According to relevant reports, the number of stores operating on Shopify has been surging in 2024, exceeding 2 million. This trend is expected to be intensified in the future as the world economy further shifts from offline to online.
The importance of excellent user experience and satisfaction for your Shopify store cannot be overstated. By mastering effective ways to increase your Shopify speed, you’ll unlock conversions with users and organic traffic growth to result in better revenue performance.
This article will explain to you the reasons for slowing down Shopify. It also recommends the most effective ways to speed up the Shopify site and teaches you how to increase Shopify store speed. The final purpose is to help you perform well in the Shopify speed test.
Reasons That Can Slow Down Your Shopify Site
Here are a few of the most important reasons why your Shopify store may be slow.
1. Outdated jQuery holds Shopify back.
Introduced in 2006, jQuery is still the choice of many websites today because it can help simplify HTML DOM traversal and manipulation. However, the reality is that jQuery is no longer the primary choice for modern developers.
2. Shopify’s Liquid template language often performs inefficiently.
It is written in Ruby and allows dynamic content to be loaded onto the website. However, some themes use overly complex code that can slow down your Shopify store.
3. The server-side rendering (SSR) consumes operational resources.
When someone visits a page on your Shopify store, HTML is generated on the server and sent to the client for viewing in the browser. This makes e-commerce stores slow and means higher hosting costs. It also weakens security because frequent requests between client and server create vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit.
Best 9 Methods to speed up Shopify website
1. Compress images as much as possible.
According to statistics, the total volume of photos accounts for one-fifth of the weight of the website, so a responsible shop owner should pay attention to the compression of photos. Compressed images can not only make your file size smaller but also ensure the presentation effect of the image.
As an important reference for selling products, images can be an important factor that influences customers’ purchasing choices. When you’re compressing your photos, please consider using lossless compression for smaller files to ensure that they do not lose quality. Some compression tools such as Image Compressor, Image Optimizer, and Crush. pics can largely contribute to making your work more efficient.
2. Improve page loading speed.
If users feel that your website store is running too slowly, it is often because the web page loads too slowly, and users need to wait for a long time.
Using AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) can significantly reduce web page loading speed on mobile devices. It can reduce page size and load time as long as users can provide web pages in a standard format.
Shopify store optimization is mainly due to the fact that the browser knows the layout of the AMP page in advance, so when the customer clicks on the page, all the content loads immediately. It is reported that apps such as RocketAmp in Shopify can create AMP versions of your store pages for you.
3. Pay attention to choosing a fast and responsive theme
The theme selection of the store is the key to attracting users’ attention. To make sure your website runs fast and smoothly, please use the gtmetrix test to see its responsiveness when choosing a theme. When customers click on the website, the website theme can be displayed immediately.
Especially if you choose an out-of-the-box theme rather than using the services of a Shopify expert like Eastside Co, the gtmetrix speed test will show the responsiveness of the theme in advance with professional tools for you. In the event of a theme glitch, elements on your website can be modified in the first instance to suit the device’s dimensions, in order to provide a better and faster user experience.
4. Check installed apps in the store
There are often many previously downloaded applications that are rarely opened, but they take up a lot of space. If you enter the Shopify store as an administrator, you can view all installed applications. It is recommended that you carefully weigh the value of each application and promptly delete any applications that you do not need or use. Because every time you install a new app, you add extra weight to your website by adding more code and loading more elements.
You should also review any third-party code you are using from time to time and delete what is no longer needed to prevent it from slowing down your store.
5. Learn to reduce the number of HTTP requests
HTTP requests are mainly used to connect resources on the server. When a visitor chooses to load your web page in their browser, other web files are also loaded at the same time, such as CSS files, Javascript, design images, etc. Often the more files a website has, the more requests it will make, which will slow down the loading speed.
To avoid more customers leaving your website, you better learn to reduce HTTP requests to speed up your website. You can either use technical tools to help reduce the number of HTTP requests or learn some simple self-service operations
6. Avoid broken links and redirects
Reduce the possibility of broken links by checking and updating them frequently. There is no doubt that broken links will increase your HTTP requests, and if customers click on these links, they are more likely to lose confidence in your store and leave your store to shop elsewhere.
Unnecessary redirects refer to unnecessary interconnections. For example, page A points to page B, and page B points to page C where the visitor ultimately wants to land. This means that it takes longer for the visitor to reach the page and reduces the overall speed of your website.
7. Replace sliders and carousel images
Although we often see the use of sliders on other websites, we recommend using a single hero image rather than a carousel of images. The obvious reason is that almost no one clicks on the first slide, let alone waits to see the second or third slide. In terms of website weight, each slide adds extra weight to the page. In the case where not many customers actually click, such resource consumption seems uneconomical.
Additionally, given the mobility and smaller screens of mobile devices, these sliders or carousels are less efficient to use. So maybe all you really need is to use a “hero” image instead, just optimizing the Shopify store by description.
8. Choosing the Best Hosting Website
With your hosting provider’s efficient resource management, you can easily increase your website’s loading speed. As time goes by, more and more resources or codes may need to be saved on your website, which will increase the burden of running your website. Therefore, if you want to reduce the burden on your website, choose a reliable hosting website. This means you can keep track of everything and remove any redundant elements.
When choosing the best website hosting, you need to consider metrics such as your hosting website’s monthly traffic limit, loading speed, available storage space, customer service, and data security. Remember that you need to choose a performance-focused hosting site, not a cheap one.
