from back-end databases. A mechanism should be in place to detect and alert for inaccuracies in data transmission. Keeping an eye on free disk space on servers hosting websites locally helps avoid errors and data losses that lead to broken links and eventually degrade website performance.

How to Test

Website owners can leverage an array of free and premium website performance testing services to analyze web pages and generate tailored solutions to fill the deepest of performance loopholes hampering page speed.

Page speed testing tools powered by search engine giant Google, website monitoring specialists Pingdom and GTMetrix yield valuable insights into website performance indicators for free, and programmatically generate scores and suggestions to educate non-geeky website owners. Check out these in-depth guides to help you get started.

How These Tools Work

These tools use a bunch of browsers to load websites and replicate end-user website experience across disparate geographic locations. Performance bottlenecks are monitored across various elements of the web page under scrutiny including file size, load time, response time and requests pertaining to various website parts (JavaScript, CSS files, HTML, images, etc.).

The tools generate performance scores based on a set of rules developed in the context of Web page performance and user priorities. The principles include resource caching, client-server round-trip times, data download and upload size, and a host of rules impacting end-user website experience in terms of page speed.

Suggestions are generated in anticipation of page speed improvements that should occur by implementing appropriate performance optimization rules. For example, if a large image file is served uncompressed, monitoring tools would recommend implementation of various measures to compress the bulky file. Such issues otherwise go unnoticed due to human errors or plain ignorance, neither of which can be completely eliminated. At the same time, page speed monitoring tools would at least empower website owners to identify the issues and take appropriate steps in eradicating hidden website performance bottlenecks.

Testing Tutorial

The following test was conducted using the free Pingdom website speed test tool. Visit Pingdom and conduct the test selecting various geographic locations according to the options provided, and compare the end-results. Enter your website and hit the Test Now button.

It will then return a summary of your site, including a performance grade, a total load time, the total page size, and the number of requests you have on your website.

The performance insights section of the Pingdom speed test tool is very helpful. These are all based on the Google PageSpeed Insight rules. Generally, if you improve these on your site, you should see a decrease in your overall load times.

The tool lists all downloaded files in a waterfall chart form, sorting it in terms of load order, load time, size, type or URL.

Analyze the performance of each file download by reading results against the key chart provided within the tool:

The tool helps to identify the next-best actions for website speed optimization tactics. In the sample test shown above, the tested website needs to fix some errors for requests that aren't being found. However, it's important to understand that optimizing these website design elements is an ongoing and evolving process that starts from the ground-level of website development and implemented across all new pages as the website scales.

If you need more help troubleshooting your site's performance on Pingdom, check out our deep dive into the tool.

Which Tool to Pick?

Different tools - Google's Page Speed Insights, Pingdom and GTMetrix, among others - identify different issues, test different performance parameters and indicators in different ways, from different browsers and geographic locations. Performance ratings and test results are therefore bound to be different, and no single tool identifies every single performance bottleneck in website designs. It is however recommended that you stick with one tool as you make improvements to better monitor your progress.

However, testing across multiple tools, analyzing different website design elements and comparing multiple test results provides reasonable insights for online business owners to devise speed optimization strategies for their websites.

Chapter 6: How to Improve Website Speed?

Developing a great website takes great work. Leading online businesses leverage industry-proven experience, supernatural web development skills and a killer web hosting service to develop websites boasting top-notch performance figures and user experience. But for those who miss this starting point in their pursuit of speed-optimized websites, employing a minimalistic approach in executing simple DIY page speed optimization tactics works (almost) well enough to patch slow websites.

The knowledge of investing in the right set of website speed optimization solutions and services, website management and perhaps downright coding trickery is essential to yield maximum website performance. Strategic business decisions based on this knowledge contribute directly toward enhancing website performance that in turn, lead to better online sales, leads, conversions and ultimately business success.

Optimization is the buzzword of success in the cyber world. Cyberspace, like the real physical world of planets, stars and galaxies is itself in flux - a state of continuous change and evolution. In fact, change is the only consistent process across both the real and the cyber world. Survival in these spaces depends on how well the inhabitants can adapt to varying resources and environmental circumstances.

And the same goes for website owners competing for online business success amid varying market trends, changing the behavior of internet visitors, advancements in cyber technologies at breakneck speeds under Moore's Law and varying website performance standards set forth by search engine giants.

DIY Speed Optimization

Online business owners and webmasters adapt their websites to maintain optimal results under the consistent impression of change by improvising and optimizing key elements of website design that make or break page speed.

Image Optimization

As a general rule of thumb, larger files take longer to download than smaller files. Web page download time, also known as the Page Load Time depends on the total size of content assets being downloaded from hosting servers to the requesting browser. High-quality bulky images are the largest contributors to web page size, degrading page speed and agitating visitors eagerly waiting for the web page to load.

According to HTTP Archive, as of December 2017, images make up on average 66% of a total webpage's weight. The following image optimization best-practices go a long way in reducing the negative impact of images on website speed:

Format Selection: Use JPGs or WEBPs when quality is a high priority and image modifications are not required before uploading it. JPGs can take limited processing and modifications before image quality degrades sharply. For images with icons, logos, illustrations, signs, and text, use PNG format. Use GIFs only for small or simple images and avoid BMPs or TIFFs.

Proper Sizing: Save valuable bytes of image payload and match the dimensions (width) of your Web page template. Use browser resizing capabilities to make images responsive by setting fixed width and auto-height instructions.

Compression: Image compression should be a thoughtful tradeoff between image size and quality. For JPGs, a compression of 60-70 percent produces a good balance. For retina screens, increase (JPGs) image size by 150-200 percent, compress by 30-40 percent and scale it down again as per the required dimensions.

Fewer Images: Keep the number of images to an absolute minimum.

WordPress Solutions:
Leverage image optimization plugins such as Imagify, Optimus WordPress Image Optimizer, WP Smush, TinyPNG. It's even better if you go with the ones that compress and optimize images externally, which reduces the load on your own site.

And for more tips check out our in-depth image optimization guide.

Optimize CSS Code and Delivery

Not so long ago, 30 KB was considered as the ideal web page size. And that included images, content, graphics, and code making the entire page. The popularity of CSS and JavaScript ripped apart the ceiling of 30 KB page size in delivering enriched website user experience.

Yet, modern websites coded in CSS are better at downloading content from hosting servers to requesting browsers efficiently and accurately. Optimization, therefore, isn't all about minifying file size. The following best practices ensure a speed-optimized CSS delivery:

Shorthand Coding: Cut down the size of your code by using fewer declarations and operators. Fewer lines of code mean fewer processing cycles and efficient delivery of website files to requesting browsers.

Axe Browser Specific CSS Hacks: CSS is in danger from endlessly complicated browser specific hacks - or correctional declarations as they're called - adding unnecessary weight to CSS script files. Speed optimized CSS code is both light and simple for servers to process efficiently.

Minify CSS: Almost all website speed monitoring tools give a common suggestion of reducing the weight of CSS code to improve speed. Lightweight and compact code helps to speed up downloading, parsing and execution to drastically reduce page load time.

Code Positioning: Load CSS code inside the <head> and JavaScript inside the body, as referencing CSS outside of this section prevents Web browsers displaying CSS content immediately after downloading it.

CSS Delivery Best Practices:

Do not use @import call.

Remove unused CSS.

Do not use CSS in HTML such as H1 and DIV tags.

Use inline small CSS.

WordPress Solutions:
Tools such as Autoptimize, WP Rocket, Cache Enabler, CloudFlare CDN, and W3 Total Cache are some of the most popular tools available for minifying JavaScript and CSS.

If you are a Kinsta customer you can take advantage of the code minification feature that is built directly into the MyKinsta dashboard. This allows customers to quickly and easily enable automatic CSS and JavaScript minification with a simple click.

Minification - JavaScript, CSS, HTML

Indeed, speed optimization isn't (just) about shrinking page size. Reducing the number of client-server requests in delivering website content to Web browsers is an integral part of website speed optimization. Webmasters can achieve this by not making too many folks with CSS, HTML and JavaScript requests. Although the number of requests isn't as important as they used to be thanks to improvements with HTTP/2. That is to say, optimize, minify and squish all unnecessary and compressible code lines.

Minification is particularly important for inline JavaScript and external files not cached. Google recommends minifying all JavaScript files over 4096 bytes of size, and a shaving off a minimum of 25 bytes to produce any noticeable difference toward page load time.

