Table Of Content
- Introduction
- Why Optimize Shopify Store for Higher Page Speed?
- Tips & Tricks to Boost the Speed of Your Shopify Store
- Apply deferred video loading
- Integrate static images instead of GIFs
- Remove any unused Shopify apps from your store
- Integrate Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) on the Shopify store
- Compress the media files
- Implement lazy load images
- Choose suitable fonts for your store
- Minimize broken links & redirects
- Update the Shopify themes and applications
- Conclusion
Introduction
Initially launched in 2006, Shopify is one of the best, most popular eCommerce development platforms. But as with any other platform, people often complain that their eCommerce store is not functioning as intended, that it is slow or not responding. If that happens, people will click off your eCommerce store, and move on to your next competitors. That’s why page speed and performance are among the most important aspects of any eCommerce website, no matter which platform it is built on.
Page Speed is a parameter that shows the time it takes for a website or one of its pages to load and view in its entirety. Google and other search engines consider page speed, performance, and loading times among the most important parameters in ranking a website on SERPs.
So in this blog, we’ll see why you should optimize your Shopify page for the best page speed, minimum loading times, and optimum performance. We will also discuss the best tips and tricks to do it. Using Shopify State, you can also check the current status of your Shopify store.
Why Optimize Shopify Store for Higher Page Speed?
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing use search algorithms that consider multiple factors to decide which websites and pages rank higher on the SERPs. As mentioned earlier, one of the most important factors in these search algorithms is page speed and performance.
So let’s see why it’s important to optimize a Shopify website for optimum page speed and performance:
- A better page speed improves the user experience, which leads to a higher conversion rate.
- If your page loads and renders quickly, people would stay on your page rather than clicking off and moving on to a different website. That would improve user engagement, leading to more sales and revenue.
- Website speed and performance are among the most significant upvotes you can gain from the search algorithms for positive SEO for the Shopify store.
- A better page speed gets you a higher ranking on the SERPs, which increases organic traffic and potential customers.
- Better performance improves the user experience on the web pages, which leads to better customer satisfaction and retention.
- It reduces the chance of people abandoning their desired products in the carts.
These reasons might be enough to explain why it is crucial to optimize the Shopify store for better speed and performance. Next, we’ll see the best tips and tricks to boost the website effectively.
Tips & Tricks to Boost the Speed of Your Shopify Store
In this day and age, people are used to websites and applications loading in the blink of an eye. But if your website takes even more than 5-10 seconds to load, there is a good chance your potential customers will move on to other websites. That would mean a higher bounce-off rate, reduced organic traffic, negative user engagement, etc.
So if you want to improve the user experience and get a higher ranking of your eCommerce store among the top positions of the SERPs, optimize it for better speed and performance.
Let’s check out a few tips and tricks for boosting the page speed and performance effectively:
1. Apply deferred video loading
Video content is very important to have on any website, be it a regular one or an eCommerce one. You can easily convey what you are trying to say in a 2-3 minute video, which you won’t be able to explain through a 2-3 page write-up.
But sometimes, these videos take a little time to load on the website, which slows down the latter’s speed and performance. You can try deferred video loading on your website. It is a technique used to improve the speed of a web page by delaying the loading of video content until it is needed. This can be achieved by using JavaScript to only load the video when the user scrolls to the area of the page where the video is located, or by using a lazy loading app that only loads the video when it is visible in the user’s browser window. This can help to reduce the initial load time of the page and improve the overall user experience.
Here is an example of a deferred video with iframe tags
<iframe loading=”lazy” width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/” allowfullscreen=””></iframe>
If you don’t know how to implement deferred video loading to your eCommerce website, you can easily hire shopify development company for this job. Their developers will help improve every aspect of the website, including its speed and performance.
2. Integrate static images instead of GIFs
GIFs process multiple frames, which may take longer to render on the website. On the other hand, images have single frames, which load faster. So if you want to improve the speed and performance of your Shopify store, choose images over GIFs as they are smaller in file size.
