Ways To Make Your Shopify Store Run Faster and Smoother Than You Ever Thought Possible

by James Shea

When it comes to your Shopify e-commerce store, speed matters. The faster your pages load, the better your sales are going to be. Just think about it – if you were a customer, would you really wait around several seconds until a page loads, especially if you are using a mobile device? In today’s ADHD world, anything more than a few seconds can seem like an eternity. According to Shopify, the industry benchmark is just 2.5 seconds. If your pages are not loading faster than that, then HOUSTON we have a problem! With that in mind, here are a few quick fixes that can get you back into the Shopify fast lane.

 

Run speed tests to see how your site stacks up

 

One of the most popular tools used by Shopify owners is Google PageSpeed Insights. Just like the name suggests, this is a tool that will test your website’s speed and then give you some suggestions of how to speed it up. You will want to run this on both the mobile and desktop versions of your Shopify website, so that you can start to see if there is a major difference between these two customer experiences.

 

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Other tools to test performance

Aim for a ranking of greater than 80/100 for Desktop and Mobile (Google PageSpeed Tool)

Desktop

Mobile

 

 

Compress and reduce the size of your images

 

One of the keys to the success of your Shopify store is having gorgeous, high-quality images of your products. Yet, while it’s certainly true that high-quality images are key, you also have to take into account that those images can be very large in file size, and that will drag down page load times. As Shopify points out, anywhere from 50 to 75 percent of your total page weight comes from images. So if you can compress and reduce your images, you can boost page load times. The good news is that there are plenty of lossless compression tools out there that can shrink your images in size without sacrificing anything in quality.

 

Think about features and add-ons that might be slowing performance

 

There are plenty of ways to customize your Shopify store, including apps and other add-ons and plug-ins. Some of them, however, could be causing your site to run much slower. Shopify has identified two features – homepage hero slides and pop-up view windows – that could detract from overall page load times. If your page load times are very slow, you might want to think about streamlining the overall site.

 

Experiment with different Shopify themes

 

There are many different Shopify themes, and some of them are faster than others. Makes sense, right? So one way to speed up your site is by changing to a new Shopify theme. You will particularly want to focus on device-responsive themes. That’s why it’s so important to check both the mobile and desktop versions of your Shopify site – it might alert you to problems that could be solved with a device-responsive theme.

 

Call in the developers

 

Let’s face it – if you don’t have a coding background, it can be pretty intimidating to make a lot of behind-the-scenes tweaks to your website. Even if you read some of the Shopify tutorials, terms like “render-blocking JavaScript” or “browser caching” might seem like unintelligible developer-speak. But they can be the key to speeding up your site, so this might be the time to call in a team of developers or a Shopify agency to really go behind the scenes and give your website an overhaul. It’s like fixing your car – you can take care of routine things like oil changes and maintenance checks by yourself but if you really need to go “under the hood,” you’re probably going to take your car to an auto specialist.

 

Just remember when it comes to your Shopify website, speed matters. Even speeding up your site by a second or two can make all the difference in the world. First check your site for speed to see how it compares to industry benchmarks, and then start making the types of changes that will accelerate your page load times.

If you are looking to work with a specialist to help increase your website performance reach out to our team at Hopatoo at hello@hopatoo.com

 

 

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