The eCommerce platforms that were developed over ten to fifteen years ago, around in 2010, are now experiencing slowness with increased load time. Of course, I do understand that when you newly started the eCommerce platform, it was performing awesomely well. But, what happened to that speed and performance now?

At the same time, you are happy that the users/visitors to your site has drastically increased. The visitor count is way beyond compared to what it was when you started your eCommerce platform. This certainly is a good news isn't it?

At one end, your business has seen a good progress. On the other hand, your eCommerce platform's performance is lagging. And, the only reason behind this oxymoron like situation is, in order to attract more visitors, to give a good user experience to your Customers and to implement all the new unique selling ideas, you have taken certain steps. And, those steps have led to a few problems.

• Having a large number of plug-in integrated into your eCommerce platform.

• You have a good number of themes in your eCommerce platform, however, you did not bother to update the themes and plug-in when they were updated and released.

• Use of large sized and non-compressed images.

• You do not have a proper hosting and you went for a shared hosting when you newly started the eCommerce platform, which is now not enough with your expanding business.

• No object caching in your eCommerce platform - When someone lands on your site, and you don’t have caching enabled. Every time, their browser sends a request for the page to your server. Your server then processes the request, compiles the page, and then sends it back to the browser. This is okay for a small volume of traffic, but with increasing activities and high volume of traffic for your eCommerce website?

• You have visitors from all across the globe, but you don't have a proper Content Delivery Network (CDN) that can travel through all parts of the globe, to reach their browsers.

• You have certain PHP functionality, which you earlier thought you will need. But with changing trend, you are not using them anymore. However, those functionality are still in place, and not disabled.

• The AJAX cart fragments that automatically updates the cart total in customer's shopping cart, without the need to refresh the page, is a good feature, no doubt. But, it slows down the performance of the site to a drastic extent.

• Your database has not been optimized for your growing eCommerce business.

• Mostly used responsive layouts, which resulted in unwanted files and harmed the speed.

• Large number of users affected the speed and performance of the platform and increased the load time.

Even if you take actions against the above mentioned issues, overall, for all the above problems, the most common problems are:

• A non-performing PHP code.

• Non-performing database queries

• Slow loading of files

Then, what is the solution?

Changing the hosting infrastructure and changing hardware, all these will cost you a lot, without not much of help. Although temporarily they do help, they may not provide a permanent solution.

With changing eCommerce industry and increasing users to your eCommerce platform, you need to make up your mind to change to new technologies. The age old technologies are now not compatible for large scale eCommerce operations, even though they can perform very well for small scale to medium scale businesses.

I recommend technologies like NodeJS and Golang. Golang is a booming technology and only now it is getting explored by people in the industry. In NodeJS, there are already quite many ready-to-use eCommerce solutions. NodeJS is a highly scalable technology for a growing eCommerce business. Also, to adopt AWS and other cloud based services, the technology is highly compatible.

Now, let us once briefly go through the eCommerce development and technology in 2020:

• Auto load balancing in case of increased users, even with millions of users in the platform.

• Auto-scalability with unlimited increase in products.

• Use of AWS and Lambda (microservices)

• Restful APIs for multiple front end compatibility.

• Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

As per the current eCommerce industry trends, the eCommerce websites using Angular and eCommerce websites using NodeJS are told to be performing well. 

The eCommerce websites using Flutter, the eCommerce websites using React, the eCommerce websites using Angular, the eCommerce websites using Vuejs - these technologies are told to be the best for eCommerce storefronts, backed by a robust NodeJS eCommerce Back End API. 

Wrapping Up:

Migrating to new technology is the only means to sustain the growing needs of your Customers, increase usage of your eCommerce platform, boost the conversion in your eCommerce platform and make your eCommerce business successful.