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Shopify speed optimization is one of the most important factors which any Shopify owners think about when they want to improve their conversion rate. But this has never been an easy task if you don’t know clearly about what factors you can do, and what factors you can’t do.
In this article, we'll dive deep into Shopify speed optimization, equipping you with invaluable tips and strategies to enhance your store's performance. We'll provide you with an ultimate guideline that will equip you with invaluable tips and strategies to enhance your store's performance. From now, don't skip any part of our blog post if you want your Shopify store get a success!
Why Shopify speed optimization is quite important
In reality, Shopify store's page is quite important for several reasons, and here are the three most critical ones which you should know:
- Increase conversion rate: As Baymard’s study, 47% of your website visitors expect your page to load in less than 2 seconds, and 40% will abandon it if it takes 3+ seconds. It means that the faster your store’s page loads, the higher your conversion rate is.
- Build customer loyalty: It’s obvious that customers cannot feel connected with the slow-speed site. If your site is fast, your consumers will tend to make repeat purchase.
- Improve Google Search Ranking: The faster your site’s speed is, the higher its rank is. It means that you can gain more potential customers.
How You Can Check Your Shopify Store Performance?
One of the most reliable tools is Google PageSpeed Insights. This is quite a useful tool for webmasters, developers, and anyone who owns a site, especially for Shopify stores like yours. By using the Google tool, you can easily examine and fix your site’s performance to bring the best results.
In the Site Performance For Webmasters, Maile Ohye said that “2 seconds is the threshold for e-commerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second”. You can watch the full video here to know about this: Site Performance For Webmasters
Which Factors Affect Shopify Speed Optimization
Now, let’s explore what factors can affect your Shopify speed optimization. Specifically, you should recognize what factors you can control or change to optimize your site and what factors you cannot control.
Factors You Cannot Control To Improve Shopify Site Speed
Firstly, we will explore what factors you cannot change to optimize your page’s speed.
1. Your customer's device, network, and location
In reality, your store visitors can be from all corners of the world and obviously, they use different devices and internet connections. It means your page’s loading can be slow if their factors are not guaranteed. Therefore, if your customer complains about your store’s speed, try to ask them to check their devices or network connection.
2. Shopify infrastructure
Your online store is hosted by Shopify’s global servers and doesn’t limit your store bandwidth. Meanwhile, Shopify constantly updates its infrastructure, which can affect your store’s speed.
3. Content delivery network (CDN)
CDN stands for content delivery network, which ensures your store loads at the best speed.
4. Local browser cache
Your online store temporarily stores certain elements in your customer's local storage, a process known as caching. When your customer returns to your store, their browser can retrieve resources from this cache rather than sending additional requests to the server. Shopify establishes browser caching for cacheable items within your store, extending the cache duration to one year for each file, which can be image files, PDFs, JS file,s or CSS files.
5. Server-side page cache
Along with utilizing local browser caching, Shopify also employs server-side page caching. The first time a page’s loading can be slower, but it can be faster because the customers get a cached copy.
6. The assets inside the content_for_header Liquid object
The Liquid object introduces resources utilized by various online store functions, encompassing performance analytics and elective elements such as dynamic checkout buttons. The loading process of this object and its associated resources influences your store's speed.
Factors You Can Control To Optimize Website Speed
Now, we move to the critical part, the factors you can control. Let’s focus on these 6 factors below because they can create a new revolution for your Shopify store.
1. Apps
When you use Shopify store, it means you have to install many apps to optimize your conversion rate. However, when you add new apps to your store, they add code to the theme. This can make your page’s speed load slower.
2. Themes
Themes are created by Liquid, HTML, CSS and JavaScript code. You can control your page speed by choosing the suitable theme for your store's features.
3. Theme or app features
Many Shopify stores use some app features like quick view, pop-ups, or pre-load information of product details on the collection page. Data you are not using can negatively impact your store without adding any value.
4. Images and videos
In reality, oversized images will reduce your site’s loading speed. If a potential customer has to wait for a long time to see an image on your site, she also tends to exit your page and also thinks that your whole store’s speed is quite slow.
5. Fonts
You want to use a special font to attract customer’s attention but it doesn’t exist on their devices. In this case, the font can be the reason why your page takes a lot of time to load.
6. Complex or inefficient Liquid code
The majority of the Liquid code used to render your store can be modified. There are different ways of crafting liquid code. Employing intricate tasks frequently might elevate your liquid rendering duration, subsequently influencing the overall speed of your store.
How to Optimize Your Shopify Store’s Speed
If you visit shopify website examples, you’ll have a smooth experience because they know how to optimize their store’s speed. Through the above section, you know the essential factors which you can control. Now, it’s time you need to understand what you need to do with the factors to optimize your Shopify store’s speed.
1. Choose the right theme
- Let’s ask and get advice from Shopify theme developer or utilize shopify theme detector to understand which theme is the best for your store’s features.
- If you put your site’s speed as one of the first priorities, Blum theme is known as the suitable solution for almost Shopify stores. They provide essential elements to make your store outstanding meanwhile it still keeping your store’s speed loading smoothly.
