Shopify Store Speed Optimization

Do you want to wait and watch your Shopify store go down to poor speed?

Stop risking your business growth now!

You can find several different ways to optimize your Shopify store. Simultaneously, website optimization refers to desktop and mobile views of pages when it comes to Shopify store optimization. At HulkApps, we help improve Shopify store speed by working with some of the significant aspects of the pages using some of the leading tools or techniques: 

• Google Pagespeed Insights
• GTMetrix
• Lighthouse Score
• Reducing the impacts of unnecessary apps on your Shopify store
• Compressing and resizing images
• Minifying JavaScript, HTML, and CSS calls
• Eliminating render-blocking JS and CSS
• Preventing unwanted HTTP calls and many more

At HulkApps, we care about two critical aspects of Shopify's speed optimization processes:

Factors affecting loading of your Shopify page

It is undoubtedly usual to be aware of some significant webpage optimization techniques. So, as you know, it means being aware of the website’s bounce rate, including conversion rates.

The former refers to customers leaving your website immediately without doing any action. And the latter means many positive activities involving visitors completing a purchase, adding to Wishlist items, or signing up for a specific account.

Poor performance of your Shopify store generally affects speed and eventually conversions, making it essential to consider immediately.

Improving the UI/UX code and logic of your Shopify website:

Mobile-first approach is key to making the user experience seamless and conversion-driven. It needs you to optimize your website store’s UI/UX for mobile devices. You can take advantage of methods like reducing too many texts on your product showcase pages, making the ‘add to cart page’ visible across all product pages, and ensuring a workable navigation process across your site.

At HulkApps, our Shopify experts are skilled at utilizing powerful methods that help optimize your website pages on mobile and desktop. Here is how we do it for Shopify page optimization.

• Translating a clickable webpage into tappable events on mobile devices
• Improving touch screens adaptability for sliders and pop-ups on smaller devices
• Implementing correct workability for layouts and grids on different mobile screens
• Ensuring the accuracy of vector icons over icon fonts
• Optimizing the banners and hi-res image rendering on mobile screens

Those were various techniques to improve speed optimization for your Shopify store. But, the problem with Shopify store speed is that it needs a diagnosis process to identify its multiple issues.

How do we identify Shopify store speed problem? 

Today’s customers are fickle-minded. A second of delay means lightyears for them. According to Harry Shum, one of the computer scientists and speed specialists at Microsoft, two hundred fifty milliseconds, either slower or faster, could make or break your website.

We have analyzed more than 18+ different factors:

Defer parsing JavaScript

Using GT Metrix and Google's Page Speed insights usually means better websites. Still, while working with Shopify, we take a step further with the "Defer loading of JavaScript" warning and place JavaScript between the tags for quicker and better functioning.

Browser cache

Page speed with browser caching is an essential factor for higher Google ranking, and we use a unique technique that notifies browsers about files to change patterns, e.g., every month, every week, etc. This avoids unnecessary browser caching and hence fastens up your Shopify website.

Image optimization

We implement the required PHP accelerators (e.g., op-cache) and the optimized web server (e.g., Nginx).

Image CSS Sprites

We merge all uploaded images with image sprites to lower picture size and cancel out extra space used by repetitive images for better page loading time.

Usage of a content delivery network (CDN)

CDN is the key to faster server-side loading, so we use CDN services such as cloud-flare for Shopify stores to bring more visitors to your site and make them stay and explore the website. CDN will also lower the bandwidth of your primary server and save it from DDOS attacks for a safer platform.

Removal of unused code

Junking out unwanted codes unquestionably saves bytes worth of space on the server and minimizes the bandwidth used on every page load for optimum and error-free functioning.

Other Factors…

• Removable query strings
• Check bad requests
• Check characters set in the meta tag
• Minimize request size
• Optimize the order of styles and scripts
• Check CSS @import and more

But how do we diagnose if your site has a problem?

Before doing anything, it's wise to do some speed testing and get a baseline measure of your site speed as it stands today. There are hundreds of valuable resources, but we need more time to consider them. So here are our favorites!

PageSpeed Insights

Google's newly revamped PageSpeed Insights is the first resource to see if there are any problems to address. Don't be overwhelmed by my experience with multiple pages if you score below 70.

When it comes to measuring your website's page speed, Google provides a perfect plan of attack from within the PageSpeed Insights tool.

Performance indicators

At the top of the report, PageSpeed provides an estimate that summarizes page performance.

• 90+ points – this speed is considered fast
• 50-90 points – shows an average speed
• Less than 50 – illustrates that you need to optimize the Shopify speed as soon as possible

Mobile

As marked in the screenshot above, the Pagespeed score for the mobile device is 17. Similarly, we check the Desktop tab for the Pagespeed score on Desktop.

