Why is my ecommerce store speed drastically decreasing?

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

Ecommerce store speed on Shopify has dropped sharply after minor menu tweaks (underline removed, one column split into two) and adding a custom app page. The owner is unsure what could have halved performance and shared a screenshot indicating the decline.

Suggested diagnostics and optimizations:

  • Run GTmetrix or PageSpeed Insights to pinpoint issues; optimize images, scripts, and media. Minimize installed apps/plugins, consider a CDN, and upgrade hosting if needed.
  • Fix console errors; reduce JavaScript and CSS payloads; defer third-party JS; optimize code; improve CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift—visual stability); optimize images.

Provided benchmarks from one reply: homepage targets around Mobile ~40 and Desktop 65+.

Latest updates: The store URL (https://clairamor.com/) was shared. Shopify’s speed score reportedly fell to 28 for two days. The owner is considering a third-party optimizer that claims it can raise the score to 95+ due to fair pricing.

Action items and status: Another participant requested the third-party URL. No root cause identified yet; the thread remains open and awaiting further details to analyze the site and validate the optimization approach.

Summarized with AI on February 1. AI used: gpt-5.
4

Hi you can achieve a faster website, you can try the following steps:

  1. Fixing errors on the console
  2. Reducing the load of JavaScript
  3. Reducing the load of CSS
  4. Loading third-party JavaScript at the end
  5. Optimizing code
  6. Improving Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
  7. Optimizing images.

The expected speed for the homepage is:

  • Mobile: 40 average
  • Desktop: 65+ average
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