How to Optimise Your Shopify Store’s Speed and Performance

Does your Shopify store take too long to load?

Living in a constantly connected digital world has made us impatient. We’ve grown accustomed to getting what we want at the click of a button – and we don’t like to be left waiting! This is particularly true when shopping online. The online marketplace is crowded, and if your website loses the attention of its users, there are plenty of competitors for them to turn to instead. Slow-loading websites can cause immense frustration for users. If your Shopify store doesn’t load fast enough, you’ll experience high bounce rates.

A fast website is an essential aspect of a good user experience (UX). Optimising site speed can help you keep users engaged for longer and boost conversion rates. In this article, we’ll explain what factors affect page load times and provide useful tips and advice for optimising site speed to boost your Shopify store’s performance. Let’s get stuck in!

Why does site speed matter?

Generally, the slower your Shopify store loads, the higher your store’s bounce rate will be.

According to Google, the probability of users bouncing off your website increases by 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds, whilst from 1 second to 10 seconds, the probability of bounce increases by 123%!

If visitors are leaving your website left, right, and centre, you’re missing out on opportunities to convert these interested people into paying customers. 

Ultimately, slow-loading pages cause friction and reduce user engagement, resulting in impatient users abandoning their carts, bouncing off your website, and shopping elsewhere instead.

Did you know that site speed is also a direct SEO ranking factor? Back in 2018, Google announced that page speed was now a ranking factor for both desktop and mobile searches.

Improving site speed can have numerous advantages. A faster website can help your website gain better visibility in search results, provide a better user experience, reduce cart abandonment, boost conversion rates, improve retention, and, ultimately, help drive business growth.

53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load. How long does yours take?

What factors affect your Shopify store’s speed and performance?

The first step towards achieving lightning-fast load times is to understand the factors affecting Shopify speed.

Key factors that affect site speed include:

• Shopify theme
• Image sizes and formats
• Number of apps installed
• Sliders
• Video content
• Volume of traffic
• Browser caching policies
• Mobile optimisation

Overly complex Shopify stores featuring lots of plugins and widgets, or stores built using unoptimised images, files, and code require the user’s browser to process large quantities of data, which can cause slow loading times and poor performance.

Being aware of the factors that can slow your store down and what you can do to help speed it up allows you to make informed decisions when designing or optimising your store. You can then prioritise making changes that will have the greatest positive impact on your store’s load speed to improve user experience.

Top tips for optimising site speed and performance

Here at Create8, we asked our experienced Shopify web design team to give us insider tips and advice on how to optimise site speed and performance. Here’s what they had to say.

Compress images

High-resolution images can significantly slow down page load times as uncompressed or large media files require more data to be downloaded. Using a tool like Optimizilla to compress your image files will help browsers load the image faster. Ideally, you should aim for your image files to be no bigger than 500 KB. Benefits of image optimisation include faster page load times and improved user experience.

Limit your apps

The Shopify App Store is bursting with exciting apps to boost your Shopify store’s functionality, from increasing sales and rewarding loyalty to taking your store international. As tempting as it is to install lots of different apps, each app adds extra code to your store, so they can really slow things down. Sometimes, less is more. Only install apps that truly add value to your store and opt for all-in-one solutions whenever possible. Get into the habit of checking regularly what apps you have installed and deleting any that are no longer needed.

Reduce redirects and broken links

A large number of redirects and broken links soon add up and start to impact site speed negatively. Every time a browser encounters a redirect, it must request the new URL, wait for the server to respond, and load the content from the new location. This takes additional time and slows your store down. Broken links also consume unnecessary server resources and waste visitors’ time. Tools like Broken Link Checker and Google Search Console can help you find and fix these issues to streamline the path that users and search engines take to access your Shopify store’s content and keep load times down.

Optimise your homepage

When designing your store’s homepage, only include essential items. For example, showcase featured products rather than displaying the full catalogue. Aim to design a homepage that is engaging but uncluttered. Limit the use of data-intensive elements like carousels, large image sliders, and autoplay videos, as these can significantly impact the page’s load time.