Desktop

No place I've ever reviewed has rated above 80. Google's bar is set very high these days, so a score above 90 is nearly impossible, mainly if you've never done any speed optimization before.

Just because you've got 60-70 on the test, there isn't a usability problem that needs an urgent fix.

Now we place the scores as shown below in an Excel sheet. This will help us use these scores as a guideline when once again checking the scores after optimization.

The scores and Google Pagespeed tools also point out possible areas of improvement.

Optimization scores as reported by Google PageSpeed insight tool.

Pingdom

You can find a few tools to gauge Shopify's speed, but Pingdom offers the best service capacity. It provides results of speed optimization of your Shopify stores rapidly, and an easy-to-measure waterfall signal offers simpler insights into what causes your Shopify store to load slowly.

As you put an URL in Pingdom to analyze it, the results returned on your screen will be similar to the below:

Before Speed Optimization

After Speed Optimization

Focus on these factors to improve your Shopify store speed loading.

GTmetrix performance report

GTmetrix also offers a quick waterfall analysis. It helps identify loaded stuff and contributes to the speed of your page. Clicking on each element will give you additional feedback about areas for improvement.

Put an URL in GTmetrix, and press the start button. Wait to see the results. There are two types of scores to detect the reasons for slow loading speed. They are Page Speed and YSlow score. These two features consider 23 parameters to analyze speed metrics for Shopify optimization.

As well as in other similar tools, the test result is displayed in a table with recommendations.

GTmetrix and Pingdom are non-Google products, but they possess incredible capabilities to help measure the page speed of your Shopify stores.

Before Page Speed Optimization

After Page Speed Optimization

Lighthouse

Lighthouse, a favorite of mine, is available right in Chrome Dev Tools. You can run a Lighthouse report right in your browser if you are on a web page and you click Inspect Item and open Chrome Dev Tools to the far right tab where it says Audit.

I love it because it gives you some very concrete examples and changes you can make. A fun fact to know is that it will automatically be on the simulated fast 3G, and notice that mobile users are focused on 3G. I like switching that fast 3G too applied because Lighthouse has to run that load well. It takes a little longer, but it seems a little more accurate. Good to know.

Here’s a visual of Lighthouse with HulkApps:

Google Analytics – Site speed suggestions

Google Analytics – Site Speed Suggestions
Google Analytics will provide some extra support to improve your page speed again. It shows the score and suggestions for PageSpeed Insights inside your GA dashboard. This is not necessarily a different speed device on the web page, but it is helpful to see it differently.

A great way to use this tool is to filter by the tab's time of load or view. Then you can see which of your pages may require the most support or view frequently visited pages that might need to be enhanced—analyzing your highly visited pages can quickly show you how to gain a higher conversion rate when you speed up load times.

To check the scores, first, we identify the store pages where most (more than 90%) of your visitors land. As shown below, we quickly find the data in your Google Analytics Behavior >Site Content > Landing Pages report.

Most visitors are more inclined to visit the home page and collection pages on Shopify stores. Identify these crucial landing pages of your store and keep them in an Excel sheet.

This process is the easiest way to keep essential pages handy and streamline our processes.

We know every page speed matters

So, when you are auditing your Shopify store, remember one thing. The speed of all pages is crucial to measure. It is evident that people overlook other pages and consider only a few particular pages to calculate the Pagespeed score or load time. However, keep in mind that every page’s speed matters.

Sometimes, it takes work to test all pages of your Shopify store. However, it is ideal for testing at least the top 10 pages of your website and can give in-depth optimization opportunities to create the most significant impact.

We at HulkApps help you improve your Shopify store speed, which helps increase conversions. We have a year-long industry specialization in optimizing Shopify stores and enhancing page loading. 

Hire us to have hassle-free onboarding with Google Pagespeed Insight and GTmetrix. Our expertise will lead you to attract customers and make a difference with user experience.

Ready to talk?

We have got a dynamic solution for you. Choose one of our Site Speed Optimization services. We'll take your site from frustratingly slow to under 2-second load times (and even faster on high quality hosting) with our made-for-you Shopify speed optimization service.

Do you prefer a service to enhance Shopify store speed optimization? 

At the beginning of any store on the Shopify platform, it runs amazingly fast, and everything works perfectly. With time, as your Shopify store grows, it takes uploads from an extensive product line, visually enriching themes, hi-res images, and third-party apps. They all end up eating your resources, resulting in low and poor page loading speed.


As per research and trends published by 'think with Google,' the following metrics are crucial to preventing Shopify speed store issues. Here is what the trends suggest,

The neural net tends to provide 90% prediction accuracy. As per its evaluation, it stated that, as the loading time of a time translates from one second to 10 seconds, it increases the mobile site's bounce rate by 123%. Similarly, when a site has about 6000 elements - images, texts, titles; it impacts the conversion rate growth by 95%.

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