Hi my store speed score dropped from 80 to 30 overnight and I’m not really sure why i can’t recall if i added and deleted any apps it happened 3 weeks ago and i have only just realised. does anyone know what would be the cause?
Topic summary
Store speed score reportedly fell from ~80 to 30 (noticed ~3 weeks later). Merchant says Lighthouse remains high, but Shopify’s speed report shows 30.
Shopify support explains the speed score is recalculated daily using Lighthouse on the homepage, top product, and top collection pages, and is a relative comparison to similar stores. Scores of 20–35 are common and can fluctuate with apps, images, and global connection averages.
After reviewing the shared URL, support’s Shopify Analyzer shows the site performs well overall. Primary recommendation: implement lazy loading for 3 images. A favicon was also suggested for branding/trust (non-speed).
Another contributor claims Shopify recently stopped using Lighthouse for speed scoring, which would expose fraudulent “optimizations” that inject obfuscated code to trick Lighthouse. They shared an example snippet (theme.liquid) and advised reporting such developers. The merchant says no such code is present; contributor says the timing (2–3 weeks) could align with metric changes or later store edits.
Status: No definitive root cause confirmed. Actions: 1) Lazy-load the flagged images. 2) Re-audit theme for suspicious code and recent app/asset changes. 3) Monitor score fluctuations; treat it as relative, not absolute. Discussion remains open.
Hi, @Amyosborne !
My name is Moira, I’m on the Social Care team at Shopify.
I’m glad to see that you’re monitoring your site speed, it’s an important part of your business’ performance because it will impact your bounce rate (the percentage of visitors that leave the site and don’t interact with it). The better your site loads the longer your visitors will stay because they’ll have a seamless and enjoyable customer experience.
Without looking at your store, it is difficult to suggest what may benefit you directly. But if you were to reply with your store URL, I could take a closer look, but for now, I will give you some general feedback.
How often is store speed measured?
Shopify store speed scores are recalculated daily based on a weighted average of the Lighthouse performance scores for your store’s home page, your product page with the most traffic over the last 7 days, and your collection page with the most traffic over the last 7 days. Look at Google Pagespeed / Lighthouse performance scores as guidance and not a definite metric with respect to your Shopify store.
Factors you can’t control
Several factors impact your online store speed, some of which you can control, others you cannot. Customers who visit your store live around the world and have different devices and internet connections. This means that your store might load faster or slower for them depending on these factors. Below are some features that affect the speed of your online store:
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Your customer’s device, network, and location
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Shopify infrastructure
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Content delivery network (CDN)
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Local browser cache
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Server-side page cache
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The assets inside the content_for_header Liquid tag
Factors you can control## Compress Photos
Images indeed play an important role in the visual appeal of a website. They make your store look more lively and vibrant, and they give customers the most complete details about products as well. Nevertheless, high-resolution images usually require large files and therefore slow down page loading times. To avoid that, here are some suggestions for you:
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Utilize compressing tools like TinyPNG or JPEGmini before uploading images
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Upload images with the exact dimensions listed for that theme
Remove Unnecessary Apps
As you continue to develop and edit your store, it’s unavoidable to use third-party apps like a chatbot or pop-up ads. Unfortunately, there is a trade-off between the multifunction and your page speed. Let’s take a look at every app operating on your website. Do you use it regularly has it been unused for such a long time? Is it necessary for your business or do you use it just because it seems nice? If your answer is the latter one, remove it immediately. That decision will be useful for your loading page a lot.
Reach out to an Expert
The suggestions mentioned above are quite simple and easy to do. Nevertheless, if your site is too slow and you haven’t succeeded yet with those tips, then it’s time for you to ask for help from a trustworthy professional. A professional will help you with many problems, such as getting rid of render-blocking CSS and JavaScript or dealing with issues related to HTML and JavaScript.
- Hire a Shopify Expert - A website where you can hire trusted experts to help build your business. From marketing to store speed, find agencies and freelancers to get the job done.