9. Reduce plugins
As others have said, too many plugins can sometimes do no good and harm your site. When installing a plugin, consider that it may make your site function properly or it may increase your page load time. This is because some plugins carry a large number of script files, which need to be loaded into the browser, causing your website to load slower.
In addition, it is recommended that you regularly check your website plug-ins and remove some of them that may be outdated. Also, remember to clear your cache from time to time to improve the speed of your Shopify store.
How to measure your store performance
By analyzing some of the most famous Shopify stores, we use scientific methods to provide you with trusted data standards to easily measure your store performance.
Notably, we measured homepage performance on over 400 Shopify sites to collect data points such as first content paint, interaction time, page size, image size, and total requests. Please note that all performance data is for the mobile version of this site. We then objectively compared the top and bottom 20% of pages based on Google PageSpeed scores.
Top 20%:
◾First Contentful Paint: 2.78 seconds
◾Time To Interactive: 8.98 seconds
◾Total Page Size: 2.01 MB
◾Total Image Assets: 1.11 MB
◾Requests: 72
Average:
◾First Contentful Paint: 3.8 seconds
◾Time To Interactive: 22.1 seconds
◾Total Page Size: 4.41 MB
◾Total Image Assets: 2.1 MB
◾Requests: 171
Bottom 20%:
◾First Contentful Paint: 5.89 seconds
◾Time To Interactive: 30.37 seconds
◾Total Page Size: 5.54 MB
◾Total Image Assets: 2.59 MB
◾Requests: 235
Best 5 Shopify apps to speed up your store
1. SEOAnt
SEOAnt will improve image SEO and increase your website speed without reducing quality. You can easily obtain more traffic and increase your sales by preloading pages, reducing page abandonment rates, and improving SEO rankings. Just get the most out of your resources by automatically syncing new images across products, collections, blogs, and assets. While new images are automatically compressed according to settings, it’s free for you to edit Alt text, and filename, convert PNG to JPG, and add watermarks.
2. Tapita SEO & Speed Optimizer
Tapita SEO & Speed Optimizer can optimize SEO and Shopify page speed with one click, providing better conversions and sales for customers. Tapita has a powerful toolset to help take your SEO and page speed to the next level: speed boosters, image optimizers, SEO audits, metadata templates, and more. Secondly, it helps to monitor your website health and fix SEO errors with Tapita SEO Audit. In addition, an excellent team of experts is available to resolve your issues and provide valuable advice.
3. Tiny: SEO Image optimizer, Speed
TinyIMG features image compression and optimization with smart SEO features to increase Shopify site speed optimization. It helps ensure your store’s revenue upgrades by improving page speed, user experience, and search engine rankings. One of the best features is the ability to improve your rankings by optimizing SEO metadata. Additionally, TinyIMG’s task automation options and SEO reporting help you prioritize your efforts efficiently.
4. Crush: Speed & Image Optimizer
Crush Image Optimizer reduces the file size of your store images to maximize the speed of your store. Generally speaking, smaller image files mean that pages load faster. Unlike other apps, it optimizes your images in an intuitive way by automatically renaming image files and ALT tags to aid discovery in search engines. With the help of this app, you can easily figure out how to improve Shopify store speed and get a high Shopify speed score.
5. Smart SEO
With Smart SEO, you can drive more organic traffic to your store and boost sales, thereby ranking higher in the SERPs. Smart SEO provides tools and automation to perform image optimization and increase matrix website speed. With the power of AI to generate eye-catching product meta tags (ChatGPT-4 Turbo), you’ll find that complex customer acquisition tasks become simpler and mundane tasks become automated. Free plan available with a 7-day free trial.
FAQs
1. What Site Speed Optimizations Does Shopify Already Have?
Your Shopify website should already offer the ability to take advantage of browser caching and use a CDN. Certain content from your store (such as images, JavaScript, and CSS) can be cached in the browser and instead of being reloaded when the user views it again, it is called from the cache, which means load times are much faster. Shopify uses CDN (Content Delivery Network) to allow some of your website’s content to be stored on servers around the world.
2. How to Make Shopify Store Faster with a CDN?
CDN can help Shopify store speed optimization and reliability of content delivery, optimizing global content distribution to ensure a superior user experience and maximum engagement. You can say goodbye to slow loading times and unreliable performance, minimize connection latency and deliver your content to users quickly. You get uninterrupted access and a seamless browsing experience with reduced downtime
3. How Revenue Impact Your Site Speed?
As we all know, Shopify site speed is about user experience. According to statistics, a one-second increase in website speed can generate more than $8,000 in revenue for a website. It can be seen that it is very important to maintain a fast website loading speed. Speeding up your Shopify site not only enhances the user experience, it can also have a direct impact on your bottom line.
4. What factors are outside of your control when making Shopify speed optimization?
Think about whether you have ways to control your customers’ devices, networks, and locations. Customers who visit your store are from all over the world and have different devices and internet connections. So when a customer makes a request, you should remind them to check that they are using the latest version of their browser and that they have recently cleared their cache.
5. What is Shopify page speed?
Shopify page speed, also known as page load time, refers to the total time it takes for a web page to load correctly. When customers click on a page, page speed refers to the time it takes for them to see all the content on the page. According to Google, the recommended page load time should be less than two seconds. If it takes too long, customers may lose patience and move to other pages.
Outro
If you want to know how to increase Shopify store speed, the optimization methods and tools provided in this article will point the way. One of the best ways to ensure your website loads faster is by optimizing your images and reducing requests and latency. You can expect to rely on higher performance to optimize Shopify across all digital channels.
It is recommended that if you want to further improve the website performance of your Shopify store, you can learn more about our products such as SEOAnt.
