In the digital world, the faster your website’s load time is, the better the user experience (UX) is. Your website serves as the first impression to users and has a direct effect on the perceived credibility and quality of your business – and ultimately, trust. When you optimize your web page’s load time, you not only see improvements in UX, but also conversion rates, and ultimately, sales revenue.

According to research, the first five seconds of a page-load time have the highest impact on conversion rates. Additionally, website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time (between seconds 0-5). 

Website load time — or page load time — refers to how long it takes for a website, or web page, to fully load or appear on screen. This includes all content on the page such as text, images, videos, and your cookie banner, also known as consent management platform (CMP). 

Website imperatives: Data transparency and consent management platforms

The influx of privacy regulations requires companies to be transparent about collecting data when consumers visit websites, driving the need for a CMP on digital properties. OneTrust’s CMP enables companies to configure a UI to capture and manage consent. The CMP can be deployed by simply adding a snippet of code to your website. Adding a new code that prompts a UI can be daunting and cause concerns for how it might impact website load times. That’s why OneTrust’s CMP is built to render on the server-side of customer websites, improving page load time and providing an optimal UX. A solution like this  helps deliver responsive sites that work faster than the standard request-response model by removing the “request travel time”.

Improve website performance with a CMP that renders server side

Not cluttering your website with unnecessary images, widgets, and plugins will result in better user experiences, and it’s this user-focused approach that Google seeks to highlight with its search-engine rankings. How do you balance Google’s algorithm while following cookie banner regulatory requirements? Choose a solution that doesn’t negatively impact your performance, provides a user-friendly experience, and helps you stay compliant at the same time.  

Performance improvements with SSR

When testing OneTrust’s server-side rendering (SSR) capabilities, loading and interactivity showed massive performance gains when compared to client-side rendering, including:

• 66% improvement in Largest Contentful Paint 
• 71% improvement in Total Blocking Time  
• 27% improvement in Speed Index 

Let’s dive into what server-side rendering is and how these performance metrics are crucial to maintain SEO and deliver an optimal UX.

What is server-side rendering?

Server-side rendering (SSR) is the ability to render HTML on the website server, rather than rendering it in the browser using JavaScript. The web browser submits a request for information from the server, which instantly responds by sending the fully rendered content to the client. Most CMPs use client-side rendering, which is outperformed by server-side rendering.

Search Engine Optimization and Google’s Core Web Vitals

Search engines crawl and index websites, taking into account a variety of factors when determining where to rank those sites in search results. In 2021 Google made an update to their search engine ranking algorithms, to consider Core Web Vitals; a series of measurements across loading, interactivity, and visual stability.

Critical performance metrics for SEO include:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how quickly the site loads

• Total Blocking Time (TBT) measures how long a site takes to load content before a user can interact with the site; one of the most heavily weighted scores impacting performance

OneTrust Cookie Consent: Dependable, reliable, and optimized

With OneTrust’s Cookie Consent solution, also known as our Consent Management Platform (CMP), companies can build trust with customers using the most powerful and dependable consent solution in the market. With reliable support and technology such as a 100% availability SLA, automated change management for optimal performance, and global CDN and asynchronous script deployment, companies can maximize the performance of their CMP using OneTrust. Additionally, use server-side rendering to minimize payloads and accelerate page loads.

Read the full Performance blog series:  

• Cookie Consent Performance Series: Part 1 – SEO & Availability 
• Cookie Consent Performance Series: Part 2 – Asynchronous Loading 

Interested in getting started today? Start for free or request a demo!