A rigorous approach toward designing speed optimized website would incorporate a strong intent on eliminating unnecessary bytes from the code. Utilizing all the coding space available, deleting extra spaces, indentation and line spaces while maintaining readability of the code reduces the overall size of website core and front-end files. And for websites already developed without this strategy in perspective, combining multiple server requests (for HTML, JavaScript, and CSS) into single ones effectively slashes sizeable chunks from page load times.

However, overindulgence in HTML Minification potentially leads to loss of fidelity of the website code, with user agents taking excessive memory cycles and CPU power in "guessing" the missing resources required to parse HTML files. Monitoring page load performance changes in response to implementing each minification process individually ensure that only the unnecessary code and spaces are deleted.

Minification of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML share common benefits: reduced network latency, fewer HTML requests, enhanced compression, faster browser downloading and execution, ultimately boosting page speed and yielding higher scores on website speed measuring tools.

Plugins - Less is More!

Additional website functionality with plugins comes at a price: performance degradation. Unfortunately, webmasters deploy a myriad of plugins to add attractive but often unnecessary features such as gravatar, profile tools, website stats and font tools - some even use 10 different plugins for social media integration. The only benefit here is successfully avoiding manual coding.

Many popular websites carry as much as 80 plugins. Yet, the number is not entirely a concern if the installed plugins are developed well to avoid complex actions and expensive server processing.

Four major areas to look at when it comes to selecting high-quality plugins:

Does it perform complex operations?

Does it load many content assets and scripts?

Does it increase the number of database queries to each page request?

Does it perform requests to external APIs?

If the answer to all these questions is YES, your reaction to the plugin in question should be a huge NO!

Now to the big question, how many plugins is too many?

While there's no comprehensive answer to this question, limitations are unique to every website and plugin. A lot of WordPress experts recommend not using too many plugins. But many well-performing websites host over 80 plugins, until they install one low-quality plugin that adds half a second to page load time.

Similarly, using 10 plugins for simple and unique tasks is much better than deploying one plugin to perform all of the complex tasks by itself. Exceptions include high-quality SEO plugins by credible developers, such asYoast SEO, All In One SEO Pack (free WordPress SEO plugins) and the likes.
WordPress Solutions:
Use the following solutions to keep a check on WordPress plugins performance:

Limit/Disable WordPress Revisions

Revision management is one of the perks that WordPress has to offer. The CMS automatically keeps track of the content created on the CMS and makes all of it available for future changes. To the server, this costs unnecessary processing through additional database entries not actually required in the first place. Controlling the number of revisions stored relieves the website core of useless burden.

Writing the following code snippets in the wp-config.php file helps to get around this issue:

Disable Revisions:

define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', false );

Limit Revisions:

define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 10 ); // limited to 10 revisions

Check out our in-depth guide on how to optimize WordPress revisions for faster performance.

Optimize Databases

WordPress CMS stores posts, comments, pages and other forms of textual and encrypted data within a single database - except for images and videos that are stored in the 'wp_content' folder instead. This database gets crowded over time, not only with unnecessary content and post revisions, but also with garbage data.

Garbage content includes:

Comments in the spam queue

Unapproved comments

Post revisions

Trashed items such as posts and pages

Database optimization revolves around getting rid of garbage data and useless content from cluttered databases, shrinking them in size and making it easier for website hosting servers to fetch requested content efficiently, within minimum processing cycles. This can also involve ensuring that you are using InnoDB for your MySQL database tables, as opposed to MyISAM. Learn how to convert myISAM to InnoDB.

The wp_options table is also often overlooked when it comes to overall WordPress and database performance. Especially on older and large sites, this can be the culprit for slow query times on your site due to autoloaded data that is left behind from third-party plugins and themes. Check out our guide on how to cleanup your wp_options table.
WordPress Solutions:
Compression

According to Google, every day the cyber world sees 99 years of human years wasted due to uncompressed Web content. And although most of the latest Web browsers support content compression capabilities, not every website delivers compressed contents. Visitors to these bandwidth-hogging websites experience insanely slow interactions with Web pages. Primary reasons for this unfavorable (and mostly unintentional) website behavior include misconfigured hosting servers, Web proxies, old or buggy browsers and antivirus software.

Uncompressed content hurts bandwidth-constrained users receiving the Web content in agonizingly lengthy page load times. Here's the transcript of a common browser-server communication in delivering uncompressed content:

Browser: Hey, GET me /HeavyWeightChampion.html!

Server: On it! *server skims through the server and finds the file*

Server: There you go, 250 KB of response code.

Browser: Ouch! *end-user sweats, ultimately receiving the requested content in a few tens of seconds*. (Okay, client-server communication is perhaps a bit more formal and less dramatic than the above narrative.)

Most of the problem lies in the way client-server communication goes in the HTML world. HTML files (making almost the entire Web content) includes several redundant code instances. <Tags>, <Alts>, <HTML> and the likes are all the same stuff materializing repeatedly.
Google recommends the following compression tactics to deliver website content efficiently:

Minify JavaScript, HTML and CSS

Ensure consistency in CSS and HTML code with the following techniques:

Consistent casing - mostly lowercase.

Consistent quoting of HTML tag attributes.

Specify HTML attributes in the same order.

Specify CSS key-value pairs in the same order by alphabetizing them.

Enable GZIP compression. GZIP finds similar strings and code instances, replaces them temporarily with shorter characters. Browsers decompress gzipped files, bringing them back to their original shape.

A few words of caution though:

Do NOT GZIP (already compressed) images, PDF or other binary data.

GZIP data only in the range of 150-1000 bytes in size. The speed of compression must be faster than the time taken in delivering the content uncompressed.

Do NOT compress content for old browsers.

Not following the above recommendations actually increases file size and page load times due to the overhead of compression and decompression.
WordPress Solutions:
Cache

Developers crave simplicity in website design code. Website code easier to create, read and maintain leads to efficient website development processes. This includes using the available code functions frequently to cut short extensive coding for specific website functionality.

However, adding too many extraneous loops and unnecessary code lines increases page rendering times by a few milliseconds. Influx a torrent of website traffic, and the milliseconds compound to plunge page speed well below acceptable standards.

Webmasters can reduce these response times by delivering cached copies of the requested content instead of rendering it repeatedly in response to every single user request that pings their server. Web cache is the mechanism of temporarily storing copies of web content to satisfy subsequent user requests from the cache database when specific conditions are met. This process reduces the number of client-server round trips taken in delivering (static) website content to requesting browsers.

Website owners can enable caching with the following add-ons and configurations when hosting service providers do not provide server-side caching:

Along with static cacheable content, websites also host dynamic information containing unique attributes changing regularly for every end-user. Storing cached copies of non-reusable dynamic content, therefore, doesn't make sense, even though rendering non-cached content is a painstakingly slow process.

Fragment Caching

This is the art of caching smaller elements of non-cacheable dynamic website content. When Web pages containing static and/or dynamic content are loaded, hosting servers process PHP code and query MySQL databases to fetch the requested content. These time-and-resource consuming processes are circumvented by delivering the desired output stored as a cached copy.

Fragment caching stores the output of some code blocks that remain unchanged across varied versions of the dynamic content. When the code runs and reaches the code block cached for a predetermined time, the server queries and delivers the cached output of this code instead of executing it repeatedly until the time limit reaches.

The end result is a cache-optimized website content for maximum page speed even for ecommerce and membership-based websites handling intensely dynamic content. Kinsta actually provides four different types of caching, all of which are all automatically done at the software or server-level. So there is no need to mess with third-party plugins.

Content Delivery Networks (CDN)

CDN is an extension of cache optimization designed to supercharge website performance aimed specifically at globally dispersed web traffic. CDNs consist of a network of servers hosting cached copies of web pages. Internet visitors requesting this information are directed to the nearest server within this network based on their geographic location.

Traditional benefits of CDN including performance boost, high availability, and page rank collectively lift business bottom line. Check out all the reasons why you should be using a CDN. Kinsta includes a free HTTP/2 and IPv6-enabled WordPress CDN for all clients on WordPress Hosting plans!

Switch to Managed Hosting!

WordPress essentially democratized the web by empowering citizens of the cyberworld to create their own blogs and launch products and services online with minimal investments. In general, website owners leverage one of the following hosting services to keep their websites up and running:

Free hosting: Favorite to hobbyists.

Shared hosting: Favorite to individuals developing an online business presence at the lowest cost.

