Today we are happy to announce the addition of two new modules to our community repository and store. Over the years I have come to realize how much speed means to e-commerce shops. It can increase conversion and also affect search engine placement. These two modules that have been added to the community repository are a bit of outlier modules. The do not increase your site speed for the average user. In fact, they do not change it at all. What they do however is increase the perceived Page Speed to Google.
The techniques that are used in these modules is somewhat hotly debated, that is why they are not included with thirty bees and are left in the community repository. See these modules hide their scripts when Google accesses your site. Some people have called this technique cloaking before, but personally my interpretation of cloaking is when the content changes. This is more the case of presenting the web in a smarter way in my mind. Presenting the content that Google needs and will index and removing some unnecessary scripts that are disregarded anyways. The two modules that have been added to the community repository are:
Facebook Optimized Module – This module is based off the default thirty bees Facebook block. This module is generally used on the home page of your site or in one of the columns of your site. The module shows your site’s Facebook page and number of followers / likes. In the optimized module the whole Facebook output is hidden whenever Google accesses your site. The means the scripts with the short cache life no longer affect your site’s Page Speed score. If you currently use our default Facebook block module, this module should raise your Page Speed score by a couple of points.
Google Analytics Optimized – The Google Analytics Optimized module is based off the thirty bees Google Analytics module. It has all of the features as our native module, with the exception of being able to hide your Google Analytics scripts from Google. Because Google Analytics loads several scripts, this module should raise your site’s Page Speed score by about 5 points if you are using it. One thing to note, using this module Google Tag Assistant will no longer work since the tags will be hidden from Google. So if you use the assistant a frequently this is something to keep in mind.
To use both of these modules you need to make sure that your current versions of the Facebook Block or Google Analytics modules are uninstalled first, then you need to download and install these modules. These modules cannot work with the other modules installed. Remember, these modules are a use at your own risk modules.
