EP076 The Ecommerce Platform Race to Perfect 100 Scores on Google Lighthouse
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[00:00:06] JOSHUA WARREN: Hello, welcome to commerce today. My name is Joshua Warren and I am here today, actually just with myself. Our recording schedule got a little thrown off this week. I took a wonderful trip to Austin and met with some old friends and some new friends and talk to e commerce platforms. So I'm actually recording this a day later than usual and by myself, but it's going to be a fun episode either way.

[00:00:26] JOSHUA WARREN: So today I want to talk with you all about lighthouse, which If you've been around e commerce web development performance for really any amount of time, you've heard about Google lighthouse, you're probably tired of hearing about Google lighthouse, but specifically I want to talk about this new race I'm seeing emerge among e commerce platforms of wanting to be the, the first to really get to those perfect 100 scores on Google lighthouse.

[00:00:53] JOSHUA WARREN: And it's, it's not. without the controversy. So it'll be a fun episode. So Google Lighthouse, if you're not familiar with it, it's a, an automated testing approach that Google has and a tool that Google has the test, the performance of your website. It can actually test it in a mobile mode or a desktop mode.

[00:01:10] JOSHUA WARREN: It can really do a number of different types of tests, depending on how you set it up. But at the end of the day, what it really does is give you a score of zero 100 in a number of areas. The one that everyone pays attention to is performance. And it's actually the measure that can then also impact your SEO rankings.

[00:01:27] JOSHUA WARREN: And so that's actually one of the biggest reasons people pay attention to Google Lighthouse scores is because there's this message out there. And I think it's, it's been proven out from, from what I've seen from Brands that have really elevated their lighthouse score that you start getting your lighthouse score very much ahead of your competitors.

[00:01:45] JOSHUA WARREN: And you start seeing a lot more organic traffic. There's actually a case study we're going to talk about where they got their Google lighthouse score to a 100 and they doubled their organic traffic from Google. And that's a lot of free high converting traffic for them. So obviously the SEO impact is big, but beyond that, you know, one of the reasons that Google prioritizes and ranks higher, these sites that perform better is users like them better.

[00:02:10] JOSHUA WARREN: So that actually leads to higher conversion rates. So the faster your website is, the more likely it is someone's going to make a purchase from you. So another reason to kind of chase that 100 on Google lighthouse. But then also. As Lighthouse has evolved and as they've moved into what's called core web vitals, it's no longer just about like a one or two key metrics.

[00:02:30] JOSHUA WARREN: It looks at a number of different things across the user experience, even including how long it takes before the page can be interacted with. And then also what causes the page to refresh and redraw and things like that. So by improving your Google Lighthouse score, again, your Improving where you're going to rank with Google, you're improving your conversion rate and you're improving the usability and sometimes even the accessibility of your site.

[00:02:54] JOSHUA WARREN: So because of this, there is a lot of money out there and being able to tell merchants that you can increase their Google lighthouse score. There was actually one Shopify extension that got busted that guaranteed you a perfect score on Google lighthouse, but it turns out what it did was detect if you were running lighthouse and if so, Fake the contents of your site to get you a perfect 100 score.

[00:03:15] JOSHUA WARREN: So you gotta be careful. There's a lot of uh, a lot of people out there making big promises about Lighthouse scores that can't always deliver because of this excitement around Lighthouse scores and how important they are I'm seeing different e commerce platforms start to try to raise each other to see who can basically get to the point of almost guaranteeing perfect 100s on Lighthouse and some of the execs at Shopify put out some graphics and.

[00:03:39] JOSHUA WARREN: Feelings recently that I don't necessarily agree with. And I think a lot of y'all haven't agreed with, I've seen some interesting conversations on LinkedIn about it. They, as you would expect, they basically put out something saying, if you want a fast site, you want to be on Shopify and every other platform is incredibly slow.

[00:03:55] JOSHUA WARREN: And it was a little slanted. And from what I looked at it and even comparing it to benchmarks, I've run benchmarks, other people in the community were running wasn't totally accurate. Now that's not to say that. Shopify is not fast. They've done a lot of work and really what their marketing really ought to have said, or at least for us, more technical people could have said was Shopify is winning the race on time to first bite.

[00:04:19] JOSHUA WARREN: Basically the amount of time it takes the server to start to output. the contents of the page. And that is an important factor. It's not the only factor though. And actually Lighthouse looks at a lot more than just time to first bite. So yeah, Shopify is talking about this a lot. But then another platform is really trying to take the lead here and that's Adobe commerce and Adobe commerce cloud.

