Shopify Speed Optimization: How to Speed Up Your Shopify Store Website
How fast does your Shopify store load? There are plenty of things you can do to optimize it and make it faster, so you can see higher sales, more traffic, and better customer satisfaction. If you’re wondering how to speed up your Shopify store, take a look at this guide on Shopify speed optimization! It’s got loads of tips on how to improve your website performance. What steps you should take to boost loading speeds as much as possible.
Choose a Speed Optimized Shopify Theme
Choosing a speed optimized theme will also be helpful in improving the loading time of your website. These themes have clean code that is easy for Google and browsers to interpret. Therefore giving you a better shot at ranking higher in SERPS.
There are many free options available from e-commerce platforms like Themeforest and Creative Market which are worth checking out. If you want to save yourself some time then it might be worth investing in a premium theme from Themeforest or Creative Market. They tend to load faster than their free counterparts. With an extended trial period on offer you can rest assured that if there are any issues with the theme then it’s not going to cost you anything to rectify them.
There are more features than just the loading speed though so it’s important to look through all of these before settling on one. Some other factors to consider include compatibility with third party apps, ease of customization and support for multiple languages.
For those who aren’t too confident in their technical skills we recommend looking into Shopify’s collection of pre-made themes. Which are mobile responsive, come equipped with all of the features mentioned above. Provide unlimited design customizations without being too complicated for beginners.
Alternatively you could find a freelancer to help tailor your own custom designed theme from scratch but this would require more time and money on your part. Regardless of what option you go for, picking up a fast loading theme should be the first step in speeding up your store!
Disable Unwanted Shopify Features
There are many useful features that come with your Shopify plan and they’re all set up by default. What you want to do is disable the ones you don’t need, or use. So your store loads as quickly as possible. This will be a one-time setup process, but the time investment pays off in reduced page loading time.
One of the most popular tasks for site speed optimization is turning off JavaScript for any pages that have it enabled. You can easily check which pages are using JavaScript by going to Settings > Design > Static Pages and selecting ‘JavaScript’.
If there’s any active pages then you’ll know what items to turn it off on! Turn off Unused Apps. Apps can be both good and bad for site speed optimization depending on what they’re doing. A great example of an app that could slow down your site is Gravity Forms.
It’s not a necessary app and it comes with the Standard Shopify plan. So if you don’t need to manage forms then it should be disabled. The same goes for any apps like abandoned carts or discounts that are no longer used on your website. More complex ecommerce websites might have several apps running at once and this could add up to unnecessary loading time. Try to limit the number of active apps whenever possible.
First off, disabling unnecessary features (like unused apps) from your Shopify account will save you tons of load time! Turning off these features is easy and only needs to be done once.
Optimize Website Images
Optimizing images is an important task that can often be overlooked when there are so many other changes to make. It’s time consuming and requires a fair amount of technical know-how. It’s worth the effort. Start by optimizing your website images to deliver pixel-perfect content, decrease file size and minimize load times. Reducing the file size means you have more storage space for other data on your site.
The last thing you want is for your website to crash or slowdown in any way during peak periods – holiday shopping or promotions, for example. Once all optimization work has been completed on every page of your site (including product pages). Test its performance with Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom Tools.
If you’ve done everything correctly then everything should show green checkmarks! Congrats! You’re now running a speedy site! Now all you need to do is take this knowledge and apply it to new updates on your site as they come up. Happy speeding!
Use Fewer Shopify Apps
One of the best ways to speed up your shopify store website is to remove or reduce any unused or unnecessary apps. Many small businesses are unaware that their store’s slowness is caused by an overabundance of apps and themes.
You may find that you do not need the large assortment of extras provided by the different app stores on Shopify. Consider taking a look at all of the different apps and removing anything that you don’t use regularly. Be sure to check in on the app in order to make sure it does not return again. Some companies will re-upload old versions when they update them, which could slow down your site even more!
A good way to keep track of this is to have Google Alerts set for your email address so you know right away if something new has been added. Another way to get rid of unused apps is simply deleting them outright. When you’re logged into your admin panel, click on the Apps button in the sidebar menu and select Delete.
Remember that deleting an app from one store doesn’t delete it from other stores associated with your account – though this can be remedied by going through each tab and clicking delete until everything has been deleted. An important thing to note about using fewer apps is that updating software takes much less time because there are fewer products to go through.
If you’ve got apps that take up a lot of space, such as Shopify Plus and BigCommerce, then take caution before removing them. However, smaller sized apps such as ShippingEasy might not require regular updates unless there is a critical vulnerability found in the code.
Use Lazy Loading
Lazy loading is the ability to load in only those graphics that are necessary for the current page instead of preloading them all at once. Lazy loading helps speed up page loads. Since the image takes less time to load and therefore does not lock up your browser.
Using this technique, you can also have more images on a page as there will be no delay from waiting for other images to download. Simply by using lazy loading, you can increase the number of pages per minute that your site loads by 50%.
Once your website has loaded, it’s important to identify whether or not you need every asset (image) loaded on the page before showing it. If an asset is already in cache and needed for future content, then you can safely display it while new assets are being loaded. Even if they haven’t finished downloading yet. For example, if the user navigates back to a product detail page after viewing a product gallery. You should show the same images in order so that they don’t have to wait for each one to load.
When implementing these techniques, it’s important to test with multiple devices because mobile devices are slower than desktop devices when it comes to loading and rendering webpages
Embed Product Videos Rather than Uploading
Ecommerce websites usually have high page loading times, especially if you are running your site on a self-hosted eCommerce platform such as Shopify. This can create a negative shopping experience for the visitor, which could cause them to abandon their shopping cart before checkout.
In order to speed up the load time of your website, embed product videos rather than uploading them. You will still get the video information in an easy-to-access way without slowing down the load time of your site. For instance, if you want to showcase a dress or shirt and provide closeups of specific aspects of it. Then go ahead and upload it to YouTube or Vimeo. Add that video link into the description box and visitors can watch that video by hovering over it with their mouse.
Embedding the video instead of uploading a video makes your store faster. Plus, it is just one less file hosted on your website (meaning more space for other items). Embedding allows viewers to easily click away from the embedded video and return back to browsing your store.
Additionally, it means that viewers don’t need to download and store the entire video content. Rather, they’re viewing a live preview of what’s inside! Not only does this make for speedy viewing but also reduces bandwidth use for customers who may be using low data plans. Moreover, because YouTube has a built-in player. You do not need to worry about installing any third party software or plugins. Just grab the URL and paste it into the textbox!
A Quick Wrap
Increasing the speed of your site can dramatically increase conversion rates by making it easier for customers. To find the products they want, increasing their confidence in the legitimacy of your store and facilitating better UX design. These are just a few reasons why it is important to optimize your site’s speed.
Luckily, there are many steps you can take to make your website faster! One step you could take is reducing the number of requests from third-party scripts on your page. Doing this will not only help reduce load time but also improve SEO rankings. Because there will be less content for crawlers to index.
There are other strategies you can use as well that include reducing JavaScript payload size and using lightweight images when possible. With these tips, you should be able to speed up your website significantly!