Dedicated hosting or managed hosting: Favorite to serious individuals and small and midsize firms setting up an online presence.

Collocated hosting: Favorite to large enterprises or government institutions with in-house IT teams to manage websites.

Among these, employing managed WordPress hosting for end-to-end website development and management services is the most cost-effective and productive option for maintaining an ultra-high performance website. Features of managed hosting services impacting page speed and website performance include:

Performance optimization - compression, code minification, server-side caching, etc.

Cache optimization.

Content optimization for performance - image optimization, controlling garbage data, etc.

Search engine optimization.

Regular software updates.

Plugin compatibility and deployment for best performance.

Database optimization.

Content delivery networks.

Performance testing and monitoring.

Lightweight and speed optimized servers.

Server and website configuration and maintenance to minimize client-server roundtrips.

Latest versions of PHP and MariaDB

WordPress is Faster With PHP 7

With the release of PHP 7 came huge performance gains! So big in fact, that it should be a priority over a lot of the small optimizations you might play around with on your WordPress site. The following benchmarks demonstrate significant performance improvements with PHP 7 over its previous iterations. PHP 7 allows the system to execute twice as many requests per second in comparison with the PHP 5.6, at almost half of the latency.

We also ran our own PHP benchmarks. And similarly to the benchmarks above, we saw that PHP 7.3 could execute almost three times as many transactions (requests) per second as compared to PHP 5.6. PHP 7.3 is also on average 9% faster than PHP 7.2.

WordPress 5.0 PHP 5.6 benchmark: 91.64 req/sec

WordPress 5.0 PHP 7.0 benchmark results: 206.71 req/sec

WordPress 5.0 PHP 7.1 benchmark results: 210.98 req/sec

WordPress 5.0 PHP 7.2 benchmark results: 229.18 req/sec

WordPress 5.0 PHP 7.3 benchmark results: 253.20 req/sec 🏆

Get all your applications, databases, and WordPress sites online and under one roof. Our feature-packed, high-performance cloud platform includes:

Easy setup and management in the MyKinsta dashboard

24/7 expert support

The best Google Cloud Platform hardware and network, powered by Kubernetes for maximum scalability

An enterprise-level Cloudflare integration for speed and security

Global audience reach with up to 37 data centers and 260 PoPs worldwide

Get started with a free trial of our Application Hosting or Database Hosting. Explore our plans or talk to sales to find your best fit.

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A Beginner's Guide to Website Speed Optimization

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In-depth website speed optimization guide that shows you how important it is to have a snappy website. DIY instructions and tricks to improve load times.

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What is Page Speed?

Page Speed is the amount of time that it takes for a webpage to load. A page's loading speed is determined by several different factors, including a site's server, page filesize, and image compression.

That said:

"Page Speed" isn't as straightforward as it sounds.

That's because there are lots of different ways of measuring page speed. Here are three of the most common:

Fully Loaded Page: This is how long it takes for 100% of the resources on a page to load. This is the most straightforward way to determine how fast a page loads.

Time to First Byte: This measures how long it takes for a page to start the loading process.

If you've ever landed on a page and stared at a white screen for a few seconds, that's TTFB at work.

First Meaningful Paint/First Contextual Paint: Time it takes a page to load enough of its resources for a user to be able to read the content on that page.

For example, let's say you have a blog post that takes 10 seconds to fully load.

That's a long time... if you ONLY look at how long it takes for the entire page to load.

On the other hand, paying attention to First Meaningful Paint sometimes better represents how users actually interact with your page as it loads.

For example, let's look again at the page that takes 10 seconds to load all of the page's resources.

Even though it takes a while for the entire page to load, when a user first lands on the page, they get a "First Meaningful Paint" after 1.5 seconds.

Which means they can start interacting with your page pretty much instantly. So to a user, your page is fast.

Bottom Line?

There are lots of different ways of measuring page speed. And there's no "right" metric that beats all of the others. They all have pros and cons.

Instead, focus on improving your page loading speed for ALL of the metrics that you find.

Why Is Page Speed Important for SEO?

Google has used page speed as a ranking factor since 2010.

And in 2018 Google ramped up the importance of page speed with The "Speed" update.

In short:

A slow loading website can hurt your Google rankings.

The question is: how does Google determine your site's loading speed? Do they look at how long it takes for 100% of the page to load? Or TTFB?

They haven't made any official statements on it. But considering that they report on all of these metrics in their PageSpeed Insights tool tells me that they probably use a combination of different page speed measurements:

With that, here's how to improve your site's loading speed.

Best Practices

Compress Images

I put this first because it's usually the biggest win.

After all, images usually take up 50-90% of a page's size.

(And loading speed)

For example, look at this page speed report from a page on my site:

As you can see 86.2% of the page size is due to images:

So the more that you can compress your images, the faster your page will load.

How?

If your site runs on WordPress, then I highly recommend a plugin called WP Smush:

It automatically compresses any image that you upload to the WordPress media library. And at least according to the creators of the plugin, this can reduce your image file size by 14.2%.

Not using WordPress? There are still plenty of image compression options out there, like Caesium and the Mass Image Compressor.

Unlike back in the day, most of the compression tools now either use lossless compression or only reduce image quality to a point that's barely noticeable.

For example, we compress 100% of the images here at Backlinko. And they still look nice and sharp:

Clean and Compress Your Code

In other words: minify the resources found on your page.

This includes:

Your first step should be to clean up any bloated code that you have on your page. This extra code could be from features that you don't have on your site anymore. Or from shoddy developer work.

Either way: the cleaner your code, the faster things will load.

(Yes, that rhymes 🙂 )

Then, compress your code using a program like GZip.

Upgrade Hosting

This is one tip that I don't see enough people talking about.

You can clean up your code and compress image all day long. But if you spend $4.99/month on hosting, your site isn't going to load quickly.

That's because you're sharing a server with a million other websites.

There are a million web hosts out there. So I can't recommend one in particular.

But I can say that as a general rule: when it comes to hosting, you get what you pay for.

So if you're serious about improving your site's loading speed, it might be time to upgrade to a premium host or to a dedicated server.

Activate Browser Caching

This allows users to store parts of your page in their browser cache.

So the next time they visit your site, it loads MUCH faster.

Unfortunately, this won't help your page load any faster for first-time visitors. But it's great for improving your loading speed for people that have visited your site before.

You can set up browser caching in your .htaccess file. Or with a WordPress plugin.

Implement a CDN

A Content Delivery Network ( CDN) is one of the easiest ways to boost your site's loading speed.

CDNs work by figuring out where your visitor is physically located... and then serving up your site's resources from a server close to them.

Test With Multiple Page Speed Testing Tools

Now that you've implemented these steps, it's time to see how you're doing.

And I recommend testing your page speed using two different tools.

The first is Google PageSpeed Insights.

Google's tool scans your page's code for problems...

... and opportunities.

And they recently added a feature that reports on how long it takes for your site to load to actual human users (using Google Chrome Browser data).

Which is SUPER useful.

One word of warning: you'll sometimes find that the tool's recommendations don't make sense for your site.

For example, Google's tool recommended that I "Serve images in next-gen formats".

However, these "next-gen" formats aren't supported by most browsers (including Safari and Firefox). So if you switch over to these next-gen formats, your site's user experience is going to go down the drain.

That said: there are a ton of helpful insights in this tool. And I recommend implementing as many as you can.

Next up, we have WebPageTest.org.

What's cool about WebPageTest is that it loads your page in an actual browser. And it lets you know about specific parts of your page that take a long time to load.

It's a free website optimization tool that's available at the Semrush App Center for anyone with a Semrush account. What's cool about it is that you can check your site's speed and performance directly in Semrush, along with other tasks, and get actionable insights for your web team.

Mobile speed case studies - Push for faster page loads: 3 in-depth case studies that show how improving speed can translate into higher rankings and more organic traffic.

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Everything you need to know about page speed and SEO, including details from the latest Google PageSpeed updates.

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In this day and age, page speed is everything. Not a day goes by without a new article, Google representative, or SEO expert telling us that optimizing for speed is among the most important things you should do for your website. And they're right, of course! Page speed influences SEO in many ways. Here's an overview of how page speed and SEO go together.

What is page speed?

"Page speed" refers to how fast the content on your page loads. It sounds simple; the faster your content loads, the quicker your page speed is. However, it's good to understand that page speed is somewhat of an umbrella concept because there's not a single metric that can define how fast your web page loads.

