Is the site speed system accurate for a fast-loading website?

[The-Apparel-War]

Is the Shopify site speed system accurate? for me the website loads quite fast, sometimes it can take over 2-3seconds. any possible way to make this score go up? www.the-apparel-wardrobe.com

[Daniel]

Hi there, @The-Apparel-War! 

I definitely appreciate the effort you are putting in when it comes to gathering more incite regarding your store and how it is performing! 

What sort of speed are you getting from the Shopify report? Upon visiting your site, I do notice a bit of a lag regarding the main banners/imagery that you have. 

When it comes to optimizing your site speed, definitely checkout the following to improve on this:

• Improving Site Speed 
• Why Is Site Speed So Important? 
• How Fast Is Your Shopify Store? 
• Tips to Optimize Your Shopify Site (Outside Resource) 

Definitely give these a look over to see what tips you can apply into your own store.

[oscprofessional]

@The-Apparel-War ,

Welcome to the Shopify Community.

I have gone through your store. Your store looks good.

I have checked your site in the page speed insight chrome tool. your website score is very low.

Site speed is very important because if the speed is not good there will be the site bulky means lagging up to open the website so speed optimization will be very important so don't think just do all possible things to boost up your site speed.

 I will give you the best advice and suggestion you first work on your website and also the look and feel of your website.

3rd party apps & codes which take time to load and their size. They decrease the speed.

You can reduce the unused JavaScript. But there are 3rd party app JS file codes that 3rd party js you can not remove. 

Remove unused CSS and unused JS:

• Check assets folder of the theme and remove unused CSS and JS file
• Check and remove unused apps
• If your store has not install any app you can comment {{ content_for_header }} code in theme.liquid (not recommended if you don't have a knowledge about the liquid)

The Opportunities section of your page speed insight tool report lists all offscreen or hidden images in your page along with the potential savings in kibibytes (KiB). Consider lazy-loading these images after all critical resources have finished loading to lower Time to Interactive:

To defer loading of offscreen images in your Shopify site, you will have to modify your Theme (theme.liquid file) to leverage the lazySizes library.

Need to work on the following points 

• Theme Upgrade if there is a scope and upgraded theme available
• Reduce JS Payload.
• Use Critical CSS.
• Reduce Large Image Sizes
• Compress Images
• Limit Third-Party JavaScript & Shopify Apps
• Preload Web Fonts. 
• I would suggest limiting to one and using a standard web font.

By fixing these issues, your website speed score can definitely improve.

And we will provide an assured guarantee plan for the website speed optimization.

For more details please check the link below. 

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

If anything is missed out or unclear then don't hesitate to ask. Email us or Connect with us on Skype

Have a nice day !

[flareAI]

Hello @The-Apparel-War,

The faster your site is, the more users you are likely to convert.

Follow the below tips that will help you decrease the load on your web pages.

1. You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to view more detailed metrics for pages in your store.
2. Use a theme which is optimized for performance means a theme which is responsive, fast, and takes minimal time to load the page.
If you choose a theme with numerous sliders, fancy animations, advanced navigation systems, etc., will affect your page speed. If your theme is loading slow, consider disabling the theme features you don't need.
3. Image compression is important and a necessity for faster loading web pages. Make sure your images are of good quality and do not add too many images on a single page. You can try some tool like https://tinyjpg.com/.
4. Removing unused app code is a best practice that avoids running code for unused features, and makes your theme code easier to read.
5. Use a System font which is a font that is already installed on most computers. For example: Segoe UI, Times New Roman. If you use a font that does not yet exist on your customer's computer, then the font has to be downloaded before your text can be displayed. This impacts the time that your store takes to load.
6. Themes contain CSS, JS, HTML which can increase and affect your store speed. So disable theme features you don't use.
7. Loading extra data your customers aren't using can impact your store speed without adding value.
8. Using slideshow, which are high-quality images combined with transitions, take time to load when the user clicks the link to the homepage. So instead you can use a single high-quality hero image.
9. Remove third-party JS scripts and Shopify App which you are no longer using
You should disable app features you don't use, or you can remove the app if you don't need it. If you are removing an app make sure to remove code that was added as part of the app install process.
10. Replace GIFs with static images
11. To reduce the initial load time, you can use Lazyload technique
12. Minimize HTTP requests. For example: Combine & inline your CSS scripts
13. Avoid unnecessary redirects and fix broken links
14. Use minified CSS and JS files
15. You can run the Shopify Theme Inspector for Chrome to identify the lines of code that are slowing down pages in your online store.
16. Don't add too many images on a page
Adding too many images on a page can be frustrating. It can significantly slow the load time of your website. Also, it can overwhelm visitors, which will ultimately result in a poor user experience, a high bounce rate, and a high probability of lower rankings in relative search results.

Google Search, the world's largest and most trusted FREE ecommerce channel will show more of your store to customers on Google Search if your site is fast. So site speed is critical for organic channel sales. Did you know, ecommerce on organic channels is greater than all paid ads and social media combined. We created flareAI to deliver feeds to organic channels on a regular basis without taking your time. flareAI helps to get your products found on Google, the world's largest FREE eCommerce service. Let flareAI help you to grow your revenue on the world's best free sales channels.

Hope the above tips will help you.

Gina
Add flareAI Shopify App today!

[AvadaCommerce]

Hi there,

Your speed score in Shopify is based on a weighted average of the Lighthouse performance scores (the most popular and trusted tool for measuring a site's speed) 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. Maybe the page you checked loads quickly, but the pages in this list do not.

Please note that Lighthouse reports are run on the mobile versions of these pages because 60% of sales made on Shopify stores are from mobile devices. There's a difference in the loading speed on mobile and desktop so make sure that you check your website speed on mobile.

Another thing that can make you think your website loads faster than it actually does is the 'cache'. Since you already visited your website many times, your browser cache pre-stores files like images and web pages that sit on your hard drive for faster access if you were to visit the same pages again or pages that have the same components to speed up the page loading process. 

To further improve the speed score, I suggest you try AVADA SEO Suite which has great features that can help you with improving site speed such as Image Optimization, Speed Up, Lazy Loading and Minification (removes unnecessary information from the source code). 

You can also refer to this Shopify post about Improving Speed.

I hope my answer can help you achieve your business goals.