3. Remove any unused Shopify apps from your store
Shopify has thousands of applications in its store that can help improve its appearance and functionalities. So it’s only natural to use them on your website. But using too many of them on your eCommerce website can result in JS and CSS files running in the background, which may slow down the performance.
So monitor your website regularly and uninstall the Shopify apps that you don’t use often on the website. That would ensure your memory is not wasted on unused files, improving the speed and performance of your Shopify store.
4. Integrate Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) on the Shopify store
Millions of internet users like to access websites on their mobile devices. So it’s important to ensure your Shopify website opens and renders on mobile devices quite quickly. With that in mind, the experts at Google & Twitter came up with an open-source project called AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages.
The web pages designed to load quickly on mobile devices are referred to as Accelerated Mobile Pages that use AMP HTML and are cached on Google’s servers to improve the speed and performance of the websites. Through AMP, you can ensure the Shopify store loads quickly and smoothly on devices of all types, to improve the UX and increase the organic traffic on the website.
There are several applications like FireAMP and AMP by Shop Sheriff on the Shopify store that can help you create and integrate accelerated mobile pages into your website. That would help boost your website quite considerably.
5. Compress the media files
Images and videos enhance the appearance and user experience of a website. But if they are too big, the website will take longer to load and render. So one of the most prominent techniques Shopify developers use to improve the speed and performance of the eCommerce store is compressing the image and video files.
There are several applications available on the internet and the Shopify store like compressor.io, TinyPNG, TinyJPG, etc. These apps use lossless compression, which helps compress the size of the images on your Shopify website without sacrificing the quality.
You may also find applications and websites on the internet that can help reduce the size of the videos through editing. Use these websites to compress the videos and improve the speed and performance of your Shopify eCommerce store.
6. Implement lazy load images
Lazy loading is a web development technique that can help improve the load times and performance of a website by delaying the loading of images and other resources until the user actually needs to see them. Instead of opening and rendering all images on a web page instantly, this technique only loads the images currently visible or will soon be visible to the user. That helps reduce the amount of data that needs to be loaded upfront, improving the initial load time of the web page quite significantly.
The main advantage of using lazy loading is that it allows for a faster loading time even with a lot of images. That improves the overall UX, particularly on mobile devices and slower internet connections.
Here is an example of lazy loading:
<img class=”lazyload” data-src=”https://yourwebsite.com/image.jpg” />
7. Choose suitable fonts for your store
Another significant tip to boost the speed and performance of the Shopify website is by using proper fonts like licensed monotype fonts, System fonts, and Google fonts, which are free to use on the Shopify font library. These fonts are already installed on almost all computers and mobile devices, so they’ll load on the browsers of PCs and mobile devices more quickly.
8. Minimize broken links & redirects
Every time a user clicks on a link that redirects to another page, the browser needs to make an additional request to the server, which can slow down the page’s load time. Moreover, when a user clicks on a broken link, they will be redirected to a 404 error page, which can be frustrating for the user and can also slow down the page’s load time. So minimize the redirects and broken links to ensure faster performance and better user experience. There are several applications available on the Shopify store to fix broken links and minimize redirects.
9. Update the Shopify themes and applications
The Shopify team introduces constant updates in the core platform and the different applications in the Shopify store to improve their appearance and functionalities. So it’s important you update them to their latest versions to improve the speed and performance of the eCommerce website.
These are just a few of the significant tactics you can implement to boost the page speed and load times of your Shopify-based eCommerce websites.
Conclusion
If you are a product-based business, a Shopify-based eCommerce website would be helpful. But it’s possible that even after designing and creating a great eCommerce store, your organic traffic might be low due to a negative user experience. One of the reasons behind that might be slow website speed and performance.
That’s why we have discussed the best tips to boost speed of Shopify website, load times, and performance of your Shopify eCommerce website. Implementing these tactics will help you to increase your eCommerce store sales. That would help bring more new organic traffic and retain the past recurring customers as well. Since page speed is a highly significant factor in search algorithms, these tactics will also help your eCommerce store reach the top positions of the SERPs.
So Get in touch with competent Shopify developers and implement these tactics to boost the speed of your eCommerce website comprehensively.
