Using Page Speed Insights for optimization

[Justina_Fox]

Hi there, 

I have a question related to speed optimization on Shopify.

We have used Google Page Speed Insights & Pingdom Website Speed Test. After running the tests, we’ve compiled a list of to-do’s for our developer based on the personalised optimisation suggestions we got from Google & Pingdom. 

Our developer claims that ‘Page Speed Insights are not relevant for Shopify stores. Same thing for Pingdom. What you can see there is out of my control when it comes to Shopify platform.’

We suspect that he simply doesn’t want to do any further optimisations. We already got rid of the apps we don’t need, optimised image sizes, etc., but the page speed is still an issue.

Our page speed according to Google Page Speed Insights:
Desktop - 72/100

Mobile - 28/100

Is our developer right and there’s nothing else we can do about the page speed?

P.S. I've attached a few of the optimisation tasks we've shared with our developer.

[oreoorbitz]

There are things that your developer can still to do improve the performance, and things that are out of his control and up to you, and things that are out of both of your hands.

If the developer doesn't know much about pagespeed opitmization, hire a specialist to teach him the process, or a specialist to just do it.

[PaulNewton]

@oreoorbitz has it right, there are things out of merchant control when using a platform provider for hosting such as shopify.

In this situation get a consult, or use an app, or outright hire someone, or make sure your developer knows you can afford them figuring it out for you.

Merchants have NO control over settings such as expire headers, or enforcing gzip compression of the online-sales-channel ,or it's CDN ,as that requires server access which you will never get. For assets like images some businesses setup their own CDN.

High level view - Either the developer is not familiar enough with shopify to confidently scope the project so they can't or dont want to. Or what's even more common they may believe you simply cannot afford , or wont , pay the cost required to properly invest in performance.

Performance isn't just some bug fix it's an ongoing process and discipline a business must adhere to ; otherwise any investment in perf can easily be undone with a couple of button clicks by a merchant or their staff even without even realizing they've impacted the website perf.

On top of that improvement is non-linear  so with scoring it can be quick and easy to get from 50 to 70 but it takes a lot of effort and hard decisions going from 90 to 95.

If the dev is hourly just ask them to go through the available perf apps to evaluate them for you, and if you/they are using GIT or some other version control they get a sense of what the apps are doing to improve perf on shopify's online-store-channel.

When a merchant does have a large healthy dedicated budget for perf then they may just want to consider going headless with the storefront api to take full control over perf.

[Swishman]

"Performance isn't just some bug fix it's an ongoing process and discipline a business must adhere to " - @PaulNewton 

😃👏👏✌

[oscprofessional]

@Justina_Fox 

Welcome to the Community.

We will help achieve your task easily and more cost-effectively if you are looking for a way to improve the Speed of your site quickly & effectively!

you can check our store.

https://www.oscprofessionals.com/shopify-performance-optimization/

You can directly get connected with me via email or Skype.

[MS_WEB_DESIGNER]

Hi @Justina_Fox 

Welcome to the Shopify Community!

I am Alex From MS Web Designer (Top Rated Shopify Certified Experts and eCommerce Consultant from Singapore ) I helped 1000+ Shopify Store owners to Optimize their website loading speed for both mobile and desktop and increase their conversion rate.

I will love to help you with some experts feedback here

- Kindly Provide your Store Url,
- Also Mention Which Shopify theme you are using

- How many Apps you are using?

Note: If your store is protected with ‘store Font password’ please Send it here or DM me.

If you have any concerns feel free to ask me!

Regards,
Alex