Your eCommerce pages that load between 0-2 seconds will most likely be the ones bringing in high conversions.
Because if your NetSuite store takes a second more to load, you lose up to 29% of your potential customers.
So what can you do to work around your NetSuite issues? Start by learning proven ways used for speed optimization and what could be slowing down your NetSuite store.
Jump to:
10 Reasons Your Netsuite Store Is Running Slow
How to Test Your NetSuite Site Speed
How to Make Your NetSuite eCommerce Store Faster
Here are ten solid strategies to up your Netsuite speed game and offer visitors a great experience:
1. Audit your applications and integrations
Multiple applications and integrations help improve your store’s aesthetic.
However, they can significantly slow down your eCommerce store because they send SOAP web service requests and call RESTlets.
You should use your integration records to audit these applications and integrations.
Do this by visiting your account and under setup, you’ll see integrations. Click on “manage integrations” to uninstall the applications you no longer use.
2. Reduce the number of custom fields
The more custom fields you allow in your form, the more data you’d have to store. And most times, it’s just redundant data.
To enable NetSuite speed optimization, enable a dropdown shoppers can select from. With this, you can group your users by preset values.
Use a dropdown for most fields except for dynamic fields like shipping address during checkout.
3. Get rid of dated data
You don’t need the details of all the products you sold years ago. If anything they will just contribute to NetSuite performance issues.
Similar to the way you review your applications, review the data you currently have stored. How often do you use the information there?
We recommend storing catalog data for only one year at most.
4. Remove redundant scripts
The same way you audit your themes is the same way you should review your scripts and preset workflows.
While they might not directly affect your store’s overall functionality, they can increase your processing load and slow down NetSuite's response time.
So we recommend removing any scripts that are no longer in use including user events. You can do this from the Javascript Utilities section of your Commerce Developer Environment.
5. Combine workflows wherever possible
NetSuite allows for tons of customizations that can potentially trigger performance issues. Especially when you have a lot of additional workflows.
So rather than eliminating them, try to merge the ones you already have set up.
You can start by merging workflows that have the same logic and functions together.
Also, remember to cancel workflow instances you think should be no longer active. This will reduce the load on your records.
6. Use scheduled searches to your advantage
When you need to pull up data results, depending on what your query is, it can cause Netsuite server issues.
Data queries put strain on your processing speed, especially during high-traffic seasons.
Instead, save a search and define a schedule that’ll automatically run when there’s less traffic to your store. You’ll get an email with the data or results at a specific date or time.
To do this: go to Reports > Saved Searches > All Saved Searches > New
This also works because you don’t have to generate a new report every time. You can always go back to the saved report for updated data.
7. Optimize proxy servers and firewalls
Your proxy servers and firewalls help block bad traffic from accessing your store.
However, you need to optimize them to avoid NetSuite performance issues.
Proxy servers and firewalls running in the background can cause your pages to load very slowly.
To optimize, modify the settings that allow all traffic from NetSuite.
We also recommend that you not use proxy servers to access your NetSuite because it will cache that page on your proxy server's disk. And this’ll mean you wouldn’t see updated information about your site.
8. Limit the number of dropdown entries
While dropdowns are better than custom fields, they also consume data points when they are too many in number.
In addition to this, it takes the dropdown forever to load and your users have to put up with endless scrolling to see all options.
So, keep your dropdown entries simple—preferably not more than 50. You can embed search if it’s more than two scrolls so that users can easily find the entry they want to select.
9. Reduce the number of rows in list segments
By default, NetSuite sets the number of records that are displayed in a list.
But, you can choose the number of rows that show in your list segments.
Like dropdowns, implementing this can reduce the time it takes to load these records. You can make edits directly from your general account settings.
10. Prioritize pop-up lists over dropdowns
Pop-up lists are faster and more efficient than dropdowns because they automatically filter records based on the search you enter.
This is particularly helpful when you have a ton of values you can’t possibly comb through.
To enable pop-ups, simply visit the preferences section under Home.
The best part is that it’ll be dynamic. So when the values are small, a dropdown shows.
However, when there are too many options, it automatically switches to a pop-up list.
10 Reasons Your Netsuite Store Is Running Slow
Before implementing the performance improvement strategies we shared above, here are a few things you need to look into for NetSuite speed optimization:
1. You don’t use a Content Delivery Network
CDNs are a way to redistribute the traffic you get on your site.
So rather than everyone getting to your site data from a single point, they join from multiple networks—particularly the one closest to where they’re located.
Not using a CDN is what often causes a lot of load requests that slow down your NetSuite site speed. During high-traffic events like Black Friday, this will only get worse.
Since you can get them from reputable providers like Cloudflare and Gumnet for free, we recommend immediately setting up one.
