We’re getting ready to launch our new theme but because it’s unpublished, it’s quite hard to get speed insights and test it using online tools. There also seems to be an extra initial delay in the website load due to it being in a preview mode.
Is there a way to test an unpublished theme reliably and/or can you provide any information on how our theme will perform once it’s live and where we can improve speed?
You’re totally right, Preview mode will load some additional libraries and doesn’t use the production Shopify CDN setup, so the score is usually affected by around around a -15~20% degradation. It’s a very common concern of our clients.
Due to this and many other concerns, we have developed our Analyzer app you can check how your store is performing, all 100% free.
The preview link had expired so I couldn’t run the test yet. Please feel free to run a test whenever is convenient and contact us if you require further assistance, our engineers specialize in pagespeed optimization and core web vitals and can take your store to the fastest it can possibly be!
Beyond testing with our tool and using preview mode, you do have other options:
Backup your live theme and then publish the new theme and test live during a low time, like early morning in the week on your store.
If you have another store, you could simply download the theme file and then re-upload the theme there and test on that domain as to not disturb the live store. The pitfall to watch out for here is app configuration. So that’s why I’d go for the first option rather then this because you’d need identical apps and if you are running paid for apps that’s may be costly for just a quick test.
Hope that helps! Feel free to reach out if you need further assistance, we’re always here to help