When discussing page speed in website performance, we should not consider it similar to how fast a car can go. A car can go 100km/h, and you can say that's the car's speed. But when talking about page speed, there is much more going on than just "this page loads in 4 seconds". It's much better to think of page speed as part of the user experience that your visitors will get when interacting with your website.

How to think about page speed

In an ideal world, you'd click a link in the search results, and the corresponding page would appear instantly. But we all know that's a pipe dream. Over the years, pages have only increased in size, and the popularity of JavaScript made them even more complex and harder to load. Loading a web page can still be a drag, even with lightning-fast internet connections and potent devices.

Think about when you visit a web page. Do you wait for the page to load fully before interacting with it? Or do you start scrolling around and checking things right when you see content starts appearing? And if you start interacting with the page right away when there's content, do you find missing elements (text, images, videos, buttons) when you scroll deeper on the page?

Here's another question for you. Let's say we have two pages. The first page quickly displays the first bits of content on your screen, but it takes longer before you can interact with things. The second page shows content a tad bit slower, but elements on the page, such as images and buttons, work properly. Between the two, which one would you say has better "page speed"?

As you can see, "page speed" is not necessarily about how fast a web page can load but more about how quickly it can provide a good user experience. Even if the page's main content is quick to load, but other elements take longer to appear, you'll still feel like the page is slow because you have to wait before you can interact with it.

There's no single metric to define page speed

By now, you may understand that it's tricky to define the "speed" of a web page or how "fast" a page is. Page speed is a multifaceted concept that can't be determined using a single metric. Not to mention, many things affect the loading speed of a website, which we will get to later in this article.

When you click on a link to visit a web page, your browser has to make a request to the server of the website asking for content and other information. That content has to be loaded fully or partially on the browser before the user can interact with the page. At the same time, many things happen when a page gets loaded. You see things start appearing and popping up on your screen. After a brief moment, you can begin to interact with the page.

But when you take a step back and think about how we browse the web, we tend to interact with a page almost simultaneously when content appears on our screen. We tend not to wait for the page to load before we start exploring fully. At the same time, we don't like it when we start scrolling, but things only pop up a bit later.

So to gauge the "speed" of a web page, we need to use several metrics in combination with each other to determine how fast and smooth the user experience on that page is. For that reason, Google introduced Web Vitals in 2020 - a set of metrics to measure websites' speed and user experience. These metrics made their way into the Google core algorithm update in 2021, becoming the Core Web Vitals we know today.

Core Web Vitals give insights into your page speed

Core Web Vitals look at three aspects of a web page: loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. From those three aspects, Google defined the following metrics:

Loading - Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric measures how long it takes for the most significant piece of content to appear on the screen.

Interactivity - First Input Delay (FID): This metric measures how fast the page can respond to the first user interaction.

Visual Stability - Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This metric measures the stability of visual elements on your page. In other words, does stuff move around on the screen while loading?

Google also set the standard measurements for each of these metrics and split them into three categories: good, need improvement, and poor. For instance, a page with a First Input Delay (FID) of below 300ms is considered poor, while above 100ms is considered good.

It's worth noting that you have to meet or surpass the target performance in the "good" categories for 75% of your real-world visitors, in a 28-day period to pass Core Web Vitals. Generally speaking, that means three out of four visitors must experience the target level of performance or better.

If you're looking to improve your page speed, it's essential to know and understand these metrics. And with page speed improvement, you may also enhance your ranking on Google.

Differences between page speed and site speed

Some people use the term "page speed," while others use "site speed" when discussing website performance. They are similar but surely not the same. Page speed only refers to the performance of a single web page, while site speed refers to the overall performance of a whole website.

It's easier to measure the performance of a single web page as we have metrics in Core Web Vitals to work with. On the other hand, measuring the performance of a whole website is very tricky as a site can contain hundreds, even up to millions of pages. In addition, each of those pages behaves differently as they have different content and purposes.

Similar to "page speed," you can't define the speed of a website with a single metric. However, a website is just a combination of a bunch of web pages put together in a structured way. So let's say most of your pages pass Core Web Vitals, then you can consider your site "fast." If the opposite is true, you have slow "site speed."

How important is page speed for SEO?

It's a no-brainer that you want your website to be fast. A fast site means your pages load quickly. Of course, people come to your website for your content and your offers. However, that awesome and unique content must be accompanied by a good user experience.

Fast-loading sites have higher conversion rates and lower bounce rates

Attention spans are notoriously short. As the internet gets faster, they're getting shorter still. Numerous studies have found a clear link between the amount of time a page takes to load and the percentage of visitors who will get bored of waiting. For instance, Google found out in their research that:

The probability of a visitor leaving a page without interacting increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds (thinkwithgoogle)

The probability of a visitor leaving a page without interacting increases to 90% as page load time goes from 1 second to 5 (thinkwithgoogle)

Your goal should be to be the fastest site in your niche. Be faster than your competitors. Having a site or an e-commerce platform that takes forever to load won't do you any good. People hit that back button in a split second, never to return. With each bounced visitor, you are losing money and brand loyalty. Speed and efficiency are everything these days, so people won't sit around waiting for your page when there are other alternatives.

By offering a fast site, you encourage your visitors to stay longer. Not to mention, you're helping them get through their checkout journey faster. That helps improve your conversion rate and build trust and brand loyalty. Think of all the times you've been cursing the screen because you had to wait for a page to load or be running in circles because the user experience was atrocious. It happens so often - don't be that site.

A fast page improves user experience

Google understands that the time it takes for a page to load is vital to the overall user experience. Waiting for content to appear, the inability to interact with a page, and even noticing delays create friction.

That friction costs time, money, and your visitor's experience. Research shows that the level of stress from waiting for slow mobile results can be more stressful than watching a horror movie. Surely not, you say? That's what the fine folks at Ericsson Research found a few years back.

Ericsson Mobility Report MWC Edition, February 2016
Improving your site speed across the board means making people happy. They'll enjoy using your site, buy more and come back more often. This means that Google will see your site as a great search result because you are delivering the goods regarding site quality. Eventually, you might get a nice ranking boost.

Frustration hurts your users and hurts your rankings

It's not just Google - research from every corner of the web on all aspects of consumer behavior shows that speed significantly impacts outcomes.

These costs and site abandonment happen because users dislike being frustrated. Poor experiences mean they go elsewhere, visit other websites, and convert to competitors. Google easily tracks those behaviors (through bounces back to search engine results pages, short visits, and other signals) and is a strong signal that the page shouldn't be ranking where it was.

Google needs fast sites

Speed isn't only good for users - it's good for Google, too. Slow websites are often slow because they're inefficient. They may load too many large files, haven't optimized their media, or don't make use of modern technologies to serve their page. That means that Google has to consume more bandwidth, allocate more resources, and spend more money.

Across the whole web, every millisecond they can save, and every byte they don't have to process, adds up quickly. And quite often, simple changes to configuration, processes, or code can make websites much faster with no drawbacks. That may be why Google is so vocal about its education on performance.

A faster web is better for users and significantly reduces Google's operating costs. Either way that means that they're going to continue rewarding fast(er) sites.

Improve page speed helps to improve crawling for search engines

Modern sites are incredibly wieldy, and untangling that mess can make a big difference. The bigger your site is, the more impact page speed optimizations will have. That not only impacts user experience and conversion rates but also affects crawl budget and crawl rate.

When a Googlebot comes around and crawls your webpage, it crawls the HTML file. Any resources referenced in the file, like images, CSS, and JavaScript, will be fetched separately. The more files you have and the heavier they are, the longer it will take for the Googlebot to go through them.

On the flip side, the more time Google spends on crawling a page and its files, the less time and resources Google has to dedicate to other pages. And that means that Google may miss out on other important pages and content on your site.

Optimizing your website and content for speed will provide a good user experience for your visitors and help Googlebots better crawl your site. They can come around more often and get more done.

Page speed is a ranking factor

Google has repeatedly said that a fast site helps you rank better. So it's no surprise that Google has been measuring the speed of your site and using that in their ranking algorithms since 2010.

In 2018, Google launched the so-called 'Speed Update,' making page speed a ranking factor for mobile searches. Google stressed it would only affect the slowest sites and that fast sites getting faster won't get a boost, but they are looking at website performance across the board.

In 2021, Google announced the page experience algorithm update, demonstrating that page speed and user experience are intertwined. Core Web Vitals clearly state that speed is an essential ranking factor. The update also gave site owners metrics and standards to work with.

