People nowadays have access to fast-speed internet and smartphones. After COVID 19, they shifted their shopping methods to the online mode which created a significant impact on the shopping industry. Now different industries all around the globe have shifted themselves to online platforms.

Users who are accessing the products of your site from their smartphones or laptops expect that your site loads quickly within seconds after they click on it. Some of the disadvantages of a slow loading site include less traffic, high bounce rates, low user engagement rates, and less sale of your products.

Shopify is a great eCommerce platform used by different eCommerce site owners and shoppers as you can make a lot of money with Shopify. The two key factors if you want to grow in this eCommerce world and speed up your Shopify store are – site performance and fast loading page speed.

You just don’t have to maintain your Shopify store but you also have to optimize its speed and remove the barriers between your customers and products. Whenever you customize your website, its speed suffers and this is where you need Shopify speed optimization services.

What do you mean by page speed?

Page speed refers to the loading time of your Shopify store or the time that your website takes to completely load when a user types your URL manually or click on the link that navigates them to your site. Page speed measures how quickly the content of your page loads.

What is a good page speed of a website?

To know how fast or slow your page loads, you can quickly check using different tools. The average speed of your page that should take to open on your desktop is 4.7 seconds and on mobile, it is 11.4 seconds. But according to Google, your page should load in under 3 seconds on both desktop and mobile phones.

To lower your bounce rates and improve customer retention rates, you need to optimize the page speed of your Shopify store. According to CustoMediaLabs, the bounce rate of any eCommerce store is 20-45%.

8 Effective methods to speed up your Shopify store

Here are 8 effective ways to speed up your Shopify store that won’t even affect the functionality.

1. Check the performance of your store using different tools

You can use different tools to check the performance of your site Here are 2 important tools.

• PageSpeed Insights Tool

PageSpped Insights helps to generate page speed score and also provide various suggestions to improve the speed of pages of your website. 

This tool provides data based on the following elements for both desktop and mobile: Eliminate CSS in above-the-fold content and render-blocking JavaScript, Gzip compression, Image optimization, Minify JavaScript and CSS, Avoid redirects in landing pages, and Reduce the response time of the server.

• GT Metrix

It is the second most important tool which measures the speed and overall performance of your web pages and grades them from A to F. It also gives recommendations for improvements on your site.

When you click on the “waterfall” tab in GT Metrix, you will see the exact time each page takes to load completely.

2. Optimization of fonts

A major element of web designing is using fonts. While conducting Shopify page speed optimization, it is one of the most important points you cannot exclude. For Shopify page speed optimization, Shopify’s font store contains various collections of fonts that including Google fonts, system fonts, and licensed fonts. 

Shopify store provides access to all these fonts easily. Make sure that the fonts that you use are available on your customer’s devices so that they don’t have to download new fonts to see the text of your site. For this, you might need to use system fonts that are easily available on most computers. 

System fonts provide various options such as Monofonts which include Consolas, Monaco, Menlo, or Lucida Console: Serif fonts which include Times New Roman, Garamond, Iowan Old Style, Baskerville, or Source Serif Pro.

3. Optimize and compress images and videos

An eCommerce store has a lot of images and videos to load and they usually take a long time to open. The two reasons why images take a long time to open are – Using long file types or not using properly sized images. You should always try to use JPG images or proper size images you that users don’t have to wait for a longer time for them to open.

You should also not use too many images on a single page of your store as it will increase the loading time. While you perform image compression, you need to make sure that it doesn’t affect the quality of your images. For this, you can use the image optimizer tool so that you don’t affect the quality of your image.

4. Choose the appropriate theme for different pages of your Shopify store

When themes of your Shopify store don’t work properly, then it will reduce the loading time of your page. Shopify theme comprises CSS, HTML, and JavaScript codes. Your Shopify page speed gets affected when you customize or add new elements to your themes.

If the performance of your store is slowing down and you detect a problem in your theme, then take the following measures.

• Disable all those themes which you currently don’t use.
• Identify how you can make a balance between the speed and different features of your eCommerce website.
• Use a proper font for your Shopify store wherever needed.
• You can hire a Shopify support team who are experts in using Shopify and have good technical knowledge working on different themes.
• You can also contact different companies that provide Shopify speed optimization services.

5. Create mobile accelerated pages (AMP)

Mobile Accelerated Pages (AMP)  is a standard framework that allows merchants to create mobile-friendly website pages. In today’s fast-changing world, smartphones have played a major role from becoming luxury products to necessary products. 

People just don’t use them for communication but to also make online payments, learn new activities or classes, surf different websites, or do online shopping. 

Today, more users are doing online shopping from their mobile devices as compared to laptops or computers and thus Shopify store owners should consider optimizing the website or store from a mobile accelerated pages point of view as if your site doesn’t function properly or takes too long to load, then you will reduce a lot of prospect customers.

 For this, you can use the FireAMP app that generates AMP pages efficiently and quickly.

6. Use Google tag manager for tracking codes

Google tag manager stores all your tags in one place. To get to know the client’s behavior, you need to collect data from your store but this process slows down your store and thus you need Shopify page speed optimization services. 
With Google Tag Manager, all your tracking tags will be managed in one place using one snippet of code. Shopify is an eCommerce platform that provides security to various eCommerce owners and shoppers.

7. Make sure to minimize your redirect pages and broken links

To complete your Shopify page speed optimization, you need to find different broken links and redirect pages in your store.

To avoid redirecting pages in your Shopify store, you should choose the 404/301 redirect link by Giraffly as it identifies 404 pages, and shows all the broken links of your site after this they give you a complete report via email, and then all you need to do is to set-up a redirect pattern and the software will perform its functions.

For broken links, use tools that detect the broken link of your site so that you can update them. For this, use tools that detect the broken links of your site so that you can update them. This also reduces the bounce rates of your website.

8. Find and reduce your site page’s HTTP requests

To reduce HTTP requests, you can use the HTTP Requests Checker tool or perform the following steps.

• Convert images to Base64 code.
• Combine all JavaScript.
• Minimize usage of functional images or designs.
• Use a few social buttons.
• Incline smaller JavaScript.

Conclusion

We hope that this article helped you to understand how you can speed up your Shopify store. If you follow all the above 8 effective methods carefully, you will have a fast loading and optimized Shopify store. Shopify store provides an easy process and a rich and valuable customer experience. If you don’t use all these features, your Shopify store will take more loading time.

You can start with easy steps or hire a support team for immediate improvements. Your Shopify support team will provide Shopify speed optimization services and will invest resources and time and improve the speed and performance of your store. They will work with a customer-centric view and create an appealing page for your Shopify store, optimize your site and also improve the loading time of your site.