10+ Tips To Improve Shopify Speed Score That Actually Work

If you want to optimize your Shopify store for both conversion rate and SEO rankings, managing to improve Shopify speed score should be your top priority. 

But what is Shopify speed score? What score is considered good enough? And how to improve speed score on Shopify anyway?

Don’t worry! In this blog, our eCommerce gurus team will uncover every myth about Shopify page speed optimization.

Let’s dive in!

1. What is Shopify speed score?

As its name already suggests, Shopify’s speed score is a vital indicator of your Shopify store’s speed performance. Historically, Shopify relied on a single speed score derived from Google Lighthouse (a tool that simulates performance in a controlled environment).

However, as of recent updates, Shopify has shifted to using Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics introduced by Google in 2020 to measure real user experience and actual interactions. And if you aren’t sold, here are a few ‘facts’ that speak volumes about the importance of page speed:

• A 0.1-second improvement in load time can lead to an 8.4% increase in conversions for eCommerce sites (Source: Deloitte)
• Approximately 70% of users said that an online store’s site speed directly impacts their will to purchase from that retailer
• Google has explicitly confirmed that they use page speed as one of the critical ranking factors

💡Want to launch a profitable Shopify store without breaking the bank? Take advantage of Shopify 1 Dollar to start your eCommerce business and see some results before committing.

2. What is a good Shopify speed score?

Technically speaking, Shopify pulls data from Google PageSpeed Insights to show you how your store performs based on three Core Web Vitals.

So, let’s have a glance at them first:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric measures the loading time of the main content on your page (e.g., the largest image or text block)
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): INP measures the responsiveness of your page when users interact with it (e.g., clicking or scrolling).
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This metric evaluates the stability of your page layout during loading

2.1. Shopify speed score metrics

And according to Shopify and Google standards, a good Shopify speed score is defined by achieving “Good” ratings for all Core Web Vitals metrics.

Below is a summary of the three thresholds for three metrics:

So, this means a speed score is regarded as good when it has LCP ≤ 2.5 seconds, INP ≤ 200 ms, and CLS ≤ 0.1.

2.2. PageSpeed Insights metrics

Shopify’s speed score is directly tied to Google’s Core Web Vitals, the same metrics used by PageSpeed Insights. This means that to achieve a good Shopify speed score, your store must meet the identical thresholds above: LCP ≤ 2.5 seconds, INP ≤ 200 ms, and CLS ≤ 0.1.

However, PageSpeed Insights offers a deeper analysis than Shopify in the sense that it combines real user interactions with lab data instead of relying solely on field data like Shopify. This will help you understand both actual customer experiences and potential issues that might arise in specific scenarios, like slower networks or older devices.

Also, beyond Core Web Vitals, PageSpeed Insights evaluates additional metrics that provide a fuller picture of your site’s performance. These include First Contentful Paint (FCP), which tracks how quickly initial content appears, or Speed Index, which measures how fast the entire page renders.

PageSpeed Insights also excels at diagnostics. Unlike Shopify, which provides a basic summary of LCP, INP, and CLS, PageSpeed Insights offers actionable recommendations to address your site’s performance bottlenecks.

To gain a thorough understanding of your store’s performance, consider supplementing Shopify’s dashboard with additional tools. For example, here are some effective options:

• Google PageSpeed Insights: Get detailed reports on your page speed performance and diagnostic suggestions 
• Google Search Console: Use Google Search Console before and after optimizing your page speed to see whether it impacts your search rankings
• GTmetrix: Similar to Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix helps break down your page load times and identifies areas to optimize
• Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX): The CrUX is a dataset used to reflect how Chrome users experience your website in real life.

3. 10+ Best tips on how to improve Shopify speed score

Now that you understand better what Shopify page speed is and how website performance

impacts user experience (UX), let’s explore 10+ methods to supercharge your Shopify site speed.

3.1. Optimize images

The first battle-tested tip on how to increase Shopify speed score is starting with optimizing your graphic and imagery content. By that, we mean optimizing both the file size and format of your images.