- You can disable the theme’s features which you don’t often use on your Shopify store
2. Choose and Utilize Suitable Apps Effectively
No one can deny that apps with specific functions can help your Shopify store increase conversion rate and revenue considerably. However, if you use too many apps, they can slow down your site. Because the apps can add a lot of CSS and JS code to your store, which brings bad impacts on your online store.
- If you have any intention to install the new app, please research its functions carefully.
- Regularly check and disable the app you don’t use anymore
- When you delete one app on your Shopify store, make sure to remove its code on your site.
3. Optimize Images and Videos
One of the most popular factors decreasing your store’s slow loading is images and videos. Many stores want to use high-quality images and videos to create a professional profile with their customers. However, it brings negative effects when visitors have to wait too long to see one image loading.
- Compress and merge images
Optimize your images by decreasing their size without compromising on quality or color. This practice also aids in minimizing the storage space required for them. "Some 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know and 83% of consumers say they would refer their family and friends to buy products and services." ~Jason Wise, Earthweb.
- Choose the image field type
You need to focus on 3 types of images JPG, PNG, and SVG.
JPG is recommended for most cases. It yields significantly smaller file sizes in comparison to PNG, though it lacks support for transparent backgrounds, unlike PNG.
PNG is the preferred format for images containing substantial text and limited color. Its advantage lies in presenting text with greater clarity.
SVG is widely regarded as optimal for graphics due to its inherent scalability without loss of resolution. Graphics like logos, icons, and non-illustrative visuals are often best served in SVG format.
- Image size on serve
When considering the images on your web pages, their sizes are crucial. For example, if you have the option to upload a 2000px image according to your theme code, it might not work well on a phone with a 400px screen. To address this, Speed Boostr recommends that you load images at 1x to 1.5x the size of the browser's container. You have a couple of ways to tackle this issue. You can adjust your liquid code to load smaller images, or you can utilize the 'scrset' attribute.
- Employ lazy load images
You can use lazy loading feature on many apps to optimize your Shopify store speed. Especially, PageFly offers you the Lazy Load option, a tool designed to optimize page loading speed. With this feature, your pages can load exceptionally quickly. By implementing Lazy Load on your page, you can achieve a notable 10-30% reduction in loading time.
Please, check out our video below and you’ll understand why many merchants prefer to use our lazy load images: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3Z7v-tbTiI
- Host videos externally
Don’t upload videos directly on your site. It’s better if you use Youtube or any alternative video hosting platform like Vimeo. Let's upload on the sites and use the embedded link on your Shopify store page. Then, you’ll see your Shopify store loads faster.
- Replace GIFs with static images
While GIFs might appear harmless and entertaining as additions to your product or information pages, meant to enhance the customer experience, they can actually hinder page loading speed if not handled properly. You can use the following alternatives instead of applying GIFs on your store:
- Employ lossy compression to shrink GIF file sizes
- Transform them into HTML5 or MP4 formats.
- Consider substituting them with static images.
4. Choose system fonts
To make sure all customers can load your store’s fonts quickly, you should use system fonts. You have the option to choose from three font families: mono, serif, or sans-serif. Even within these families, you can apply font styles like bold or italic.
- For Mono font family: Menlo, Consolas, Monaco, Liberation Mono, or Lucida Console.
- For Sans-serif font family: BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Roboto, Ubuntu, or Helvetica Neue.
- For Serif font family: Iowan Old Style, Apple Garamond, Baskerville, Times New Roman, Droid Serif, Times, or Source Serif Pro.
5. Organize All Tracking Codes with Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager is a convenient solution for effortlessly adding and removing tags from your site, eliminating the need to directly manipulate the code. It offers an excellent approach to centralizing all your website’s tracking codes in one location.
One of the remarkable features of Google Tag Manager is its automatic code loading. This means that the code loaded via Google Tag Manager won't hinder the rendering of your site’s content. Therefore, you still can check your site’s data without affecting your page’s speed.
6. Minimize Redirects & Broken links
Unwanted redirects can hinder site performance and lead to slower page load times. This slowdown directly affects the overall loading speed of the shopify website. Moreover, broken links can significantly damage SEO efforts. When a user arrives on an unavailable page, they tend to hit the back button on their browser, contributing to an increase in the website's bounce rate. To prevent unnecessary HTTP queries, you can utilize free online tools such as Dead Link Checker. These tools help you identify broken links on your store, allowing you to promptly update or remove them.
Conclusion
In the fast-paced world of online business, your Shopify store's speed matters more than ever. We hope this ultimate guide will help you optimize your online store better than ever. Now, it’s time for you to take action. Let’s make your online store better by applying our useful steps like choosing the right theme, wisely utilizing apps, optimizing images and videos, and selecting efficient fonts. Remember, speed can’t make your store luxurious or beautiful but a necessity in today's competitive online landscape. By speeding up, you'll stand out and watch your business thrive.
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Raúl is ReferralCandy's partner manager.
