With Shopify, more and more online merchants are choosing a powerful and intuitive shopping cart system. Setting up and opening an online store has never been easier. This makes it all the more important to stand out through factors such as pagespeed or performance, which are generally part of SEO, in order to increase visibility and thus customer trust. Pagespeed optimisation is an essential strategy for generating sustainable traffic. As all aspects of e-commerce evolve, the importance of optimised implementation becomes even more critical.
In this article, you will learn how to improve page speed and performance so that you can increase your rankings, visibility and ultimately your sales through increased customer satisfaction. Let's get started right away.
What is page speed optimisation and why is it important?
As online retailers look to increase their visibility in search engines, the term 'pagespeed' quickly comes up alongside general SEO and performance metrics. Pagespeed refers to the speed at which a website loads. This includes all the content, such as images, text or javascript, that is required to deliver the page to the user.
Have you ever clicked on a link or product on a website and waited forever for it to load? And they haven't even implemented new features like VR and AR? Not only is this annoying, but if you run an online store like this, it costs you potential customer satisfaction. This is exactly what you want to avoid. And that leads directly to the question of how to keep performance, and in particular page speed, from falling to pieces.
What affects the pagespeed optimisation of your Shopify shop?
In order to optimise pagespeed, it is important to understand the factors that negatively impact the pagespeed of your shop. When users access a page in your shop, all the information needed to display the page is retrieved in the background. All of this information can potentially have a negative impact on page speed. This includes the HTML document that contains the basic structure of the page, graphics and other media content. Javascripts - if present - are also loaded and executed here.
After these elements are loaded, the page is rendered - built in visual form. Javascripts are small executable files that allow you to interact with the website, or add animation and dynamic content. You should also keep this in mind for the following actions. Before you start optimising your website for speed, you need to know where you stand.
Optimising page speed - what to measure and how?
Here are the latest Pagespeed Insights results from www.google.de
Of course, there are many tools that can give you all kinds of insights. To avoid getting bogged down in details, we will limit ourselves to an example of one of the most important tools for SEO, which will give you enough specific information about all aspects of your website's performance.
PageSpeed Insights is a free tool from Google that gives you an excellent overview of your website's page speed and load times from a number of different perspectives. For example, the time it takes for your page to render and for users to interact with it, or the time it takes for none of the elements on your pages to move.
We all know websites where you want to click on something, but the button moves at the last moment due to a loading process - this variable is described by the CLS value. This is just one of a large number of values that describe the performance of your online store, known in search engine optimisation as Core Web Vitals.
Google has of course documented the acceptance values of the Core Web Vitals. It is important that you test each page type individually, as the values do not apply to the entire website. Product pages, search results pages, home page, checkout pages, the pages that are most relevant to your conversion should all pass a Core Web Vitals test.
5 ways to optimise the page speed of your online shop
Optimising page load time can often be a very technical topic that requires developer resources. But even with a few tricks, you can get a lot out of page speed optimisation.
1. optimise images
Graphics are one of the biggest slowdowns on your website if you don't do something about it. Shopify offers handy features that automatically resize images. It can also automatically convert them to the more efficient WebP format to reduce loading times. There are many apps that do this formatting and conversion.
It is also important to use the right format and the most economical file type: JPEG offers the best solution in terms of quality for a constant file size of 24 KB. The page speed values are now more likely to be in the green. The same principle applies to video files.
2. Lazy Loading
Instead of loading all of the media content on a page initially, elements that are outside the initial viewing area can be made to load later. Images and videos are only loaded when the user reaches the relevant part of the page (e.g. by scrolling). Lazy loading is a technique that allows content to load slowly. The content is only loaded when it is needed, rather than in advance with all the other necessary files and scripts. Most Shopify themes support this feature, alternatively you can find custom applications such as or Lazyfy . Speaking of themes...
3. Custom Themes on Shopify
Of course, performance is not the only factor when choosing a theme. However, it should be taken into account when choosing a theme. In particular, very elaborate and highly animated themes often have disadvantages that are difficult to optimise. The ratings of themes often give an indication of how well they perform. You can also take a look at this article about our 8 favourite themes.
And if that's not enough, there's always the option of a custom theme, which we can help you develop with the help of our experts.
4. use apps sparingly
The ability to use apps for every conceivable function is one of Shopify's strengths, but unfortunately also a potential stumbling block for performance and, of course, page speed. Reducing the number of apps to the bare minimum and going lean makes good business sense, as well as good for your online store. It ensures that valuable resources are not wasted, and that your customers experience fewer load times.
5. effective caching strategy
Last but not least, let's get a bit more technical: caching is a method of storing frequently used data such as images, CSS files and HTML code in the cache of your website visitor's browser. When they return to your online store, the browser can load this data from the cache instead of having to fetch it from the server. This also reduces loading time.
Shopify has long had an automatic caching feature that stores static content such as images and CSS files on a CDN (Content Delivery Network). With a Shopify Plus account, you can even adjust the caching settings for dynamic content. This further optimises the load time of your pages, especially for returning users who will find a more responsive site.
Page speed optimisation for better user experience and rankings
One thing is for sure: Pagespeed optimisation for Shopify online stores is a never-ending project, just like ongoing optimisation in other areas. Among the SEO measures, performance is very important because it can be easily measured as a strong quality feature for Google, and it is also directly perceived by the users of your website. Especially if VR and Augmented Commerce are among your topics.
So the main premise is to keep your site streamlined and free of elaborate animations, carousel widgets and superfluous elements that do not benefit your customers. Of course, the overall design of the store and the user experience associated with it must not be neglected. Remember, performance not only impresses Google, it is also a trust-building quality factor for your site visitors. And what two motivators, if not customer trust and ranking, do you need to start your page speed optimisation strategy right away?
