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Speed

5 quick wins to speed up your Shopify store

· 3 min read

A slow store costs you twice: shoppers give up before the page loads, and Google is less keen to rank it. The good news is that most of the speed problems I see in Shopify stores come from the same handful of causes — and none of them need a full rebuild.

Here are the five I check first.

1. Serve images at the right size

Images are usually the heaviest thing on a page. A common mistake is loading a 3,000px-wide photo into a space that’s 400px wide on a phone.

Shopify can resize images for you. In your theme, use the image_url filter with a width, and let image_tag build a responsive srcset so each device downloads only what it needs:

{{ product.featured_image
  | image_url: width: 1200
  | image_tag:
    widths: '400, 800, 1200',
    sizes: '(min-width: 990px) 50vw, 100vw',
    loading: 'lazy' }}

Two rules of thumb:

  • Lazy-load images further down the page with loading: 'lazy'.
  • Don’t lazy-load the main image at the top of the page. That’s usually the element Google measures for loading speed, so you want it to start downloading straight away.

2. Clean up code left behind by old apps

Uninstalling an app doesn’t always remove everything it added to your theme. Snippets, script tags and stylesheets can stay behind and keep loading on every page — for an app you no longer use.

Go through your theme’s snippets folder and theme.liquid for files and tags named after apps you’ve removed. Duplicate your theme first, test on the copy, and only publish once everything still works.

3. Be picky about third-party scripts

Chat widgets, review carousels, pop-ups, heatmaps and tracking pixels all add JavaScript, and each one competes with your products for the shopper’s bandwidth.

For each script, ask: is this earning its place on every page? Then:

  • Remove the ones you don’t actively use.
  • Load the rest only where they’re needed — a reviews widget doesn’t need to load on your contact page.
  • Delay non-essential widgets, like live chat, until the shopper scrolls or interacts.

4. Go easy on fonts

Every font weight is another file to download. A theme using two typefaces in four weights each can easily add eight requests before your text looks right.

Stick to two or three weights, prefer your theme’s font picker over extra embeds, and make sure text shows straight away in a fallback font while the custom one loads (font-display: swap), rather than staying invisible.

5. Lighten the top of your homepage

Autoplaying video backgrounds and big image sliders look impressive in a design file, but they’re often the slowest part of a homepage — and shoppers rarely wait for slide three.

A single strong image with a clear headline and a button usually loads faster and converts better. If you love your slider, at least make sure the first slide is a properly sized, non-lazy image.

How to check your progress

Run your homepage, a collection page and a product page through PageSpeed Insights before and after each change. Look at the mobile results first — that’s where most shoppers are, and where slow stores hurt the most.

Shopify also shows real-visitor speed data in your admin’s web performance report, which is worth keeping an eye on over a few weeks rather than day to day.

Fix these five and most stores feel noticeably quicker. If you’d like a second pair of eyes, I’m happy to take a look — see the free store review below.