Of course, Google still wants to serve searchers the most relevant information even if the page experience is somewhat lacking. Creating high-quality content is still the best way to rank. However, Google also states that page experience signals become more important when many pages with relevant content compete for visibility in the search result.

The Speed Update, which enables page speed in mobile search ranking📱, is now rolling out for all users!

More details on Webmaster Central 👉 https://t.co/fF40GJZik0
- Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) July 9, 2018

Google mobile-first index

Another significance of page speed for ranking is Google's mobile-first approach to indexing content. That means Google uses the mobile version of your pages for indexing and ranking. This approach makes sense as we increasingly rely on mobile devices to go online. In recent research, Semrush found out that 66% of all website visits come from mobile devices

To compete for a spot in the search results, your mobile page needs to meet Core Web Vitals standards and other page experience signals. And this is not easy at all. Pages on mobile take longer to load compared to their desktop counterparts, while attention span stays the same. People might be more patient on mobile devices, but not a lot more. Take a look at some statistics:

All the more reasons to optimize your website and content if your goal is to win a spot in the SERP.

Factors that affect your page speed

Many factors affect a page's loading speed, but we think you might know this already. Though there's one thing you can't control: the connection quality of your end user. Other than that, factors that influence your page speed include:

Your hosting service

Hosting services play a crucial role in the performance of your website because they provide the server where your site lives. So their server performance directly affects how your website performs. Factors influencing your host's performance range from their server configurations, facilities, uptime, and specifications of machines running the servers. By choosing a good and reliable hosting, you ensure that your web server can process requests fast enough to accommodate all activities on your site. In addition, you're eliminating one factor from the speed optimization equation.

Your website theme

Themes control the design of your website, from layouts and font to color scheme. But not all themes are created equally. Some themes are much cleaner and more optimized than others. They have a smaller file size, making them easier to load. That also means they have fewer bells and whistles (think of animation or specialized design patterns) compared to others that are a bit extra. But that's a good trade-off if you want better loading performance.

Large file size

We're talking about many types of files here, from your HTML file to CSS, and primarily JavaScript. Any bytes and kilobytes you can shave off these files will impact your page's performance. In addition, modern sites use a lot of JavaScript to make the site dynamic. It's what makes those flashy, cool animations and transitions you see on websites nowadays possible.

But JavaScript is also heavy, and overusing it makes a page clunky and difficult to load. You may have a low FID score in Core Web Vitals because processing these JavaScript files takes longer, especially on mobile devices, since their processing power isn't as great as desktop computers.

Badly written code

Bad code can lead to many issues, from JavaScript errors to invalid HTML markups. Poorly-optimized code can cause significant dips in performance. Clean up your code, remove any errors, and eliminate any extra lines that do not add meaningful value.

Images and videos

Heavy images are the culprit of a slow-loading page. They take up a considerable chunk of your page's weight (in kilobytes or megabytes). If your page has a large and unoptimized header image, you might have a low LCP score in Core Web Vitals. That's because LCP measures how long it takes for the largest piece of content to appear on the screen, and your large image will surely take time to load. Image SEO plays a huge role in upping your site speed.

If you're running your site on WordPress, you're undoubtedly using plugins and widgets to add functionalities to your site. Plugins are what makes WordPress such a powerful platform. But using too many plugins is counterintuitive because they slow your website down. Every plugin you install adds a bit of code to your page, making it heavier than it should be. Unoptimized plugins can also play a significant role in slowing down a website.

Absence of a CDN

CDN stands for content delivery network. It is an interconnected network of servers and their data centers distributed in various geographical locations. They can help with page loading performance, especially if you have an international audience.

A CDN saves your website's static content, like CSS and image files, across various servers in the network. It does this so it can quickly serve these files to people who live close to one of the servers in the network. Let's say your server is based in Australia, but you have many visitors from India. Instead of sending files directly from Australia, the CDN can send files from a server in India, making this process faster and more efficient.

Redirects

Redirects are a natural part of any website, and there's nothing wrong with them. But keep in mind that redirects may impact your page's loading performance if not configured properly. In most cases, they won't significantly slow you down. But in the case of redirect chains, they will. By linking as close to the final destination as possible, you avoid creating too many redirects and thus, reduce your website's load.

How to check if your page loads slowly

Unsurprisingly, some of the best resources for optimizing your website are from Google. We recommend that you explore their Web Fundamentals documentation to understand the techniques, tools, and approaches to building faster websites. Various tools are also available for measuring and monitoring the speed of your site. Here are a few that we recommend trying out:

Google PageSpeed Insights - A very powerful option that provides 'real user metrics' of your website, straight from Google. It's also one of the most important tools you should know how to use.

The Page Experience report in Google Search Console - Don't forget to check out this tool. It summarizes the user experience of visitors to your site, showing how many URLs pass or fail Core Web Vitals and other page experience signals.

Lighthouse, for Google Chrome - This is one of the most sophisticated performance measurement tools available and great for benchmarking.

WebPageTest - This tool provides a waterfall diagram of how all the assets load on your website. Great for spotting slow resources and bottlenecks.

Chrome Developer Console - This tool shows you exactly what's happening as your site loads, on your computer and in your browser.

Optimize your site is more than looking at numbers

As you know by now, page speed is not only crucial for SEO but also for your sales, retention, and brand loyalty. Create great content, optimize your website and pages to meet Core Web Vitals' standards, and aim for that top spot on the first page of Google.

It's good to note that optimizing your site for page speed is not as simple as getting a good score in all those speed test tools. Don't blind yourself to scores and metrics as those numbers are not representative of all your visitors. Every user is different. Every visitor uses another type of internet connection, device, and browser. Find out who your users are, how they access your site, and what they do while they're there.

Combine tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights, WebPageTest.org, and Lighthouse with analytical tools to get a broad overview of speed issues on your site. Use the recommendations to get started on improving your page speed, but do take these with a grain of salt. They are great starting points, but there is so much more you can do!

Page speed optimization resources for you

To get started with optimizing your page's performance, check out these articles and documentation:

Last but not least, an incredible source of information: Jono's slide deck on site speed from a talk at SMXL Milan.

Read more: Why every website needs Yoast SEO "

Jono Alderson

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What is page speed, and how does it influence SEO?

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Speeding up your site's performance is among the most beneficial things you should do for your site. Find out how page speed and SEO go together.

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20 Website Speed Optimization Strategies for 2023 | BrowserStack

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Website speed optimization improves user engagement and business prospects. Read this guide to get 20 tips on how to optimize your website’s speed.

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Website speed helps form the first impression for a visitor of that website and business. Developers and testers strive hard to make a website aesthetically pleasing and functional by adding numerous features, content, and functionalities. However, if these features or the content are not adequately optimized it may adversely affect website speed.

How fast a website loads is instrumental to anyone visiting the site. According to research, 47% of people don't wait for more than two seconds for a web page to load.

Speed is an integral part of the user experience, specifically for e-commerce websites as it can cost them millions for every second delayed. This article details three reasons why website speed is important and why it is essential to optimize website speed.

1. High speed ensures an impressive user experience

As mentioned earlier, when a customer or a visitor opens the website for the first time, they expect it to load quickly (within 3 seconds). Bear in mind that first impressions are vital for businesses on the web. Speed plays a decisive role in how audiences perceive a brand on the web.

It is human tendency to consider a faster website more reliable and professional. Inversely, a slow website is mostly annoying for users. Most users bounce immediately and prefer visiting other, faster websites to meet their requirements. Turning around that negative impression can be very challenging.

Research by Kissmetrics also reveals that 40% of people abandon a site completely if it takes more than three seconds to load. Thus, to deliver an impressive user experience for first-time visitors, a website should load fast every single time it is opened.

Note: To check how fast a website loads across real browsers and devices, use this website speed test tool by BrowserStack. Every speed test is conducted on a unique real device-browser combination (For example, Safari on iPhone X). This helps teams get accurate test results.

2. Speed affects the SEO rankings of a website

Google made it very clear that they operate by speed-obsession for every product on the web. Matt Cutts (Google's former head of web spam) has officially admitted that Google considers fast load speed as a positive ranking factor.

However, Google has also clarified that website owners should not compromise with content quality or relevancy to make web pages faster.

