How Can Server-Side Tagging Improve Page Speed?

For any business, small or big, their web page performance must be top-notch. Especially when that web page is the driving force behind revenue or lead generation for the said business, it is here that user experience will play a vital part. Should potential customers not be satisfied with what they are getting from the site, they could abandon the page. 

Loading time, page speed, and performance play a considerable role when it comes to lighthouse scores. However, any such business-related website that we see currently needs to involve a lot of technology in the background. The reason for including such an intricate level of tech behind the scenes is that businesses thrive on understanding their users and customers.  

Without the accurate insights on usage, behavior, and other actions, marketing strategies cannot be developed in a way that can produce the max Return-On-Ad-Spend. But the tricky part is for both performance and data collection tools to exist in harmony without affecting each other. 

 

Below, we will go in-depth on how a solution such as server-side tagging can improve page performance while not compromising on any factors mentioned earlier. 
 

Why is page performance so important? 

Over the years, we have transitioned from consuming content on so many devices. While earlier it was over a desktop, now, most of it gets consumed on our smartphones and other smart gadgets. It can be backed up by the fact that mobile devices or smartphones account for more than 50% of internet traffic.  

However, research from Google revealed that conversion rates are lower when it comes to mobile devices than desktops or laptops. With such a massive chunk of the traffic at stake, it becomes even more critical that page performance is as fast and seamless as possible.

  

The research mentioned above also found that a significant 53% of users are likely to exit a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load. Those are some fine margins to operate on, making page performance a priority for businesses. Lower page performances will also show up in your website’s lighthouse scores and drag them down as well. 

The biggest problem with lousy page performance is that it hits your revenue streams. You may have the best user interface with all the products or services, but it won’t matter in the end if a user is not able to access the site within a few seconds (2.5 seconds is considered fast as per lighthouse scores) and abandons it. Then, all the hard work and resources behind your marketing strategies to get a user to that landing page go down the drain. 

 

Third-party tags are slowing down your website. 

There are almost no doubts over third-party cookies or tags being a massive boon for marketers. After all, these are easy to implement snippets of code in the site HTML that allows you unrestricted access to user data and behavior. Marketing strategies were never this easy to implement as every possible bit of data is reaching the marketers. 

On average, a popular website could have somewhere between a dozen to a hundred tags for data collection and monitoring purposes. The problem with these third-party tags is that they are on the client or user’s browser. So, this client-side tagging involves the user’s browser or device parsing those tags while the site loads. 

With so many tags firing on the client-side, page performance gets badly affected because it will take much time for the site to load fully. Naturally, it becomes an issue down the line, as users are very unlikely to wait for ages to get info or buy from that site, and can choose an alternative website. 

Then how exactly is server-side tagging going to help? 

If data collection and page performance are equally important but cannot function in a way that does not bring the other factor down, what is the solution? The answer is server-side tagging. 

We have learned that tags are essential in the marketing puzzle, but it slows down page loading speeds when firing on the client side. What if we can move those multiple tags to a different location? That is what server-side tagging can do for your business and website. 

In this architecture, we have a middle point where a server exists, provided by tag management tools such as MagicPixel or Google Tag Manager. We can now move the tags from the client-side to the server. It’s not to say that all tags will be moved, leaving the client-side with nothing to parse. 

But it means that most of those tags are now being executed on the server-side. Hence, the user or client device now has to do much less work resulting in faster page load times. In turn, shorter page load times will encourage the user to go through with their purpose of visiting your site. Additionally, it will improve your lighthouse scores, resulting in better search result rankings for the site. After that, it’s simple math that better rankings are likely to boost your business. 

 

Improve page performance; don’t compromise on data collection. 

Server-side tagging has given a whole new lease of life to marketers and SEO specialists alike. Marketers can now deploy the required number of tags on the server-side to get valuable user data and behavior patterns.

 

SEO specialists are relieved of page performance worries, with page load times improved, resulting in better lighthouse scores. 

So, we know that both parties can be satisfied with server-side tagging, but for that, we need a robust and capable tag management tool such as MagicPixel. Their all-in-one dashboard, gives you an easy way to keep track of the tags that are firing or need attention.  

MagicPixel also allows you to move tags from the client-side to the server-side seamlessly and without any hassles so that your website performs to the best of its ability, all these while not compromising on data collection.