2. You haven’t been clearing your cache
Caching is great but if you’ve been making several design updates you need to clear them so you can cache the updated version.
Otherwise, you’ll have both the old and new stuff in your cache. When this piles up, you get a slower NetSuite site speed.
This doesn’t only apply to design changes.
Clear your cache when adding new categories, or any type of scripting so you can re-cache and have only the updated version stored.
You can choose to set up an automated cache-clearing system or manually do this from your NetSuite commerce configuration settings.
3. Your site has some really heavy content
Take out heavy content like animation, videos, and super-high-resolution images for every single product you have.
Use non-raster images since they store your images as code which makes the files significantly smaller.
You can also use NetSuite’s built-in compression tool to reduce your images and file sizes without ruining their quality.
4. You have too many third-party scripts
Your NetSuite store will have performance issues especially when you have so many third-party scripts running.
This includes your event scripts and scriptable cart scripts.
Oftentimes, when these scripts run, your entire application has to halt which leads to a painful slow load time for your users as well.
So consider modifying your scripts to run more efficiently.
The most effective option is to take out these third-party scripts that are no longer in use.
5. Your site has been saving searches
Every time you generate a report, there’s a chance that you’ve been saving these simple searches.
NetSuite can save up to 100 searches so that it can pile up fast. These searches end up running at scheduled instances even when you no longer need them.
So you want to check if you’ve been saving searches you no longer need to your account. You can do this by visiting your saved searches under reports.
Remove those you no longer need and watch your site speed improve drastically.
6. You have poor server performance
Many times, the root cause of your slow site speed could be NetSuite server issues.
To improve this, you might want to check if there are any running cron jobs or if your server is being accessed by any unauthorized IP addresses.
If this is the case, you might want to stop them and see how it affects your overall performance.
7. You have poor network performance
Your network in this context is your internet service provider.
Again, you’d be able to get to the heart of poor network performance when you run a NetSuite performance test.
However, if the issue persists even after switching your network, you might want to check the basics.
This includes your browser, how many users are affected and if there’s any specific page where this is happening.
You can also open a support ticket with the NetSuite team so they can look into this for you.
Just be sure to add your public IP address, and details of your proxy, firewall, browser, and antivirus software you’re using.
8. You have too many applications running
The more applications you have, the more requests they make to your servers and the more they slow down your store.
It gets progressively worse when these application functions start to conflict with each other.
So take out those you no longer use so your NetSuite site speed can improve.
9. Your shopping environment's short cache is loaded
Caching is great for site speed but only when you save the essential pages.
Caching pages like your blog posts and discount sales automatically load up your shopping environment’s short cache.
Because your store then has to reload these cached pages, you automatically have a longer load time for all the pages in your shopping environment.
We recommend using a CMS page lazy load so you can control which pages cache and which pages won’t. You can edit this in your Commerce Configuration section.
10. You have too much category data
Most eCommerce store owners think that the more categories, the better the user experience.
However, a greater number of categories just spreads the same products across more of them and duplicates the data.
So to avoid these repetitions in your database and for your customers, we recommend reducing the number of categories .
That way you’ll have fewer category data in your storage and a more organized UI.
How to Test Your NetSuite Site Speed
You can test your NetSuite site speed and identify other performance issues with the following steps;
- Log into your NetSuite application
- Double tap on the Oracle NetSuite Logo located at the top-left corner of your screen
- You’ll get a pop-up display of your site’s performance that’ll look like the image below
Now the data here tells you everything you need to know about your performance.
For example, “Total” here means your site’s load time in seconds.
The server shows the load time in seconds and how much percentage of the load time was used in getting data from your NetSuite server.
“Server suite script” is how much server time went into server-side scripting.
“Network” focuses on the load time to get data from your NetSuite servers to your computer. “Client” shows you the load time for rendering each page.
Recommended reading:
How to Speed Up Your Shopify Store - 17 Practical Ideas
17 Proven Ways to Speed Up your BigCommerce Store
11 Tested Ways to Speed Up your WooCommerce Store
20 Ways to Improve WooCommerce Product Page Conversions (Updated 2024)
Before you go...
98% of visitors who visit an eCommerce site—drop off without buying anything.
Even if your NetSuite store is optimized and highly effective.
Why: user experience issues that cause friction for visitors.
And this is the problem Convertcart solves.
We've helped 500+ eCommerce stores (in the US) improve user experience—and 2X their conversions.
How we can help you:
Our conversion experts can audit your site—identify UX issues, and suggest changes to improve conversions.
**This post was written by Moses, a digital entrepreneur who geeks out on online marketing and write about it for B2B SaaS companies that appreciates blog content borne out of hands-on experience.
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