Thus, for websites to rank well on Google, teams must ensure that web pages are optimized enough to load faster. Higher rankings lead to growth in organic traffic, which is very important for businesses.
Try SpeedLab for Free
3. Speed affects conversions

Bear in mind that Google penalizes websites with low page load speed. More importantly, customers or visitors will stop returning to such sites or bounce when pages take too long to render. This results in the loss of potential customers and revenue.

This is true especially for e-commerce websites, A one-second delay leads to a 7% reduction in conversion. For example, if an e-commerce site makes $50,000 per day, a delay of one second could potentially result in approx $1.28 million of lost revenue every year.

For businesses to be successful on the web, having a fast website is non-negotiable. A fast loading website not only delivers a good user experience but helps in creating a lasting positive impression among customers. Hence, optimizing page load speed is of utmost importance for every website developer and tester. It needs to be on the list of their priorities from the very beginning of development sprint cycles.

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3 Reasons Why Website Speed Matters | BrowserStack

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Did you know that one second delay leads to 7% reduction in conversions? Read detailed guide to understand why website speed is important for customers.

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To ensure collaboration and project success, it is crucial for all project stakeholders to understand their roles and responsibilities and those of other project members. This is especially important when project teams are more complex due to their large size, involvement of distributed team members, or reliance on staff from multiple departments.

RACI stands for Responsible Accountable Consulted Informed. While its origins are murky, the RACI matrix has been adopted by many organizations to associate roles with project deliverables. One Six Sigma tutorial describes RACI this way:

"Typically a task is associated with at least one role or in some cases multiple roles. This 'Association' of the role with a task can be divided into the following four association types:

The above four types of association of a role to a task represented in a simple task vs. role diagram or matrix is called RACI (pronounced 'racey') matrix. So basically the RACI matrix is a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM), designed to assign tasks, activities, responsibilities, accountability, decision making, support to team members of a process/project, and clarify expectations on the level of their participation." Here is an example of a RACI matrix:

This guide will explain when to use RACI, why it works, guidelines to use it effectively, and the role it can play in effective project management. Lastly, we'll show you that once you've created your own matrix, you'll need a collaborative, real-time tool, like Smartsheet, to manage the rest of the project details - from start to finish.

The Four Association Types

RACI has four participant types that are explained below. It's imperative to understand each of these before creating a RACI matrix.

Responsible
A role that is "Responsible" for completing the task or deliverable. If the responsibility role, for example, is technical writer, the technical writer may be responsible for writing online help files. A software developer wouldn't write the help files, but might incorporate those files into the product, which would be a different task.

Accountable
A role that is "Accountable" has the final authority or accountability for the task's completion. As with the previous example of a technical writer developing online help and a software developer incorporating the help files, a product manager might be responsible for seeing that the files are in the product.

Consulted
A role that is "Consulted" is an adviser to a task. For example, a Scrum Master might be consulted because they are a subject matter expert. Advisers should be considered carefully as too many people in this role can stretch the task time and raise the risk of poor performance.

Informed
A role that is "Informed" is kept up to date on task completion. Charting this role helps to illustrate dependencies and also ensures that transparency into task status exists. Identifying those who require status updates can be complex, so it is worthwhile to take the time to consult various roles to determine if they need to know when a task is completed. For example, the sales manager may require status updates because a customer has a special interest in the development of a feature.

When to Use RACI

A RACI Matrix is useful as a general practice of project management, but there are some definite indicators for implementing the RACI paradigm.

If the approval process is bogged down, it may be due to role confusion.

If decisions are being overruled often and seemingly arbitrarily, this is also a situation that can benefit from clarifying roles.

Another situation that frequently occurs is that many people perform the same analysis tasks. When tasks are not getting done, it may be that nobody knows who should be doing them.

When the authority to perform tasks is not understood, it may be time to define roles and tasks, responsibilities, and authority.

Eliminating this sort of confusion and clarifying roles and tasks is the chief function of a RACI Matrix.

RACI is among the most popular models, but there are several alternatives, including:

PACSI - Used in situations where multiple stakeholders can review and veto the work of a single accountable person. The roles include Performed, Accountable, Control, Suggested, and Informed.

RAPID - Created by Bain & Company to clarify decision accountability through clear role and responsibility delineation. The roles include Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, and Decide.

The Value of RACI

Implementing a RACI model allows you to involve more qualified minds in your projects. And, it's an easy chart to develop. Project managers will appreciate that they can use this method to develop a chart quickly that provides Project-Allocation-At-A-Glance.

RACI benefits include:

Eliminating role confusion.

Preventing over-allocation of resources to one project and under-allocation to another.

Clearly defining roles to all the people who fill them (clear understanding of expectations is key to a smooth project and reduces the need for conflict resolution later).

Ensuring no task is overlooked when resources are allocated.

Providing a fast and efficient way to re-allocate resources when there is turnover. New people can quickly identify their roles in a project and the roles of those with whom they must interact.

Finally, because the Informed category is given equal weight, the RACI Matrix encourages communication between roles. Communication is the key to clearly understanding expectations, which results in a smooth project.

RACI Matrices

A RACI chart is a matrix of all project activities associated with the responsible people or roles. "All project activities" includes everything from the day you begin, such as planning, test, design, support, etc.

Creating a RACI matrix involves the following steps:

Decide how to chart the matrix- You can use any number of tools or templates, including a spreadsheet, whiteboard, or software solution.

Identify the project tasks (or deliverables)-Meet with key stakeholders to develop a list of project tasks. For this discussion, "tasks" include activities such as meetings or events that must take place, as well as deliverables such as features or products. Tasks are labeled across the X or Y axis of the matrix. For example, if you are charting a software project developed under Agile, the Sprint Demo Meeting may be a required activity and should be included in the matrix as a task. Don't forget to add maintenance of the RACI Matrix as a task. The project manager usually maintains the RACI Matrix.

Identify the project roles-Project roles are labeled down the axis of the matrix that was not used for tasks. The project roles make the matrix more understandable and can be useful for adding data you may have forgotten. As you identify roles, you'll remember tasks for those roles, so add them to the task axis. Also, the task axis is useful for identifying roles and clarifying resource allocation. This is a good time to assign names to roles as well - one name per role is optimal.

Label the intersections of the axes-Where the X and Y axes intersect, label the intersection with an R, A, C, or I to finalize the matrix with who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed on each task.

RACI Guidelines

Although a RACI Matrix is specific to a project, there are some broad guidelines or best practices to keep in mind:

Avoid multiple levels of oversight - one level is enough

Encourage teamwork

Maintain chart fluidity - make changes as needed and let people know when things change

Assign only one Accountable per task

Ensure Accountable assignees have authority to ensure the task is complete

Avoid too many consultants as they can take up too much time (waiting for answers, gathering input, etc.) while too few can damage performance, so try to find the "sweet spot"

Inform everyone with a role of their assignment

Finding the Right RACI Template

RACI templates will save you time and provide a starting point for building your chart. However, there are numerous templates available and you should review the varying styles to find one that fits your project needs.

Some templates use the X axis for the tasks and Y for roles, and others do the opposite. If tasks exceed roles, as they generally do, it is easier to use the X axis for tasks and the Y for roles as you will be able to see the greatest number of roles per task at a glance on most computer monitors. On the other hand, you may find it easier to filter a chart based on role (for instance, filtering to show only the "I" roles for a given task) with the tasks on the X axis. In addition, most templates use some form of color-coding.

Regardless of which template you select, using one will eliminate a lot of basic work in constructing the chart and will free your time to define roles and tasks.

RACI Project Management

RACI Analysis
RACI project management is focused on analyzing and managing the RACI Matrix to identify problems, resolve conflicts in roles, revise role categorization, and provide the team an opportunity for feedback. Analysis should be done in a team meeting, though the meeting may not require every single role holder to attend.

A RACI Matrix is analyzed vertically and horizontally. Here are some things to look for when reviewing the role axis (whether this is horizontal or vertical):

If one role has too many responsibilities, should some responsibilities be reallocated or should more people be assigned to the role?

If only one person is Accountable, is it reasonable to expect that person to make all decisions and could it threaten the project by creating a bottleneck?

Here are some things to look for when reviewing the Task axis (whether this is horizontal or vertical):

If there is a task with no one Responsible, should someone be assigned or should the task be eliminated?

If there is a task where no one is Accountable, who has decision-making authority?

If there are multiple people Accountable for a task, avoid conflicts by making a single person accountable.

If too many people must be consulted, evaluate whether one person can be assigned who talks with others involved.