[00:04:41] JOSHUA WARREN: So honestly, e commerce platforms, including Shopify historically haven't scored well on Lighthouse. There's a lot of e commerce sites out there scoring in the twenties, the thirties, the forties, maybe the fifties, but getting into the eighties, nineties and up to 100 has been a challenge. And a lot of that comes down to the fact that e commerce sites are just so much more complex than your standard site.

[00:05:03] JOSHUA WARREN: I mean, when we have pop ups, when you have behavioral tracking, when you have needing the ability to add to cart, check out all those things, that's a lot more than your average, you know, kind of static site. So it's hard to get those lighthouse scores up. And that is why. Both Shopify and Adobe commerce cloud have been focusing on this so much.

[00:05:22] JOSHUA WARREN: So Shopify their big thing, like I mentioned, they're really focused on improving their time to first bite, basically improving the kind of the backend and the server side of things so that the sites are faster. That will increase your Lighthouse score, but only up to a point. What Adobe is doing though, is really interesting.

[00:05:40] JOSHUA WARREN: They have released something called edge delivery services. I'm gonna geek out for just a minute. But edge delivery services, if you're technical, that name might even kind of clue you into what they're doing here. They're basically combining the idea of a content delivery network with edge computing.

[00:05:56] JOSHUA WARREN: So instead of one server or one cluster of servers that feeds into a content delivery network, you actually have nodes distributed everywhere that are doing the actual computation, the edge computing to render your pages and display them to the users. So that actually gives you amazing performance enhancements.

[00:06:16] JOSHUA WARREN: And Adobe has actually shared, they've had a number of clients that have deployed edge delivery services, score those perfect one hundreds on lighthouse. And that is something that honestly I didn't think would be easily reproducible. Seems like Lighthouse scores can be so dependent on the site, the design, the technologies they're using, but Adobe has really apparently found something here that allows them to deliver this again and again and again.

[00:06:42] JOSHUA WARREN: It's a little bit interesting. I will link to the documentation for how to use EDS or edge delivery services with Adobe commerce. I say it's a little interesting because it was originally built for Adobe experience manager. And so when you use it with commerce. There are certain features they're starting to roll out over time.

[00:07:00] JOSHUA WARREN: So one of those being that content authoring, you can't use the CMS features you're used to in Magento and Adobe commerce right now. There's this document based model that they're using where you actually create your content and Google docs, Microsoft word, other tools like that. Those actually sink into edge delivery services and that's how you update it.

[00:07:21] JOSHUA WARREN: In some ways it's, it's. Nice. I think that's an interesting approach because now you're not having to teach your content team how to use a specific CMS for your e commerce platform and tell them, Hey, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, whichever your company is standardized on. Just go use that build out of your all your content there and then sink that into the edge delivery services system.

[00:07:43] JOSHUA WARREN: So yeah, it's, it's really interesting and I am pulling up another link. I'm sharing is to a case study that Adobe has shared. They actually shared this last year and then shared more about it at Adobe summit. I would encourage you to read it if you haven't yet. It's all about Haynes Haynes brands and one of their sites made in form.

[00:08:03] JOSHUA WARREN: And they were, I think the first to launch on edge delivery services. My favorite part of the story is. They actually had issues after they went live on edge delivery services because the site was too fast and that just sounds like something a marketer would make up. But it's it's true. The site was so fast that the systems they had in place to try to detect abnormal user behavior went crazy because users were able to interact with the site so much faster than they could before.

[00:08:31] JOSHUA WARREN: They share that you can actually go to the home page, go to a category, go to a product page, add the product to cart. And then all the other third party systems catch up and you finally get the little cookie pop up or the consent banner. And so basically the site started performing so fast that lot of the other technology wasn't keeping up with it.

[00:08:50] JOSHUA WARREN: So, and that has not only greatly increased their conversion rates just because the site's so much faster, but their um, Organic traffic is just way up and their SEO rankings are way up because they are so much faster than all their competitors. Now I thought that was interesting. And not everyone has the resources of Haynes brands, but I thought it was an interesting way to address the challenges around Google lighthouse scores because so many brands out there that I've talked to even said, Hey, we've given up.

[00:09:20] JOSHUA WARREN: Like we know our lighthouse scores as good as it's going to get because we're an e commerce brand. We have a lot of complex interactions on the site. We're just not going to get any further than that. We're just happy with the score we have. At least we're in the average. And there's some leadership at Haynes that basically said, No, we want to see.

[00:09:37] JOSHUA WARREN: We want to set the standard for what's possible. And they worked with Adobe to develop and deploy this technology that is really going to change how e commerce sites are delivered in the future. It is an enterprise level tool right now. I know that adobe is working on ways to make it more approachable for smaller businesses.

