I recently learnt about Shopify’s flagship new OS 2.0 functionality and brand new Shopify theme dawn.
I read the blogpost about the supposed speed improvements, but upon checking the speed of the new theme, it only hits 55 page speed. This is for a theme which doesn’t even yet have third party addons installed.
https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdawn-theme-default.myshopify.com%2F
Are there any real benefits of this new theme? Are Shopify planning on improving this speed?
The score with that tool doesn’t equal speed or performance, it can be used as a guide to try to identify potential performance issues, but the score is largely based on apps used, and some quirks can make the score fluctuate wildly - one recent example: I had a site scoring 88/100. One of the warnings recommended setting a defined height and width of images on the page. This has zero affect on performance, but after implementing that the site scored 100/100.
If you want to dive a deeper into the topic this article should shed some insight for you: Understanding Load Speed + Analysis Tools and Scoring on Shopify (I wrote that with consultation from my team, Speed Boostr, that have optimized over 1,500 Shopify sites).
With any performance tool, use it as a guide but don’t sacrifice engaging features or site design just to improve the score (assuming you’re on an ecommerce site and your goal is to improve conversion rate).
With Debut I had a score of around 60, now that I passed at Dawn the average speed score is around 30!!!