Role Confusion
It is common, during the life of a project, to have team members experience role confusion. A RACI matrix is useful for clearly identifying roles associated with a project and improving productivity, especially when you're suffering from role confusion. Some signs of role confusion are:

Concern over who makes decisions-Decision-makers are usually labeled as Accountable, but it may be that decisions are being made by the Responsible party. If that's the case, the team should know who makes decisions in each situation.

Finger pointing-If work is not completed on time, finger pointing may result. The key to avoiding this is knowing who is Responsible.

Poor resource allocation-The RACI Matrix should make resource allocation very clear, but sometimes a single task can be extremely taxing, leading to some issues concerning who should be doing what and when.

Lack of action because of ineffective communications-If someone is not Informed, they may not know to perform a task.

Too many consultations because the wrong people are consulted-The Consulted should be clearly labeled to avoid jeopardizing the project schedule.

It is the duty of a project manager to step in if role confusion is suspected and clarify roles to ensure that everyone is aware of expectations.

Improve Project Management Efforts with Smartsheet

Creating a RACI matrix is helpful to get started working on any project -- big or small, simple or complex. Once you've completed your matrix, you need a collaborative, real-time tool to help manage project details from start to finish.

One such tool is Smartsheet, a work management and automation platform that enables enterprises and teams to get from idea to impact - fast. Top project management leaders rely on Smartsheet to help align the right people, resources, and schedules to get work done.

Use Smartsheet to create consistent project elements, increase speed, and improve collaboration with scalable options that fit individual work preferences. Hold yourself and your team accountable, improve visibility into team priorities, and ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

Discover how Smartsheet can help maximize your project management efforts, today.
Try Smartsheet for Free
Want more project management tips and best practices? Check out our Project Management Resource Hub for the latest articles, templates, and more!

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A Project Management Guide for Everything RACI | Smartsheet

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To ensure collaboration and project success, it is crucial for all project stakeholders to understand their roles and responsibilities and those of other project members. This is especially important when project teams are more complex due to their large size, involvement of distributed team members, or reliance on staff from multiple departments.

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project-management.com content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

A RACI matrix is a document that clarifies which individuals or groups are responsible for a project's successful completion, and the roles that each will play throughout the project. The acronym RACI stands for the different responsibility types: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.

Successful project management depends on a team-wide understanding of roles and responsibilities. Using a RACI matrix to assign and define each role is a great way to keep a project on track and positioned for success. When designed correctly, the RACI matrix is a way for a project manager to help ensure the success of the project before it's even begun.

Featured Partners: Project Management Software

How Does a RACI Chart Help Project Managers?

Project managers use RACI charts to keep track of team roles and relay those responsibilities to the larger team. The matrix defines clear roles and responsibilities for individual team members across the various phases of the project, breaking each role down into four types of designation: those who are Responsible and Accountable for project deliverables, those who should be Consulted as work begins, and stakeholders who need to be Informed of ongoing progress, roadblocks, and updates.
Read more about project phases
RACI Matrix Definitions

Responsible

The individual(s) with responsibility for the task or deliverable is typically responsible for developing and completing the project deliverables themselves. The responsible parties are typically hands-on team members that make direct contributions toward the completion of the project. The responsible team is comprised of the project's "doers", working hands-on to ensure that each deliverable is completed.

Some examples of responsible parties are:

Project Managers

Business Analysts

Developers

Graphic Designers

Copywriters

Accountable

Accountable parties ensure accountability to project deadlines, and ultimately, accountability to project completion. This group frequently also falls under the informed category.

Some examples of accountable parties are:

Product Owners

Signature Authorities

Business Owners

Sponsors

Key Stakeholders

Consulted

Consulted individuals' opinions are crucial, and their feedback needs to be considered at every step of the game. These individuals provide guidance that is often a prerequisite to other project tasks, for example, providing legal guidance on a project throughout the process. If you are working on new product development or expansion, this could essentially be the entire organization.

Some examples of consulted parties are:

Legal Experts

Information Security and Cybersecurity Experts

Compliance Consultants

Informed

Informed persons are those that need to stay in the loop of communication throughout the project. These individuals do not have to be consulted or be a part of the decision-making, but they should be made aware of all project updates. Typically, this party are business owners or stakeholders that are more interested in viewing the project at a 30,000-foot view. Keep this group on your cc list for awareness of topics, decisions, and progress - that includes making them part of the initial project kickoff and project demos as optional attendees. This group often also falls under the accountable group.

Some examples of informed parties are:

Project Committee Members

External Stakeholders

Business Owners

Why Are RACI Roles Important?

RACI roles provide a sense of organization and clarity for teams that are looking to divide roles and keep team members accountable for their contributions. Considering that 27% of projects go over budget, for reasons like scope creep and lack of defined roles, RACI roles help position a project for success and avoid common pitfalls.

Moreover, RACI roles help ensure that communication between all roles is ongoing. When you consider that nearly half of all project spending is at risk of being wasted due to a lack of effective team-based communication, it becomes all that more important to prioritize. Ultimately, teams who prioritize communication and well-defined roles are better off, and RACI roles help teams achieve that goal faster - while providing accountability for each team member's unique contributions to the success of the project.
Read More: Top 10 Main Causes of Project Failure
How to Create a RACI Matrix

If you're looking to implement a RACI matrix as part of your team's project planning process, take these steps to create a RACI matrix.

1. Plan ahead before taking action.
Ensure that you have a thorough understanding of the project and its demands before outlining any further steps by communicating with key stakeholders and decision-makers.

2. Determine the scope of the project.
Determine the list of key activities and deliverables from the director of program management or other leadership.

3. Determine who the involved parties are.
Determine who is needed to be a part of the project or initiative.

4. Outline each project role.
Determine the project roles and responsible job titles and persons for each activity and deliverable.

5. Gather as a group.
Hold review sessions with key members of the team for alignment, and if you haven't already, host a kickoff meeting with the entirety of the team and key stakeholders to unveil the matrix, address questions, and more.

If the project has already started, it's not too late to implement a RACI matrix.

1. Outline the story. Using research from multiple sources, do a, b, c, and d.

2. Utilize steps 2 and 3 (shown above). Ensure the right groups are assigned and engaged.

3. Hold a review session. Ensure that the team acknowledges and discusses the plan and the roles assigned.

Featured Partners: Project Management Software

Examples of a RACI Matrix

Example of a RACI Matrix chart with role definitions

Our FREE Downloadable RACI Matrix Template

Who Creates the RACI Matrix?

The RACI matrix - sometimes called RACI model, RACI diagram, or simply just RAC - is created by the project manager at the start of the project as a key part of establishing the initial human resources planning for the project. Because miscommunication is a common threat to any project, RACI charts are a great asset to teams dealing with any type of project, from very simple projects to extremely complex ones.

FAQ: How do I Implement a RACI matrix?

Implementing a RACI matrix takes more than just a few emails and sporadic conversations - it takes consistent communication and planning. You should host a kickoff meeting to introduce the matrix to the team and make a plan to continue meeting at predetermined times throughout the project lifecycle.

Here are a few more tips to keep in mind as you implement your RACI matrix within the team dynamic:

1. Get everyone prepared. Send the document around to the meeting distribution as read-ahead material, requesting feedback if there are any major concerns.

2. Roll out each role for the team. During the meeting, conduct a review of the tasks and responsible parties. Do not rush through this review, but rather ensure enough time in your project kickoff for this important aspect. (Be certain to clarify the definitions of RACI to avoid ambiguity.)

3. Consider changes and update accordingly. After the meeting, send out the notes documenting acceptance or updates to the RACI. In addition to sending out the notes, request any corrections within a reasonable yet defined timeframe. Clarify that if no changes are requested, each person is acknowledging their role and committing to the project tasks as outlined.

4. Stay in touch. Consider a quick review with the entire team each quarter or every six months for longer projects to ensure it remains up-to-date and not simply another document in the repository but a relied-upon artifact.

FAQ: What are RACI matrix best practices?

As you implement the RACI matrix...

Encourage teamwork and foster collaboration whenever possible.

Don't fear updates - make changes and adjustments as needed (but be sure to communicate those changes clearly to all parties).

Earlier is better. Roll out your matrix plan to the team BEFORE you plan to implement it for the best results.

Have a clear-cut understanding of the project scope and how each role connects to the overall project goal.

For "Responsible" Parties:

Make sure your project's definition of Responsible is clear on who holds the "decider" role for the project or project phase's completion, and what the dimensions of that responsibility will be.