[00:09:55] JOSHUA WARREN: But right now it is something you have to be on commerce cloud and you know, have a certain size business to qualify for and to use. I do think that it will roll down to smaller brands in the future. And if it doesn't, I suspect that there are other platforms out there that are watching this and saying, wait, we can develop an edge delivery approach as well.

[00:10:14] JOSHUA WARREN: So just like um, PWAs five or six years ago, I think now a lot of people on the front end side are going to be talking about edge delivery it's almost like the DevOps approach to front end. If you ask me, meaning that it combines server architecture and really DevOps, a DevOps approach with front end technologies.

[00:10:36] JOSHUA WARREN: And so there's just some interesting things that I think people are going to be able to do. I haven't seen any open source solutions yet doing edge delivery. I suspect I'm going to keep an eye on the Medusa project. I think that if anyone's going to be close to it, it could be them. Of course I'm, Always pulling from Magento open source.

[00:10:53] JOSHUA WARREN: So who knows, maybe that'll be a, someone that can develop a similar technology and approach for open source Magento open source. And if so, I will definitely shout that from the rooftops. Speaking of Magento open source I couldn't have an episode about Google lighthouse scores without mentioning one other solution.

[00:11:10] JOSHUA WARREN: So for both Magento open source and Adobe commerce cloud, there is a wonderful technology out there called Hoova. It took me like four years to learn how to get their name right. And I think they've only been in business for four years, but finally got it. It's H Y V A and I will link to it in the show notes for this episode.

[00:11:27] JOSHUA WARREN: Who was uh, it's not edge delivery, but it is a different approach to a Magento front end. That when implemented well, does deliver lighthouse scores approaching and up to 100. And so if you're looking for a way to get your performance up to that level, and you are on Magento or Adobe Commerce Cloud and edge delivery services just isn't on your roadmap, isn't within your reach right now, definitely recommend looking at Hoover.

[00:11:53] JOSHUA WARREN: It's not only much faster, it's a lot simpler to develop for than either the old Luma based system in Magento. Or um, PWAs and PWA studio. So I, I even feel like. Unless or until someone creates edge delivery services style delivery for Magento open source We're really going to see Across Magento and Adobe commerce the standard being you're either using edge delivery services or you're using juba so That would be what I would be looking at if I was in the Magento or Adobe ecosystem In the meantime over on the Shopify side.

[00:12:27] JOSHUA WARREN: I know they're doing quite a bit around performance and also specifically around checkout performance and checkout technologies. So who knows, maybe we'll see an edge computing based announcement from them soon. And then of course there's always big commerce, which hopefully sometime soon we will get some news on are they being acquired, who is acquiring them and who knows, depending on who acquires them and what kind of company it is, I could see there being an interesting Play there for them to go into an edge delivery model.

[00:12:58] JOSHUA WARREN: But for now, if you want a big name e commerce platform and you want edge computing and edge delivery, your one choice is Adobe commerce cloud. So sorry, Shopify, you're not quite there yet, despite what uh, you would have been sharing on social media. So that is all about Google Lighthouse scores and kind of this race I'm seeing between the e commerce platforms around Lighthouse.

[00:13:22] JOSHUA WARREN: We do at Creatuity have a performance auditing service. So if you have some questions about your site's performance or some challenges, then reach out. And for people that listen to this episode, mention this episode we can even do a free or low cost audit depending on the situation you're in and what you need help with.

[00:13:39] JOSHUA WARREN: So definitely reach out to me on LinkedIn if you're interested in that. The other thing I'd like you to do on LinkedIn well, first of all, follow me if you haven't yet. I'm Joshua Warren on LinkedIn. I have the gold creativity background color behind my head shot. So you can tell me from the, I think 30 other Joshua Warren's on LinkedIn.

[00:13:55] JOSHUA WARREN: But while you're on LinkedIn, stroll over to my profile and either DM me or find one of my recent posts about web performance and just share with me kind of, how is your site performing? What sort of lighthouse scores are you seeing? Are you happy with them? If you don't mind sharing, share what platform you're on.

[00:14:11] JOSHUA WARREN: I'm kind of curious to get some, some more real world data from merchants that are actually, Kind of fighting this performance battle and this reach to get to a lighthouse score of 100 and see if there's any trends among the platforms. Cause again, everyone's just saying all the platforms are saying that there's the best, there's the fastest.

[00:14:28] JOSHUA WARREN: And so often that. Doesn't really necessarily play out in real world scenarios. So thank you for watching or listening today. You can find these episodes on YouTube under creativity. We post them on LinkedIn under my personal LinkedIn, as well as the commerce today, LinkedIn and any podcast app under commerce today.

[00:14:48] JOSHUA WARREN: And I will see you back with Darren and the not too distant future. 

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