Minimise JavaScript and CSS files

Reducing the size and number of these files can drastically improve loading times. Minify and combine files where possible, and defer the loading of JavaScript until after the initial page load to prevent it from blocking the display of content.

Leverage browser caching

When browser caching is enabled, the user’s browser can store copies of downloaded data like images and CSS files. So, what is the importance of browser caching? This means that if a user revisits the website, they don’t have to download the same content again, which significantly reduces load times for users during subsequent visits.

Choose the right theme

Some Shopify themes are faster than others. When choosing a theme for your store, look for themes that are advertised as being optimised for speed to reduce your store’s overall load time. Some of the fastest-loading Shopify themes are Sunrise, Bullet, and Baseline.

What role does a content delivery network (CDN) play in enhancing Shopify store speed?

CDN stands for content delivery network, a network of servers that are linked together to help speed up the delivery of web content to users. So, what is the role of CDN in Shopify? CDNs can handle more traffic than a single server and offer an additional layer of security to both users and the store owner. Using a CDN can speed up your Shopify store’s load time and increase reliability and overall performance.

Shopify has its own CDN, which automatically distributes your store’s content to users quickly and efficiently. However, to fully benefit from Shopify’s CDN, it’s important to make sure that your theme is configured and optimised for its use. A specialist Shopify web developer can help you check and adjust your theme settings to fully leverage the advantages of using Shopify’s CDN.

What tools are available to help measure your Shopify store’s speed and performance?

Optimising your Shopify store’s load times is an ongoing job. To maintain competitiveness, you should always know your site speed, continually monitor it, and look for ways to optimise it further to improve performance. Let’s explore some of the top tools to measure Shopify performance and speed.

Shopify Site Speed Report

Your first port of call should be Shopify’s own store speed report. This is a handy built-in tool that tells you how fast your store loads and compares it with other Shopify stores to help you benchmark its performance. It also offers advice on factors that could be slowing down your store, providing useful direction on areas where there’s room for improvement. You can find the report within your Shopify admin panel.

Google PageSpeed Insights

Next up is Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool. This is a very valuable tool for identifying areas for improvement to help you speed up your Shopify store. It provides actionable recommendations for improving site speed and separate scores for mobile and desktop performance.

GTmetrix

Type a URL into GTmetrix to receive detailed reports about the page’s performance, any areas that are slow to load, what’s causing it to be slow, and how to fix it. You can also get GTmetrix to monitor your Shopify store’s performance and send you alerts about any changes in its performance. There are both free and paid options available.

Pingdom

The free version of Pingdom allows you to test your store’s speed from different locations and receive detailed performance insights and recommendations. However, to benefit from the tool’s monitoring, alerts, and more detailed reports, you will need to pay for a plan with them.

How often should you perform speed tests and updates to maintain optimal performance?

Your Shopify store’s speed should be consistently monitored and regularly reviewed, at least once a month, to help you spot any problems early on and ensure your store is always running at optimal performance.

If you make any major changes to your website, it’s important always to carry out thorough Shopify performance testing afterwards to ensure the changes haven’t negatively impacted site speed.

As soon as updates or patches become available for Shopify or any of the software or plugins that your store uses, install them as soon as possible. Many of these updates include optimisations that can help to boost your store’s speed and performance. Configure your settings to automatically install updates where possible to ensure you get them as soon as possible. 

It’s also useful to schedule in time every month or so to carry out performance optimisations, including cleaning up unused data, fixing broken links, compressing images, and minimising CSS and JavaScript files.

Partner with Create8 to boost your Shopify store’s speed and performance

At Create8, we’ve worked with businesses in a wide variety of industries to design and build fast, high-performance Shopify stores. We are proud to be a Shopify partner and offer various Shopify support packages and services.

For a fixed monthly price, you can access advice and technical support from our Shopify experts whenever you need it! Whether you want to speed up page load times, optimise Shopify images, or start winning more conversions, our team will help you maintain your store at peak efficiency.

Contact us to find out more about our Shopify services, and let us help you optimise your eCommerce store for growth.