When you upload JPEG or PNG files to your Shopify store, Shopify automatically converts them to WebP for browsers that support it. This means you don’t have to worry about the format conversion. 

Nevertheless, you can still optimize your images further by using image compression tools like TinyPNG and resizing your images to the exact dimensions they will be displayed at to minimize unnecessary data transfer.

3.2. Delete unnecessary apps

Shopify apps are greatly helpful in the sense that they can help extend your store’s functionality. However, if you add too many unnecessary apps, your page speed will likely be negatively affected. 

This is because several apps (especially the ones that pull your database information to display on your front-end) add JS and CSS codes to your store. This will increase the HTTP requests to your server and directly slow your site down. 

Therefore, another method on how to increase speed score on Shopify is simply to delete the apps you no longer use. 

💡Tip: To preserve your page speed, when choosing apps to install, you should prioritize apps that:

• Have ‘Built for Shopify’ badge: These apps have already passed Shopify’s strict regulations about performance, including speed.
• Are multi-purpose: Instead of adding specialized apps for everything, you should choose an app that has multiple features.

>> If you’re looking for a set of essential apps already settled in an optimized store, check our premade Shopify stores.

3.3. Choose a fast, responsive theme

You might want to look for themes with sophisticated looks and cool interactive elements. However, note that the more complicated your theme is, the more code the theme may add to your Shopify site, which can possibly slow down your page speed.

Thus, make sure that you only go with the fastest Shopify themes. But how can you tell apart high-speed themes from those that are not? 

Well, simply run the themes’ demo pages through speed assessment tools like GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights or scan the reviews of other merchants to know their hands-on experience with the themes. 

3.4. Use videos externally instead of animated GIFs

GIFs can be funny when you see them as memes on social media. However, these files can be a burden to your store speed as GIF files are much larger than videos. Hence, our recommendation to improve Shopify speed score is to use videos externally. 

By ‘using video externally’, we mean you should prioritize embedding YouTube videos over uploading video files directly to your site. This is because YouTube will then take the heavy lifting of hosting and streaming off your plate, allowing your Shopify store to load faster.

3.5. Use Shopify lazy loading

Another tip we’d love to mention today is the lazy loading technique. Simply put, lazy loading is a technique that loads images only when they come into the user’s view port rather than all at once. 

Take the infographic below to visualize better how page loading works with and without lazy loading:

To implement lazy loading in Shopify, you can either use the built-in image_tag with its default lazy loading behavior or add the loading=”lazy” attribute to your <img> tags directly. For more control, you can also utilize the lazysizes.js library and apply the lazyload class to your image tags.

3.6. Try to reduce broken links and redirects 

Broken links not only hurt your Google crawling and indexing process but also pose a burden on your Shopify page speed. Simply speaking, when a visitor clicks on a broken link, the server will attempt to retrieve a non-existent page, resulting in a 404 error. 

This process consumes server resources unnecessarily, which can potentially slow down your site’s response time for other users.

And while redirecting broken links is an effective way to keep users on your site, each redirect also adds an extra HTTP request and an additional round-trip delay. Indeed, recent industry studies indicate that every redirect can add approximately 200–300 milliseconds of delay to your page load time, and if multiple redirects occur sequentially, these delays can quickly accumulate.

So, our advice is to try to minimize your broken links and redirects altogether by doing regular audits of your site’s URL structure using automated tools like Google Search Console, SEMrush’s link checkers, etc.

3.7. Optimize your Shopify store for AMP

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open standard framework that works by breaking down your web pages by their most crucial elements and storing a more simplified version of your pages on the Google server. When a visitor accesses your site using a mobile device, the AMP version is served almost instantly from Google’s high-speed infrastructure

If your Shopify website offers an AMP version, your mobile customers will be automatically redirected to AMP pages, where load time is reduced remarkably. 

However, with the AMP version, features like videos, ads, and animations will be removed, allowing the pages to load faster with only text and images. That’s why you shouldn’t use AMP on pages with high traffic or high-converting pages where you need to do branding or generate more leads.

