Speed Optimizing Your Shopify Storefronts 2023

A Shopify store with a slow loading time is one that will deter users and negatively affect your conversions and revenue potential. Luckily, there are plenty of things that you can do to speed up your storefronts in 2023!

Theme optimization, image optimization, reducing requests, and lazy loading are just a few of the ways you can boost your Shopify store speed. Speed optimization should be part of your website development efforts, as well as performance testing. Building a website takes a lot of angles, such as having your web pages to be Search Engine Optimized (SEO), and having your image compression done properly for a good user experience.

1. Use a Fast Theme

If you want to speed-optimize your Shopify storefronts, a fast theme is a great way to start. These themes use compression to minimize file size and load faster than other options.

This can increase the overall performance of your website and improve user experience. Besides, it can also help boost your search engine ranking and conversion rates.

You can find fast themes in the Shopify theme store, but you need to make sure that they’re built and coded to the highest standards.

The number of HTTP requests (images, stylesheets, scripts, etc) that a theme makes can significantly affect its loading time. Themes that use fewer and lighter files should load quickly, so you can increase your site’s speed and improve SEO rankings.

2. Optimize Your Images

If you have a lot of images on your Shopify store, you can easily reduce their file size and optimize them to increase page speed. Image optimization can be done in a variety of ways, including using a content delivery network (CDN) or using a lossless compression plugin or tool to reduce the overall size without reducing quality.

In the digital world, consumers have become impatient and often abandon a page that loads too slowly. That means every tenth of a second that you can speed up your website will make a big difference.

One of the biggest issues affecting site speed is the number of images that are loaded on collection pages and product descriptions. These can be especially heavy if they’re not optimized.

3. Optimize Your CSS

Page speed is a crucial component to user experience and influencing eCommerce conversions. Ideally, your store should load in less than two seconds.

Fortunately, this isn’t hard to do and can be accomplished with these quick tips. The biggest thing you can do is to ensure that your images are optimized for speed.

A good way to do this is by using GTMetrix to see which images on your page are taking too long to load. You can then change the size of those images so that they load much faster.

Another thing to watch out for is fonts. If you use a font that doesn’t exist on the customer’s device, they’ll have to download it and that can add a few extra seconds to your page load time.

4. Optimize Your Apps

Page speed optimization is crucial for improving the user experience of your Shopify storefronts. It improves user engagement, decreases the chances of a visitor bouncing off your website, and helps to advance search engine rankings.

A good way to test the speed of your Shopify site is to use Google PageSpeed Insights. It will analyze your pages and point out what parts of your website are causing a delay.

One of the best ways to speed up your store is by compressing images. This reduces the file size without affecting image quality.

Another thing you can do to optimize your apps is by disabling the features that you no longer need and removing those that do not add value to your store. For example, if you use an app that provides live chat functionality, disable it or remove it completely.

5. Use AMP

AMP is the Google initiative that enables you to create mobile-friendly copies of your pages. These pages are distinguished by the lightning bolt symbol in search results.

Using AMP could potentially improve your website speed and help visitors stay onsite longer. AMP also helps increase your ad viewability, so you can earn more money for your content.

However, it would be best if you were careful when using AMP. The framework focuses on efficiency rather than creativity, and it cuts out some important features such as lead capture forms and social sharing buttons.

Moreover, AMP limits the number of advertisements you can display per page. This can cause issues when implementing direct-sold ads or when you want to offer a variety of ad types. It also limits the number of images you can use on your AMP pages.

Conclusion

Client-side experience in UI/UX is crucial to get engagement, therefore the user interface design (UI) has to have logical and easy-to-use interfaces so as to funnel them to the checkout. Offering a fast, frictionless experience will increase your conversions. Your bounce rate will diminish, and your overall online store performance will drive higher revenues. In a production environment, functional testing, as well as usability testing, is frequently required to fine-tune the experience, which then includes speed optimization benchmarking as well. If you have needs in speed optimization of your online store, feel free to reach out to us at wish@thegenielab.com