Ensure that all parties are aware of their role and responsibilities within the matrix.

For "Accountable" Parties:

When multiple Accountable team members must exist, use your definitions to make clear which individual is accountable for a given project element, and how that individual needs to interact with other Accountable team members.

Ensure that there is only one "Accountable" party assigned per task.

Be sure that the Accountable party has the authority and power to oversee the task as the accountable party.

For Consulted and Informed Parties:

Consulted parties are often high-level decision-makers with heavy schedules. Make sure you're clear on their availability ahead of time.

Similar to Consulted parties, Informed parties are often less hands-on and have less understanding of day-to-day project operations. As the project goes on, make sure to keep detailed notes to keep the Informed party up-to-date on key information.

Understand the ways that these parties like to communicate and create a plan to reach them early - whether that's over phone calls, emails, video calls, or from within your project management system's collaboration tools.

Knowing the difference between who needs to be consulted versus informed can be a challenge if there is ambiguity about project roles. Consider what aspects of the project different team members need to know to do their jobs, and then bake those into your definitions.

RACI Matrix Pros & Cons

Increased Engagement:
RACI helps engage project participants in the project lifecycle.

Limitations on Role Scope:
The RACI model does not provide details on role scope, especially for responsible parties. These gaps in detail also affect other team roles, for example, another gap in a RACI is the determination of who is responsible for verifier and signatory.

Enhanced Project Planning:
Project managers make project planning more organized, efficient, and detailed.

Limits on Task Details and Scope:
While a RACI matrix can provide an overview of who is responsible for different tasks, it will not state what needs to be done.

Identifiable Improvement Opportunities:
Areas of improvement are more easily identified.

Not Aligned to the Agile Methodology:
Project managers using an agile methodology like scrum may find it redundant since accountability, ownership, and ongoing communication is built into the scrum framework (i.e., product owner, scrum master, and daily standups with the team). Additionally, agile focuses on team-based delivery and accountability, while the RACI framework and alternatives focus on individual responsibility and autonomous accountability.

Easier Collaboration:
Use of a RACI matrix creates a clear path for leadership to sign off on project steps, as project documentation in the RACI model is heavily emphasized.

Better Communication:
Improves overall group communication as a whole

Group Accountability:
Assists groups, especially larger project teams, stay connected and accountable to their roles and project goals

Free RACI Matrix Templates

A number of project management software solutions include a native RACI matrix template. Here are just a few we've found:

Colorful RACI Chart Template

We love this template from Smartsheet because it's colorful, thorough, and includes room for every party involved in the project.

Pastel Colored RACI Matrix Template

This template from the Academy to Innovate HR is a great choice for project managers who want to organize their team roles with an easy-on-the-eyes chart that evolves beyond the simple spreadsheet.

Simple RACI Chart from Clickup

These RACI templates from Clickup have enough variety to fit any of your project needs, but are simple enough for even beginner PMs to use.

Detailed RACI Matrix Template

This template is a great starter template for anyone looking to explore RACI charts in their project management strategy. As an added bonus - it comes with the RACI definitions already built in!

Excel-Based RACI Chart Template

Are you an Excel or Google Sheets user looking to take advantage of the RACI matrix? An Excel-formatted template from Project Management Docs can be just the solution for you. This template is a great template for users who want a chart that comes in a pre-formatted structure.

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RACI Matrix: Responsibility Assignment Matrix Guide 2023

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Learn how to apply a RACI Matrix to your project to ensure that everyone understands who is responsible for what with project roles.

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RACI Chart Definition, Template, & Example | TeamGantt

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It's a fact: Complex projects make it easy for teams to lose track of tasks. You might have an air-tight project plan and a stellar team to back it up. But if you're not crystal clear about assignments-or even involvement-on a task level, confusion, crankiness, and even demotivation will creep into your project team.

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There's an old saying that 'If everyone's responsible, nobody's responsible.' And in project management, it often rings true.

When people don't know exactly what they - and their colleagues - are responsible for, it's easy for things to get missed, ignored, or left for others to deal with.

This is especially true nowadays, with projects more complex - and teams more distributed - than ever.

And it's a situation that leads to confusion, frustration, and, potentially, project failure.
One way to mitigate this is the responsibility assignment matrix - sometimes called the RACI matrix.
In this post we'll outline the core principles of the RACI Matrix - and explain why it may be a good idea for project managers to put in place for their projects!

What is a RACI matrix?

A RACI matrix is an essential project management tool used to define roles and responsibilities for a project or project task. It's about defining who's responsible for projects or tasks, and what level of input is expected of them.

These are the four categories of involvement in a project, and each individual or team involved in the project is assigned one of these project roles.

Let's first dig into what they mean...

The Responsible category is for a person or team who is actively involved in completing a task or project. To put it crudely, they're the ones who are actually 'doing the work.'

The Accountable category is for the person or team who's ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the project, task or deliverable. They might not be the ones 'doing' the work, but they are the ones who are ultimately accountable for the outcome.

The Consulted category is for teams or people who need to be consulted for their expertise or input along the way. They may not be directly involved in the work, but their input is important. For example - these people might be required to give feedback and sign off, or provide technical advice.

And the Informed category is for people who need to be kept informed of progress. They may provide input on a task or project, but more likely, they just require up-to-date info to understand where things are up to.

By clearly defining roles and responsibilities for a project using a RACI matrix, it's easier to monitor progress and ensure successful completion.

It also helps to eliminate misunderstandings about who is responsible for what by enshrining this in a clear, visual way.

How to create a RACI matrix

Creating a RACI matrix is easy to do. The matrix consists of two main elements - a table and a list of tasks, roles and responsibilities for the project or task.

The table is made up of columns for each individual involved in the project, and rows for each task or activity that needs to be completed. Each cell in the table will indicate the role for that person in relation to that particular task. The list should include a description of each task or activity, as well as the roles and responsibilities for each individual involved.

Let's look at a classic project and consider how those categories would come into effect using the RACI model.

In this example we'll consider a typical, run-of-the-mill web design project. So we start by adding a column for every person or team involved - we'll go with client, project manager, web designer, graphic designer, front-end developer, back-end developer, content writers/editors/strategists and a QA team.

Then, down the left-hand column, we list the stages or tasks involved in that project. We'll keep things broad and go with briefing and project outline, design, look and feel, user experience, front-end user interface, back end functionality and website content

Again, this is pretty broad, but you could also make it incredibly granular, highlighting every single task and every single person - and, actually, the RACI matrix is often at its best when done in this more detailed way.

Then, to complete our RACI matrix, we need to go through each empty box in our chart and fill it out with one of our four letters to denote whether that person or team is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted or Informed.

To further illustrate the idea, let's look at a different example - designing and executing a content marketing strategy.

In this example you'll notice that we have some individuals marked as "A&R" - this means they're both accountable AND responsible. In other words, they're tasked with doing the work - AND accountable for the results - which demonstrates how, sometimes, people can occupy more than one category in the matrix.

The beauty of this model is that you can read it in a couple of different ways.

You can view it row by row and work out who has what level of responsibility for a particular task.

Or you can use the columns to work out the requirements of a person or team across a whole project. In theory, you could pick out your role, then get a clear overview of all your responsibilities by simply working your way down the list.

Your RACI Matrix x Project.co

RACI charts are a key part of the project management process - particularly for complex projects - and can be managed with project management software like Project.co.

Start by creating your project. Every project can be customised to include the tools you need.

Next, invite your project team - this can be made up of internal team members, client team members, and even freelancers.

The Project Notes section is a great place to leave important info that's relevant to the whole project. This is a good place to store your RACI matrix.

You can also use the Embed tool to embed documents such as Google Sheets so they're available from within your project to everyone involved.

You can also include important RACI chart info from within the notes section of each task, as well as attaching tasks to individual people, dates and other important info.

Simply create the tasks you need to complete for your project and assign the responsible person or people to them.

Final thoughts

You don't have to be a business analyst to create a RACI chart and use this powerful method to make your projects more streamlined, simple and efficient.

The bottom line is that a RACI matrix ensures every team member knows what's expected of them - who's accountable, who's doing the work, who needs to be consulted, and who needs to be kept up to date.

And if you're looking to take your project management game to the next level - sign up to Project.co today and get started for free!

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Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RACI Matrix) Explained

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Learn about the core principles of the Responsibility Assignment Matrix, and why project managers may want to put the RACI Matrix in place for their projects!

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