Low Pagespeed score despite fast loading time

[gafell]

I have been working on improving the page speed of our website https://gafell.com/ and we are getting a loading time of just 1.5 seconds when testing on https://tools.pingdom.com/ which seems fast enough. 

However on pagespeed insights we are getting a really low score of just 29 https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgafell.com%2F and I am worried that this may affect our rankings, as we have been focusing on improving our SEO and know that the loading speed is as important factor for google. Is this something that is worth trying to improve for us?

[JoesIdeas · Accepted solution]

Hi @gafell I can share some insights / ideas (my team speedboostr.com optimizes Shopify sites every day).

1) Good recommendation by @ColinYoi  to use Google AMP if you're concerned about your Google PSI score. To get an idea for expectations + a guide to implement that I created a guide: https://speedboostr.com/shopify-amp-guide.

You'll likely have to sacrifice some functionality but that's kind of the point of their tools - the score is often affected by using 3rd party apps.

2) A score of 29 is pretty common for an engaging ecommerce site that uses 3rd party apps. Loading speed is definitely important for SEO and usability so I would focus on that first before addressing the score (the score is not equal to load speed, it's an estimation based on a crawl of your page against scoring metrics. Case study reference here: https://speedboostr.com/case-study-google-psi).

3) I would start with theme and image optimization first, to make sure your site is optimized. You can use the Shopify Analyzer for that. That's a free tool my team built for the Shopify community, the scoring and recommendations are specific to Shopify sites, based on 1,000+ Shopify sites we've optimized.

4) After optimization is dialed in, you can look at more advanced tactics like conditional loading apps (loading app scripts only on the templates they're needed), splitting up your theme CSS / scripts to load only on the templates they're needed, and diving into specific warnings on general tools like PSI to see if that warning can and should be addressed.

5) Another tactic is to implement preloading. This won't affect scores on analysis tools, but it will make the pages load faster for the user after they've landed on your site (2nd, 3rd page visited, etc). You do this by preloading certain assets that are used site-wide. For an explanation: https://speedboostr.com/preloading.

If you need help with any of that, feel free to reach out to my team at speedboostr.com/contact. Our team of Shopify developers are focused on optimization and do stuff like this every day.

[ColinYoi]

Our site gets a speed of 26 from Shopify and the following from pingtest. 

Like you am looking through code to improve score. I added an Amp site for mobile using AMP app in shopify which seems to be working well. As it gives super fast optimised loading and ranks on its own in google. Might be an option for you too. 

[JoesIdeas · Accepted solution]

Hi @gafell I can share some insights / ideas (my team speedboostr.com optimizes Shopify sites every day).

1) Good recommendation by @ColinYoi  to use Google AMP if you're concerned about your Google PSI score. To get an idea for expectations + a guide to implement that I created a guide: https://speedboostr.com/shopify-amp-guide.

You'll likely have to sacrifice some functionality but that's kind of the point of their tools - the score is often affected by using 3rd party apps.

2) A score of 29 is pretty common for an engaging ecommerce site that uses 3rd party apps. Loading speed is definitely important for SEO and usability so I would focus on that first before addressing the score (the score is not equal to load speed, it's an estimation based on a crawl of your page against scoring metrics. Case study reference here: https://speedboostr.com/case-study-google-psi).

3) I would start with theme and image optimization first, to make sure your site is optimized. You can use the Shopify Analyzer for that. That's a free tool my team built for the Shopify community, the scoring and recommendations are specific to Shopify sites, based on 1,000+ Shopify sites we've optimized.

4) After optimization is dialed in, you can look at more advanced tactics like conditional loading apps (loading app scripts only on the templates they're needed), splitting up your theme CSS / scripts to load only on the templates they're needed, and diving into specific warnings on general tools like PSI to see if that warning can and should be addressed.

5) Another tactic is to implement preloading. This won't affect scores on analysis tools, but it will make the pages load faster for the user after they've landed on your site (2nd, 3rd page visited, etc). You do this by preloading certain assets that are used site-wide. For an explanation: https://speedboostr.com/preloading.

If you need help with any of that, feel free to reach out to my team at speedboostr.com/contact. Our team of Shopify developers are focused on optimization and do stuff like this every day.

[asjain · Accepted solution]

Hi @gafell , 

Surely, pagespeed has been a ranking factor for a while now but it’s about to become a lot more important with the upcoming Core Web Vitals update. So, it has become quite important to focus on the speed and performance of your web store, especially on mobile. Mobile accounts for over 50% of the traffic on eCommerce sites, so you can’t undermine the importance of mobile speed.

You can implement AMP as suggested by @ColinYoi . But, I must warn you that AMP integration can a difficult path for a lot of sites. There can be issues with the design breaking across the site or a lot of essential functionalities could malfunction. So, if you’re choosing to go on this path, I’d suggest that you tread lightly, under the guidance of a developer who is skilled at this and knows what he is doing!

If you choose to not go with AMP, you can also optimize the speed and performance of your site, as it is. You can get a total loading time of under 3 seconds on GTMetrix and a green score for all Lab Data Core Web Vitals on Google PSI without AMP implementation. Sure, it’ll take some time and effort but it can be done for all Shopify sites! You can check out the following guide to get an idea of what needs to be done to speed up your Shopify store: Shopify Performance Optimization: Speed up your Shopify website!

My team specializes in speed and performance optimizations of websites. So, if you face any issues with the performance optimization of your Shopify store, you can write to us: https://w3speedup.com/contact-us/ We’ll be there to help you out!

[Marc_Mayr]

Hi @gafell there is an app that helps you to defer or completely remove javascript on specific type of pages.
https://apps.shopify.com/pagespeed-javascript

there is a 7-day free trial so I'd give it a shot 🙂