Resources
Every improvement you make will be a great investment into your business for the long term and future growth. That said, I have a couple of help pages you can take a look at to assist you with site speed:
As I mentioned, if you feel comfortable sharing your store URL, I’d be more than happy to take a look and offer some suggestions. You can also use this performance tool which analyses your website and points out areas that may need attention:
- Shopify Analyzer App | Free Analysis Tool to Optimize Your Site - This scanner is tailored to Shopify
Let me know how you do with the information above! If you have any questions please feel free to thread those below.
Cheers!
1 Like
my score is still high when i check it in lighthouse but says my score is 30 on my shopify page
Hi @Amyosborne ,
Thanks for getting back to us,
Your score of 30 is actually pretty common! Due to apps, external scripts, and having your site built on top of our platform, most stores don’t score very high, I typically see scores range between 20-35. Even though the number is out of 100, it’s a comparison against other “similar” Shopify shops. You can view it as not a measure of speed, but more a measure of speed against other merchant stores.
The scoring scale is based on the universal average for user connection speed, that is to say, the global average. So for countries with low internet prices and good average speed, your average Shopify site will load in a breeze, for someone in a more rural destination, it might be more of a struggle. Your average score will fluctuate over time, you also shouldn’t expect a perfect score especially as you add features to your site that contribute to your customer’s experience, like apps or images.
I ran your homepage through the Shopify Analyzer tool and you scored very well! It looks like the only area you could benefit from is improving your lazy loading:
You have 3 images that need to be lazy-loaded. Lazy loading delays the loading of images until they come into a user’s view. This way you’re improving page performance by not loading all of your images upfront. I found a great article here that can help walk you through the process of implementing lazy loading.
Here’s your full report:
By the way, while I was checking out your store I noticed that you don’t have a favicon (also known as a shortcut icon, website icon) yet. It adds legitimacy to your store and helps boost your online branding as well as trust from potential consumers. It will help your customers see your store immediately in their bookmarks or browser history. You can check this video tutorial about adding a favicon to your store to serve as your guide and reference.
If you have any questions please feel free to thread those below.
Cheers!
Hi,
if you hired a developer to perform your store speed, and your Lighthouse speed is over 90 but your Shopify speed dropped under 30 it is because Shopify stopped to calculate the speed using Lighthouse.
Why this? Cause many “developers”, specially on Fiverr or other market place, are selling fake gigs, they do not optimize your store code at all, instead they add a malicious code that bypass Lighthouse speed test. In this way Lighthouse receive almost an empty page and the speed becomes incredible high. But in true, your store is the same as it was, even worst.
If you are facing such a case, please report the developer immediately to the market place (Fiverr, Shopify Experts or others) to avoid further scams.
The malicious code is in the theme.liquid and it looks similar to this one:
document.open();
if(window[‘\x6E\x61\x76\x69\x67\x61\x74\x6F\x72’][‘\x75\x73\x65\x72\x41\x67\x65\x6E\x74’].indexOf(‘\x43\x68\x72\x6F\x6D\x65\x2D\x4C\x69\x67\x68\x74\x68\x6F\x75\x73\x65’) == -1 && window[‘\x6E\x61\x76\x69\x67\x61\x74\x6F\x72’][‘\x75\x73\x65\x72\x41\x67\x65\x6E\x74’].indexOf(‘X11’) == -1 && window[‘\x6E\x61\x76\x69\x67\x61\x74\x6F\x72’][‘\x75\x73\x65\x72\x41\x67\x65\x6E\x74’].indexOf(‘\x47\x54\x6D\x65\x74\x72\x69\x78’) == -1) {
console.log(“normal user”);
document.write({{pDescription | json}});
}
else {
document.write(“
.
”);}
document.close();
I definitely can’t see a code like that in my theme.liquid and it wasn’t straight away that it dropped after I had the developer edit it for speed it was about a month later.
the drop it should not be immediately, the drop should have occurred 2-3 weeks ago when Shopify stopped using Lighthouse for speed metrics.
If you do not have a similar code string, then you may just messed up your store after it was performed.