But if you struggle to improve your page speed and most of your customers use mobile devices, enabling AMP for your Shopify store can be a wise move.

To enable AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) for your Shopify store, you’ll generally need to install a dedicated AMP app from the Shopify App Store (such as Shop Sheriff AMP Pages) and then configure the app to generate AMP versions of your store’s pages.

3.8. Minify CSS, JavaScript

Incorrect HTML coding, extra Javascript libraries, and unnecessary CSS all lead to slowing down your page load time. The browser takes longer to load when there are code errors because it has to search for things it can’t see. The website has to work harder to load elements that might not be necessary for the user experience because of extra JavaScript and unneeded CSS.

Therefore, it’s crucial to minify these files to improve the speed of your Shopify store and enhance customer experience. Minification means removing excessive data in a way that will not impact how the browser uses the given resource. This process could refer to removing unused code and applying shorter function names.

Some unnecessary codes that should be eliminated are:

• white space characters, line breaks, comments, and extra semicolons
• unused functions and variables
• longhand CSS selectors that could be shorthand

3.9. Use fast-loading fonts

For the text in your Shopify store, you have a variety of fonts to choose from. However, if you choose a font that isn’t supported by default on your customer’s computer, your website then needs to download the font first before showing it on the screen. This slows down your page speed. 

Instead, you can utilize a system font to prevent your customer’s computer from having to download a new font. A system font is one that most computers come pre-installed with.

3.10. Use one Shopify speed optimizer app

Since a large number of tips we mentioned above would sort of require coding. Hence, unless you are comfortable coding, you ought to use a Shopify speed optimizer app to help ease the page speed and conversion rate optimization process. 

Though there are now a handy of tools out there, the one we highly suggest is Tiny SEO Speed Image Optimizer. Technically, this app helps automate every page speed optimization technique, from simple tasks like image compression to advanced ones like theme code minification, lazy loading, and more. 

3.11. Make the best use of Shopify Content Delivery Network (CDN)

And last but not least, to improve Shopify speed score, don’t forget to leverage Shopify’s Content Delivery Network (CDN). 

Basically, a CDN operates by caching a website’s content across a global network of servers. 

Let’s say your online store is based in Los Angeles but has a visitor from Paris. Instead of the data traveling from the original server in Los Angeles, Shopify CDN delivers it from a server nearest to Paris.

Here comes the best part: Shopify CDN is automatically integrated into your store! Right when your site goes live, it benefits from faster content delivery and improved loading times for free.

This means you don’t need a separate CDN for your Shopify store (and it’s also technically difficult to set up). However, if you are storing some resources externally, like hard-coded images or code dependencies, it is recommended that you move those resources to Shopify CDN.

Here is how to do so:

• Put the files inside the assets directory if you are developing a theme.
• Or else, select Online Store > Themes within your Shopify admin dashboard.
• Go to your theme and click Actions > Edit code.
• Scroll to the Assets directory on the sidebar > Click Add new asset.
• You can then upload a new file. Otherwise, you can create an empty one and edit its contents.

After you upload new files to your Shopify theme, you need to update the code to refer to the new file locations:

Before:

After:

Remember to double-check that the file names in the Shopify code match the names of the files you uploaded. Always test your theme after making changes to ensure that the files are being loaded correctly.

If you successfully move external files to Shopify CDN, your pages might load faster, as there are fewer external sites from which the browser can load content. Instead, the browser can quickly load all the necessary content from Shopify’s CDN, which is optimized for speed and efficiency

Read our guide on how to launch a Shopify store for more winning tips to optimize your eCommerce business. 

Alternatively, if you want to streamline your Shopify configuration process as a whole, check our Shopify store setup services!

4. Conclusion

Since speed performance affects both your potential customers and search engines, your Shopify stores can’t afford to be sluggish or even mediocre. 

That’s why eComStart team hopes that after reading this blog, you’ll know more actionable tips on how to improve Shopify speed score.

If you find this article helpful, you can explore more resources like it at eComStart.io

5. Frequently asked questions